PAUL THOMPSON

Hello again JOR. Due to a computer glitch, I lost some archived material, including (y)our previous correspondence. On the offchance you still have it, could you email it to me? Included in the lost material was the recordings, which I believe I emailed to you separately? If you have those, I'd appreciate a copy too. Please remind me how to acces the 'personal' messages as I've totally forgotten! Many thanks.

Hello JOR It may be my unfamiliarity with the workings of the forum, but I couldn't see your personal message. If you would like to repost, please &/or explain how to pick up the previous one? I have access to some of the recording as email attachments; if you give me your email address, I'll forward them on.

Well I'm pleased to tell you there are one of two people around who do remember him and indeed knew him. I have been a chorister at All Saints, Kingston Parish Church for 50+ years, and Fergus was the choirmaster when I joined in 1958. He was a hard taskmaster, hard drinker, but devoted to music. I'm sorry to have to tell you that he died in August 1960. He committed suicide by taking an overdose of tablets in the belfy. He had a shotgun with him just in case the tablets didn't work, so was clearly determined to do it. No-one really knows why. He had psoriasis very badly, and speculation at the time was that that was a contributory factor. It was also school/choir holidays, so depression may have set in. The Surrey Comet reported it at the time. Very recently, some recordings from his time came to light - it's not clear whether they are from a record, or tapes. Either way, for the time, the standard was very good. KPC has always had a very good choral reputation and Fergus certainly maintained and probably improved on that. I didn't know his previous history, so was interested to read about that.