Richard Hil
I last saw Philip Rubinstein, two days before he passed away.
‘How’s it going Phil?’ I asked, rather inanely – he’d been unwell for some time. Phil raised his eyebrows, pointed to the heavens and said, ‘waiting’. I saw a familiar smile cross his face. It was a kind of gotcha moment delivered by one of my favourite secular humorists.
Phil was never short of the ability to laugh at himself and the world around him. ‘Plenty of material’, he’d say.
He was one of those ego-in-the-box characters, who makes the world go round: warm, witty and intelligent. A person too of eclectic interests: cricket, poetry, any songs by Frank Sinatra (
Abraham Lincoln told the following story, when beseeched by job-seekers in Washington:
An eccentric old king was so much bothered by bad weather, that he hired a prophet to prophesy the royal weather for him. One day, as the king was dressing for an important engagement, he asked the weather prophet what the weather would be like.
“It will be a bright, clear night,” predicted the prophet.
The king, following the advice of his prophet, put on a light suit and left his umbrella in the palace closet as he started off. On the road he chanced to meet an old farmer riding a jackass, holding an umbrella over his head.