Its lovely reading bits that people have written about the big man on here. And its brilliant to see that people loved and respected him like me and my friends all did, too. On behalf of me and my wife and all of our friends I can safely say he honestly was the nicest bloke in our group. I’m trying to search back through my memory but am struggling to find any time that he had a truly bad word to say about anyone, or indeed, anyone had a bad word to say about him. As a group of friends, we called him ‘Petrol Head’, not because he was into cars, but that we thought he must’ve used petrol to gel his hair! His hair style was so hard to move and he had the same style pretty much from the day we met him through to the last. Yes, it got a little greyer in time but that wasn’t due to age, that would’ve been the stress of Sonia constantly nagging him… to go to the pub! He loved his Amstel beer especially but, then he probably wasn’t all that fussy. In fact the first time I met him was in a Beer Keller in Birmingham and my first impression of him was, ‘he’s a mad man!’. It's almost a photo in my mind of him dancing so outrageously to traditional German music and looking up at me and laughing with that huge grin whilst i was dancing on the table. I just wish we’d got him in some lederhosen! But as the years went by the moshing in the pits didn’t slow down. Snobs and the Academy were our favourite go-to places in Birmingham. Most of us at the time liked listening to Indie and old Britpop music and these two venues really suited us all because, although Rich was in to heavy rock music, these places would play some heavier Indie music and the occasional mainstream hard rock anthem, so he could satisfy his urges to mosh! And every time Bowie or The Clash came on you'd always look out for Rich on the dancefloor... and there he'd be, singing and pointing to his heart's content. Talking of satisfying his urges, Snobs was where he met the love of his life (no, not Super Dry!) - Sonia. And the rest is history. Just the perfect couple and each other’s soulmates. I'd always smile when they were tagged somewhere on Facebook, it was generally a pub where Sonia would be drinking cider and Rich a beer or in a cafe where they'd be drinking hot chocolate. They just seemed so comfortable in their own company and life just seemed so content. On their wedding day when we found out his name was pronounced Cro-ton not Croaw-ton, after all these years we were absolutely flabbergasted! We’d been calling both he and Paul ‘Croaw-ton’ ever since we’d known them - including our friend Steve who’d known him since the age of FIVE and who introduced us!! But this was Rich through and through, a bloke who just went along with things in his own diplomatic and laid back way. A few of us were lucky enough to spend an afternoon with him in Solihull in between lockdowns, where we had a few beers and went for a curry… and a few more beers. And, as always, he was there to the very end of the night, being his sociable self. And, typical of Rich, he was the one who organised the day out. This was the last time we saw him before his illness had really kicked in. And now our drinking and socialising will never be the same. He was a cog in our system which will never work in the same way again. He was smart, hard working, funny, and his style was his own - not only fashion-wise but also lifestyle-wise. He wanted to only ever wear Super Dry so he only ever wore Super Dry, kinda sums this up! I only hope he knew how valued he was a person and as a friend because a person as modest as Rich may not have understood how adored he was by so many people. So Dick, if you're reading this - you were adored, and still are, and always will be. Dick Crowton, a beautiful person inside and out x