I knew Iain from his time at LIPA in the mid 1990s when he started work as an open handed, wide armed and beaming Director of Finance – not the kind of stance you’d associate with a figure of financial authority. The stereotype would have it that your Director of Finance had to be thin, mealy mouthed, tightly buttoned up and loathe to expressing any kind of subjective opinion about anything at all, particularly if it couldn’t be boxed off into a spread sheet.
Iain was none of these things and was not your typical Director of Finance. His obvious financial expertise was tempered with a humanity and sense of humour which made his decisions simultaneously reasonable and sometimes alarming. There was no doubting his expertise and skillset in all matters to do with balance sheets, group accounts, cash flow and contracts; but his innate humanity and desire to do the right thing sometimes won out over the requirement imposed on him to toe the line, irrespective of whether that line was worth toeing.
I attributed his tennis playing as symptomatic of that tendency to surprise you when you least expected it. A left hander, his tennis playing could leave you completely puzzled as to why the shot you thought you had played was a point killer suddenly found its way back to you on your side of the court with added urgency, asking you all the tennis questions you didn’t want to answer at that moment. Genius or just bloody lucky? You never could quite make that out; even when the ritual retirement to the bar after the game shed no further light on how Iain had managed that particular coup de grace.
Iain’s passing for me had those hallmarks too. Whilst we had spent many enjoyable and good natured moments together in Liverpool, my moving to the East Midlands saw dusk settle on our weekly tennis encounters and there was a slow decline in our regular contact. I put this down to the nature of life, living and perhaps the inevitable fading of relationships, despite all the good intentions we start the day with.
So, it was with a huge surprise (thanks, Iain, that’s so typical of you!) that I learned in the early autumn of 2023 that Iain had died of liver and bowel duct cancer as far back as April 2022. Whilst our relationship had dissolved to the extent that I was unaware of this turn of events 16 months previously, I was cheered to hear that his last few years had been spent in a spirit of typical Iain bon homie: encouraging all those would be tennis players at his local club to enjoy the game and see winning and losing as the imposters they really are amongst other actions of good temper and generosity.
My sole regret now is not being able to pick up the friendship again and it’s a reminder that just because we lose touch with friends over time, the roots of those friendships needn’t die; they can be reawakened on the click of a mouse or the dial of a phone pad. God bless you Iain: I’m sure you’ll be living the high life up there. Even God needs a pleasant surprise once in a while, and you’re just the man to provide it.
R.I.P. Ian Ford Griffiths
April 1950 – 24 April 2022
The Nick Owen Banging On Channel 