I don’t know exactly where to start with this, so I’m going to get the devastating news out the way first. Then I can focus all my attention on paying tribute to an epic friend.

Last week my long-term creative collaborator, and one third of the Tourettes Bipolar Alliance, Christopher ‘Captain Hotknives’ Smith died suddenly at home.

For the last few days, this news has left me feeling numb, but as my shock starts turning into grief, now feels like the right moment to write in celebration of my favourite Captain. Chris was an incredible, kind, complicated and generous creative force. He was a compelling storyteller and a brilliant musician with an extraordinary capacity for human connection.

Having spotted the potential for spontaneous creativity, Leftwing Idiot, who’d known Chris for a while, introduced us to one another at the Shambala Festival in 2012. Sitting on the grass outside his tent, guitar in hand, Chris was singing a song about Bob, who it turns out was his amazing sheep dog, accompanied by Mimi O’Malley on the clarinet. My tics immediately joined in, and Chris, with mind-blowingly speed, started weaving them into the song. It’s fair to say Bob had some very unusual adventures that day.

Creating this way with Chris felt easy, liberating and joyful. It was a meeting of minds, not in a superficial way, but on a profound neurological level. Within an hour, our first ever gig had been arranged, and the Tourettes Bipolar Alliance was born.

Keep in mind that this unplanned performance was the first time I’d ever been on stage. But with Chris and Mimi at my side not only did it feel possible, it also felt like fun!

Chris’s courage and limitless imagination changed me. In his company it felt easy to be unapologetically myself. From the outpouring of love I’ve seen online over the last few days, I know I’m not the only one whose life he impacted in profound and beautiful ways.

That first meeting was the start of many adventures:

Singing about dyspraxic rain drops during a deluge on a steep hill at Glastonbury Festival – I had massive water canisters wedged in front of my wheels to stop me rolling away!

Leading an audience at Cardiff’s Unity Festival in a raucous rendition of our Social Model anthem ‘Don’t Fix Humpty, Fix Society’.

Having a mid-show wee off the back of the Glade stage at Glastonbury.

Changing the lyrics of his own notorious song ‘I Hate Babies’ to ‘I Hate Turtles’ in solidarity with disabled people who suddenly found it impossible to get plastic straws.

Chris loved telling people about the time he was pushing me in my wheelchair to a set at Shambala while I kept involuntarily shouting, “help I’m being kidnapped!”

The beauty of playing with Chris was that there were no rules, no fixed lyrics, and nothing to stop either of us responding in the moment. Everything we did felt beautifully imperfect, and that made it fresh. During the summer of the Brexit vote, we sang a song lamenting the loss of decent cheeses, French doors, and German Shepherds.

A decade after we first met, we shared a stage together for what I now know was to be the last time. We were performing at the Southbank Centre two days after the Queen died. We’d been told the gig could go ahead on condition that we didn’t say anything disrespectful. We sound checked amid the afternoon bustle, the two of us, one with loud tics and the other with oppositional tendencies, with every screen in the building displaying a picture of Elizabeth II. Chris looked at me with mischief in his eye and said, “don’t mention the dead Queen!”.

It turned out to be glorious gig, but I hadn’t been sure it would even happen. The last few years had been bleak for Chris. The isolation of the pandemic, and getting COVID took a huge toll on him – at times it was hard to bear witness to the depth of his sorrow.

In the last few days while the news of his death has sunk in, and powerful tributes have flooded social media, I’ve been reflecting on the incredible trust that we built on and off stage. The way we performed was unusual to say the least and could be incredibly exposing. We started every gig with a scrap of paper with loose ideas scribbled on it – trusting in our combined neurology and Mimi’s unrivalled musicality and her willingness to follow us into the unknown. I don’t think I’ll ever have a chance to perform quite like this again, but I’m so grateful to Chris that I got to share such creative freedom with him. He made me brave in a way I wouldn’t have been without him.

We’d often end our sets with our version of Bread of Heaven, “Share the biscuits not the crumbs”, while throwing biscuits into the audience.

So, I want to end this post by shouting my gratitude for Chris out into the world.

Kind, chaotic, courageous, Chris was a lover of curry, Special Brew, squidgy black, and humanity.

Thank you for all the times we shared, crumbs and all.

Goodnight Captain Hotknives,

I love you.