jacey | Singing the Big Man Home

Went all the way down to Pinner yesterday for Johnny Collins' funeral. What can I say about Johnny? He was a rock on the folk scene, a big character with a big voice and an irrepressible enthusiasm that never seemed to diminish. He'd had heart problems for years, but never let his health slow him down, and we all thought he'd go on forever. Unfortunately that wasn't to be and at the age of 71, whilst on a trip to Gdansk, Poland, singing sea shanties for the Tall Ships event, he was taken ill suddenly and died in hospital just a few hours later.

All that was in early July and it's taken until now to get through the formalities of a Polish post-mortem and getting the big man home again. There were far too many of us at the funeral to get everyone into the crematorium. We managed to squeeze in to standing room at the back, but there must have been another couple of hundred people outside. It wasn't a service - no prayers, just short tributes from friends and family and lots of singing. We all sang our socks off - a mix of shanties and couple of popular hymns. Of course the singing was magnificent - as it should have been. There were so many singers there that we should have been holding a festival not a funeral. In a way. of course, ot was a festival. A celebration of Johhny's life and what he meant to so many people.

RIP Johnny