YOU’RE probably not supposed to have a favourite relative, but I confess that I do. My mum’s cousin Tom (with whom I share an ancestral namesake) has been my favourite since I was about five years old.
One of the family’s two black sheep (the other being the outlandish and intrepid journalist Wicked Uncle Quent), Tom was a mythical rogue entity, who lived on a boat – first overseas and then in London – and scraped by doing various unsuitable casual jobs. We rarely saw him, as he was too busy being a rogue in London but, to
