Tom was a lovely little child, gorgeous, sweet and happy. The only thing wrong with him, in my opinion, was that he wasn’t a girl. Luckily for me, he was always an open-minded boy and once, when he was about seven, he let me dress him up in girls clothes and take photos of him in a variety of poses with full make-up and a tiara on. We both had a lovely time and were very pleased with the photos when they came back from the chemist. Mum wasn’t quite so pleased – when she saw them, she went mad and told Tom that he must NEVER show them to anyone at school in case they picked on him. ‘But it’s too late mum’, said little Tommy, ‘I took them in for show and tell’. He eventually grew into a man (boo!) but did seem to spend quite a lot of his adult life wearing flamboyant fancy dress and face paint so I like to think our little dressing-up session had a lasting impact on him. If you ever lived with Tom, you might be fooled into thinking he was chronically lazy as he spent most of his time laying in bed, fiddling around on his laptop and avoiding the shower. However, for a worthy project he could find unlimited amounts of time and energy. Making his famous home-cooked chips took the best part of a day as they had to be par-boiled, gently shaken, put into the freezer for a few hours, fried, dried, cooled, and then fried yet again. Due to the effort involved, he used to make about a month’s worth and have them all in one go, like a snake eating a buffalo. He also put a lot of time and effort into teasing people on the internet, recently managing to whip several thousand poor Peter Andre fans into a frenzy of outrage on Facebook – it kept him busy for weeks. Friends and family weren’t safe either - my brother’s friend Richard was once foolish enough to leave his Hotmail account open at ours and within hours, Tom had sent a long, thoughtfully-worded email from Richard to absolutely everyone in his address book announcing that he was gay and had met a lovely new boyfriend called Dave. Tom recently added my boyfriend on LinkedIn and Charlie waited a couple of weeks before generously deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt and accept him. Literally within minutes, poor Charlie had been endorsed for his expertise in ‘gay and lesbian’ issues. Mind you, it wasn’t just other people’s LinkedIn profiles that Tom liked to muck around with – his own profile was almost entirely a work of fiction. After I’d read it, even I would have given him a job. I have to give a special mention to Andrew Fordham for giving Tom his glowing LinkedIn recommendation for the time spent working as an ‘Information Logistics Engineer’ – otherwise known as a paper boy. As everyone knows, Tom adored cats and the great love of his life was a weird, grumpy tabby called Giblet. After Giblet died, Tom even got a tattoo of a cat symbol on his wrist, much to mum’s horror. When she had a go at him for getting it, he said ‘MUM – it’s for Giblet – she practically brought me up!’ (that is a lie, by the way, mum was an excellent mother; Giblet on the other hand never ironed him a single shirt, cooked him a meal or physically dragged him into the shower). Tom had ‘The Gift’ with all cats, he made this really weird, inimitable catty noise that used to have even the haughtiest of cats throwing themselves at him. He was, quite literally, a pussy magnet. There aren’t many people who can boast of achieving something unique in their lifetime, but Tom will surely go down in history as the only person ever to get a pair of tights on a cat without losing an eye. Tom had quite an artistic streak and produced a lot of slightly freaky digital art. Going through his files on mum’s computer, we found a disturbing number of digitally manipulated photos of Tom and Giblet’s faces merged into one. His artistic USP definitely seemed to be hybrid animals. Many of his friends will be familiar with his famous ‘Liger’ picture – a lion crossed with a tiger – and underneath mum’s display cabinet lurks a really disgusting and evil-looking clay ‘spider-cat’ which we are tempted to bury with him . He also once made an impressive ‘abstract cow’ in pottery class. At least, that’s what he told his pottery teacher he was making – actually, it turned out to be a bong. Tom was amazingly intelligent and had so many talents – music, art, writing, science – my parents were always told by his teachers how exceptional he was. He could have succeeded at so many things if only he’d gone down a different path. We are so sad that he lost his way and never dazzled the world the way he could have done. We never stopped loving him, never stopped trying and never gave up hope that he would turn his life around and fulfil his incredible potential and it’s so hard to accept that he is finally out of chances. Tommy, my dear, troubled little brother - I don’t know where you are now. But I will picture you finally at peace, surrounded by salt and vinegar crisps, an excellent seafood spread and a loyal army of cats. We will miss you always.