A brief and entirely unauthorised biography of our gentle giant. Bob was born in a cold and snowy winter in January 1955, the last of six children, two of whom had not survived, in the Nottinghamshire village where his father and uncles farmed. In his (and for many of us here today) – our - generation the countryside was our playground and we were off across the fields, woods and brooks all day long – no mobile phones, no frantic parents. Just as long as we were home for dinner no one worried too much. He made some lifelong friends in Costock, one of whom was responsible for bringing Bob and I together. His father was convinced there was no money in farming, and there was certainly a great deal of hard work, so he encouraged his boys to get a trade. Bob duly ended up with an apprenticeship at Taylor’s bell foundry in Loughborough, a proper indentured job with a fancy piece of card with copperplate writing. He tried showing it to prospective employers in later life, who regarded it as an antique thing of wonder and suggested, some seriously, that he should donate it to a museum. It was never of any use whatsoever in getting him a job. If you ever visit East Bergholt Church in Suffolk, famous as Constable’s church, you will see outside a curious medieval wooden bell cage, where the bells hang at ground level as they ran out of money for a tower. Outside is an interpretation board and if you look at it closely it has a photograph of the last time the bells were repaired and rehung. There, pushing a giant bell on a trolley is a long-haired, gangly apprentice called Robert Amos. We had no idea it was there until we found it quite by chance a couple of years ago. But wherever we drove, all over the country, Bob would suddenly point at a church tower in the distance and say proudly – ‘I’ve been up that to do the bells!’ It was an odd job for a man who didn’t like heights. And once, after an absent-minded vicar had locked them all up the top of the tower for the night, he had been lowered down in a bucket through the ringing room. Of course there’s no money in bells, and before long Bob was working for Morris Cranes. Not a brilliant choice as it turned out, but beggars can’t be choosers – a maxim Bob followed quite happily throughout life as he worked successively in bars, security, bus driving, food manufacture, engineering, glazing, driving – you name it, Bob would do it, and do it (mostly) cheerfully too. This rare giant Midlands beast came to migrate to Norfolk because he came to stay with an old friend, Phil Needham, who had been at University in Norwich, and could offer him his floor for a few weeks. Bob was out of love and out of work, found he loved Norwich, and basically never went back. He lived out of a holdall for about three months. Sometime during summer 1983, I was standing on the Dereham Road one warm afternoon, having been helping my old friend Ian Woods on his allotment. It was raining, and I was waiting for a bus home to Bowthorpe. A car I didn’t recognise slowed down and pipped the horn, and seemed to gesture through the window. I, in traditional fashion, gestured back and suggested they might like to go forth and multiply. I was horrified to see the car reverse back towards me, and the windows come down. Inside proved to be Phil, a mate of mine from my student days, along with a huge bear of a man with a lot of hair (yes I know, hard to believe) who was greatly admiring My Miss Wet T-Shirt competition entry. They gave me a lift home and the rest, as they say, was pretty much history. Robert and I had 33 very happy years together. No woman could ever wish for a kinder, more considerate partner. Despite both being adamant we didn’t want a family, after Bob’s mum died he became keen to have a baby before it was too late. Well, it nearly was too damn late – our daughter Tamlyn was born 11 days after our 11th wedding anniversary. Bob looked after her when she was tiny while I worked, and it helped to forge a bond between them that is really very special. Bob dreaded old age, he was a terrible patient, and he enjoyed his life. You all know how many holidays we took – well Tammie and I will be scattering some of his ashes in a few of his favourite places. It might take us a while to get to them all, but we will. I’d like to leave you with a few quotes from his favourite writers and characters – as many of you may know he was a huge fan of Terry Pratchet and his DiscWorld novels, identifying particularly with the Orang Utan who ran the library. It was the length of the arms, you see. He also loved Red Dwarf, which he was watching when he died, Blackadder, and the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Any rare TV appearance of the late great Dave Allen was treated in our house as something akin to the Queen’s Speech. There’s much wisdom in humour, something Bob always understood. Just because it’s funny doesn’t mean it isn’t true. From Terry Pratchet: ‘The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it’s as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it all out yourself from the clues.’ ‘People don't alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns in it’ ‘If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn’t as cynical as real life’ ‘I commend my soul to any God that can find it’ ‘ So much universe, and so little time’ From Douglas Adams: “It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much, the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons…” (And of course, the last message from the dolphins was - So long and thanks for all the fish.) Edmund Blackadder: "I think I'll write my tombstone - 'Here lies Edmund Blackadder, and he's bloody annoyed'. And finally, as the scientist Ashley Montagu said ‘The idea is to die young as late as possible’ and I think Bob pretty much achieved that. He was still young at heart and that’s the way we will remember him.

He will always be missed here from all his work mates. Our love goes out to the family.