The first time I met Richard Morecroft was at the Crows Nest Hotel, a short walk from the ABC’s Gore Hill studios. This was 1986. I was mid-20s, working behind the bar. Richard was more like 30, the media star making a rare cameo for his single drink. Tongue-tied, I didn’t start a conversation. Nor did Richard recall this episode when we ended up working together some 30 years later.
Then again, why would he? Richard was a constant in our lounge room, and I was an arts grad earning travel money. He was the voice of confirmation, the emotional anchor of the Space Shuttle disaster which happened that same month. In fact, it was around this time Richard had adopted Archie, the orphaned grey-headed flying fox. For all I know, he might have smuggled the little guy into the pub. I can’t say. We never chatted. And he left soon after.
Advance the clock, switch the setting. We meet as colleagues, along with a maths whiz called Lily Serna, the three of us co-hosts of SBS’s Letters and Numbers in 2010. If you haven’t seen the show, think parlour games dabbling with equations or anagrams. Lily aligned the numbers, while I flapped the dictionary to verify words. Sitting at the calm centre, Richard was the puzzle ambassador, with licence to play.
And he loved it, and we loved him. Everyone loved Richard, the reasons multiple. Leigh Sales, a long-time ABC friend, on marking Richard’s death last week, described him as both a gentleman, and a gentle man. Which was perfect. Gentle is the first word that sprang to my mind too. For Lily, it was grand. For both of us: generous.
Between episodes, the newsroom vet was our TV whisperer. Lily and I were babies compared to Richard’s storied career, though he’d never play that superior card. Quite the opposite. He mucked in with us, chatted via the make-up mirror, laughed at script meetings, encouraged us, gave us wings. We were his next Archies in a way, and we felt safe in his presence. Only right for a bloke whose surname yields comforter, the anagram.
Away from the games, Richard became a mate. We talked at length about pobblebonks, Brahminy kites, and other animals we adored. We discussed Nick Cave’s music, Mad Men, photography, China Mieville’s books. After half a lifetime reading autocue stories, Richard was loaded with his own, but only if you asked, since he was more interested in listening. He joined my poker friends one night under the cowboy alias of Rifleman and cleaned out every penny. I came to know Alison, too, his cool bohemian partner, whose profound loss I can only imagine.
On news of his death, Richard leaving us on his own terms after a rare and aggressive cancer diagnosis, Lily and I shared our shock by phone. The so-called Letters guy was struggling for words. Though Numbers managed to say, “We’ve lost someone the world needs right now.” That’s the phrase I’ve been nursing ever since, smuggled beneath my jacket. The weight of the news and what it means to live in this world without a Richard Morecroft.
David Astle is the crossword compiler and Wordplay columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. He is a broadcaster on ABC Radio Melbourne.
