Nobody seems to be returning my calls so I’m guessing the TV adaption has died on its arse which is a pain but one of the conversations I had with the TV people at one stage was about music and I’ve been thinking about the ideal soundtrack ever since.

Sharon found him two days later when she went back to the flat.

He’d died of an overdose; downers, and he’d shot some smack, the coroner said, so I reckoned I had been right after all.

And so our first full dress run as a new club was for Gyppo’s funeral.

We assembled in the Golden Lion car park again.

There is always a strong turnout for funerals. Not just from our club, we were all there of course, a slow cortège, riding two abreast behind the hearse, silent, solemn and grim as we rolled through the town, a police escort ahead and behind. People on the pavement stopped to watch as we passed but it was a very different feeling from that first time, some seven or so years before.

And with us were other friendly, and even not so friendly clubs. The Brethren were there in force, Dazza leading them with their wreath strapped to the pillion pad of his Harley. Down the pecking order there were members of local sidepatch clubs and MCCs, some of them customers, some of them just friends or acquaintances. Gyppo had been a popular and well known guy.

There were even wreaths from clubs like The Hangmen and Dead Men Riding. We might be enemies but we were still bikers who could respect each other.

His family hadn’t wanted a church service so there was a memorial event in a hall just at the cemetery gates. He had an open casket so we could all see he was being buried in his colours, colours that he had worn for less than a day.

Sharon had chosen the music. So the coffin left the hall for his final trip to the graveside to Bat out of Hell.

I gave her a lift back afterwards.