An Uplifting Obit

My friend JF sent me this obit of Graham Mason, a journalist. I don't know why the British have such a gift for writing about the deceased, but they do. Mason died in 2001, the obituary is dated September 2002, and I'm alerting you to it in 2007. Forget the weird chronology. Just enjoy the piece, which includes gems like this one:

Unlike his friend Jeffrey Bernard, though, Graham Mason did not make himself the hero of his own tragedy. His speciality was the extreme. In one drinking binge he went for nine days without food. At the height of his consumption, before he was frightened by epileptic fits into cutting back, he was managing two bottles of vodka a day. His face became in his own description that of a "rotten choirboy". At lunchtime he would walk through the door of the Coach and Horses still trembling with hangover, his nose and ears blue whatever the weather. On one cold day he complained of the noise that the snow made as it landed on his bald head.