I never imagined I would be sitting here writing about the life and death of my friend Brian Ralph a.k.a. ‘Vera’. It came as an awful shock receiving a phone call asking for the name of Brian’s next of kin. It was unreal. Vera was dead! It can’t be true that the outgoing, larger-than-life, sometimes outrageous pain in the arse and irascible camp old queen who at times drove me round the bend was gone, dead, no… never! Of course, as I and the many people who shared his life now know it was true.