6th June 2025
Last week friends and relatives said goodbye to Steve Willis, one of St Mary’s great characters, who attended the school between 1972 and 1979. A service was held at Kemnal Park Crematorium, just off the A20, followed by a gathering at Sidcup Rugby Club.
During the service, a tribute to Steve was paid by his good friend Tony Damer (St Mary’s 1970 to 1977). Tony’s fine words, which perfectly captured the essence of a unique man are, with his blessing, reproduced here. Rest in peace Steve.
Exhibit A in the story of my fifty-year friendship with Steve is a now alarmingly faded clipping from the Bromley and Kentish Times. It depicts the lineout for the St Mary’s Grammar School team in the 1974 heats of “Top of the Form”, a popular TV quiz show. A 16-year old me sits next to a 14-year old Steve against the backdrop of the school library under the caption “soaked in knowledge both ancient and modern”. We got nowhere in the contest, but it was a sign of early promise and of his prodigious and at times unnerving powers of recall.
Just a few months ago he dredged up my simperingly coy answer to one of the questions in that 1974 quiz; “what is a harem?” I cringe to admit that I replied “it’s where a sultan keeps his precious ladies”. Steve never let me forget that. Before the juggernaut of his memory nobody was safe and many of us should secretly be grateful that he never got round to writing his memoires.
I knew little of Steve at school; he was two years my junior and in contrast to Damer the fat wheezy aesthete he was a sports God, a first fifteen rugby player. He was my youngest brother Peter’s form prefect and Peter remembers him as a commanding figure, in easy control of a bunch of teenage oiks, his trademark afro hairstyle adding extra inches to his already towering presence like a guardsman’s bearskin.
His academic prowess won him a place to read Law at Corpus Christi College Oxford, not before boosting his street cred with a stint as a Bexley dustman. He arrived at Corpus at a pivotal moment in the college’s history; after over 460 years of male monoculture the College had decided to surrender to the twentieth century and admit female undergraduates. I’m not sure looking back which was the more notable event – the arrival of women or the arrival of Mr Willis. Life for Steve was always a continuous act of theatre and he quickly warmed to the role of the South London boy made good, a sort of latter-day scholar gypsy. At college functions he didn’t so much light up a room as burn it to the ground. He feigned indifference to the cats’ cradle of class distinctions and social niceties which divided the privileged jeunesse dore from the working class northerners, the Old Etonians and Harovians from the scions of some obscure Welsh comprehensive; as throughout his life he would strike up a conversation with anyone to size them up and was a great bridge builder. Amidst the tweed, maroon V-necks and college scarves of young fogeydom Steve cut a dash in his Parka, drainpipe jeans and fourteen lacehole Doc Martins. I swear he lived and slept in that outfit for the whole three years he was there.
We overlapped in Oxford by two years; it was there that I got to know him better and we shared many good times and lifelong friends. He was am unignorable presence in almost every aspect of college life – except perhaps the chapel – and even featured in the college Christmas Pantomimes, where his appearance as a dwarf In the production of Snow White was as unforgettable as it was inappropriate. Given his social athletic and intellectual skills it subsequently struck me that the intelligence services, who regularly hung around Oxford on furtive recruitment trips, had missed a trick. On second thoughts Steve would probably have only gone rogue on a point of principle and followed his own star.
In the event that star took him back to London and a career as a housing officer in Southwark, in the concrete jungles of Thatcher’s brave new world. For Steve it seemed more a vocation than a career and he missed it sorely when it came to an end. Though adept at the muscular eviction of squatters when required much of his work was rather more pastoral, connecting with tenants, getting to understand their needs and knowing every square inch of terrain. He was a powerful cross between a detective, a social worker and an anthropologist and his understanding of minority languages and cultural difference was of inestimable value. During the miners’ strike he went on relief missions to the Northern collieries to provide moral and material support to the struggling communities. On one occasion he riled the locals by criticizing the men drinking at their social club whilst their wives struggled at home finding food for hungry mouths. Ironic really, as I’ve always thought of Steve as being a sort of honorary Yorkshireman with his poker-faced, speak as you find manner. But it was that very honesty which so often brought him trouble. Incapable of the diplomacy required for career advancement; he was good at what he did, he knew it and wasn’t afraid of saying it. He was also firmly of the belief that rules were for the observance of the foolish and the guidance of the wise. But others thought differently. Of course Steve was no saint and occasionally fell off the highwire of his own principles. But his moral compass was always firmly set to true North. His frankness, which outclassed even the Dutch, could be insufferable, but was usually annoyingly accurate and sprung from good intentions.
Being a man of impressive resource and creativity Steve had many other strings to his bow. His discovery of a technique for turning old neckties and scraps of fabrics into patchworks became a cottage industry. Many are the proud possessors of a Mr Willis original quilt or patchwork waistcoat, labours of love and things of beauty. He had a good, somewhat adventurous eye for fashion and some years back I spent a few very jolly days with him in Edinburgh being measured up for this very kilt. He was no slouch in the kitchen either – I still use his recipe for celeriac and brie velouté – and before he fell ill he was poised to launch a Moroccan marmalade empire, having started a collaboration with a Moroccan firm on marmalades with a North African kick. As a sharp observer of the human condition and easy communicator he became a very fine professional portrait and events photographer. When my husband David and I celebrated our Civil Partnership in 2008 Steve made us a gift of the wedding photos and more recently he documented our old school’s first ever reunion day. Loyalty was one of Steve’s many virtues – loyalty to siblings, to old friends, to school and college.
I think I envy Steve most for being such a born traveler. His spirit of enquiry and adventure, his gift for making instant connections with others and his easy discourse, added to his physical toughness, made him the perfect explorer. From Lands end to John O’Groats to the jeweled Lakes of Kashmir, Steve had a fund of travelers’ tales which, great mimic and raconteur that he was, he could easily fill an evening with. Like the time he got too close to a Himalayan sky burial and had a spare leg thrown at him, or the time he went to Albania during the repressive and eccentric regime of Enver Hoxna; beards were illegal in Albania at the time and anybody turning up at Tirana airport with a beard was strong armed into a booth and forcibly shaved. So what did the usually clean-shaven Steve do? He grew the longest beard he could, just for the experience.
As Steve’s infirmities started to clip his wings he took great pleasure in letting Mohammed come to the mountain. Be it in Camberwell, Edinburgh or Essaouira (Esso-weir-a) he would take up his position at a pavement café, watch the world go by and inevitably strike up conversations in a matter of seconds with total strangers. Many of them did not remain strangers for long as a few people here today will testify. Whimsical, inquisitive, sometimes provocative, to have a coffee with Steve was a masterclass in chatting up just about anybody. I’m sure he’ll be fondly remembered by staff and clientele of establishments such as the Lumberjack in Camberwell, who even hold a stock of mugs with Steve’s face printed on them.
I was privileged to be able to spend more time than usual with Steve in his last months. Notwithstanding the shadow of his illness we shared many good times reminiscing, with more laughter than tears. In darker moments he wondered what his life had added up to and feared it was not much. But it did add up to a very great deal Steve, whatever you thought and I hope I and others were able to convince you of that.
You were a talented man of wit, kindness and loyalty, once met never forgotten. Your death has blown a big hole in so many lives and without you the world will seem an infinitely greyer place.
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