Clare McDermott

I only came to know about Clare McDermott’s death when Jonathan Sharp called me a short while ago today. We had worked together in Singapore under David Chipp (deceased) and Jimmy Hahn (now in retirement in Vancouver).

Clare was a gentle giant who was not easily perturbed. But I did make him spring up from his bed in a trice, all agitated and throwing down a thick volume of the Spanish Civil War he was reading that afternoon. I was reinforcement from Hong Kong for the 1962 Asian Games in Jakarta. He was my room mate in the then showpiece Indonesia Hotel. 

My sin was to string, in open view, an aerial for my portable radio in the window. The cautious Clare was aghast that in the political climate of the time, Indonesian security would put us in the cooler as imperialist agents.

But we got along well, worked on other assignments and became good friends, so much so that he and his companion, Jackie, took care of my daughter when she did her studies in the UK. ■