It is with a great respect and fondness and a pang of something important now missing that I wanted to add my own words about Nigel Finch. Obituary is not a word that ever would have suited him. He was too full of life for that, bubbling with skill, optimism and an almost puppyish enthusiasm for his shows. A man who gave readily of his time and of his talent and who still had so much left to give. A man of Music. It was his life and his joy and he shared it with us freely.
Nigel was a prime mover in am dram and his impact on lives was immeasurable. The pivot to many societies and the gravity that drew them together in their shared passion, galactic central point to our little constellation. He was known and respected by hundreds and secretly revered by those many of us lucky enough to call him friend (of course we would never tell him). Musical ability was the prize he was dealt by birth but it is too easy to assume that it was always bound to be so, forgetting the practice, the dedication, the dull work of preparation that made everything come together so seamlessly and the melodies flow. He could have kept it all to himself or shared it only with his fellow sages but there was nothing exclusive about him. He doled out his gift with generosity and spent it willingly on us all. Utterly competent, the expert who didn’t let you down. A cornerstone has fallen out of our shared world and it will take a drive reminiscent of the man himself to keep it all going now.
Nigel could indeed count himself amongst the great and the good of local theatre and possibly the greatest of them all. Who else could play from sight with such proficiency whilst eye rolling so exaggeratedly at a single flat note in a company at full pelt, hidden somewhere deep within the second altos? Who else could get away with a catchphrase so trite as “if I had a pound for every time a chorus sang through a rest…”? Who else’s name, to strains of William Tell, was used as a vocal warm up? He seemed to us ordinary folk a virtuoso talent and he was the maestro, with Einstein hair to match. He looked the part, didn’t hold back and took no hostages. As an utter novice and beginner to musical theatre when I first met him, I was faintly terrified. Nigel could shower a cast in musical gobbledegook to leave the uninitiated staring in bewilderment. He could hammer on the keyboard in frustration at your ineptitude. He could give caution to watch out for the c sharp in bar 17 before instantly commanding “start at Q in bar 139…and 1,2,3 and” to leave us all fumbling through the score to keep up. Few, in truth, could.
It is easy to be sycophantic and to laud his genius but Nigel was a complex man of contradictions and he was my friend. In this he was most generous of all. He believed in me, spewed out opportunities and turned greenness into confidence. For that I remain slightly bewildered and forever grateful. In lockdown he started his own company Pinpoint Productions, choosing as his first show the single performer piece “Tell Me on a Sunday” and as his first actresses Racheal and Natalie, directed by his most marvellous friend, ally and confidante Louise. Again, a generous act of faith on his behalf and a rare gift to Rach. Nigel made it happen, funded it completely and served as Musical Director, bringing all his skill, influence and long experience to bear. How surprised I was to find my name in the programme. I had done nothing but be at the pub when he first had the idea. Such was his generosity.
Pinpoint flourished in the few, short, intervening years. Too few. Nigel had big plans for it and brought George, Tom and Susie on board and they grew close to produce the magnificent “Last Five Years”. He was sometimes a curmudgeon to rehearse with and ruthlessly honest. He did not splash praise around easily (as any unsuspecting pub waitress could tell you when asking for feedback on his dinner) but he would certainly say what he liked. A compliment from Nigel meant something and was praise indeed.
To paint Nigel only as a legend is to do him no justice at all. He was sometimes faintly ludicrous and we loved him for it, ever obliging to take the micky. A sociable grump who knew the gossip as well as any teenager and who was far from immune to dropping the odd catty remark. There was the Hi-Viz yellow vest, the clipboard and the mysteriously acquired new hobby of auditing railway stations which, as far as anybody could tell, chiefly involved counting the bins.
He was many things: A connoisseur of rhubarb crumble, a night owl, a party animal, a doting cat lover and push over to KoKo who dined luxuriously on Sheba, a mystery shopper extraordinaire, terrorising Pizza Huts up and down the land. Patient. Impatient. A geocaching mega-enthusiast with an astonishing number of finds. What fun it was to take him across the Itchen river in our dinghy to the far side of a grimy and obscenity covered motorway bridge. There he retrieved his 7500th cache and earned his eligibility for the much prized medal that came with it. How innocently enthused was this man of renown by the whole affair!
He was a tousle-haired impresario in the pit but a meticulous bureaucrat on committee, the treasurer of seemingly every society, impatient for show reports and with a complete command of the finances. A collector of 50p discount vouchers who didn’t miss a money saving trick but who still would not think of shirking his round and who travelled frequently to the most exotic places on the planet. Our rival collections of fridge magnets revealed the difference, ours comprising mainly of English seaside resorts, his revealing the four corners of the Earth. From Japan to Peru, with hardly a location missing in between. He was due to cruise to Antarctica this Christmas, nominally to see the penguins but really, as we all knew, so that he could say he had geocached on every continent.
There was, of course, also Nigel the aviator and we knew this version less well but still had glimpses; tales of mishaps and derring-do. His long and successful years on air traffic control, another Nigel completely for another reflection. He flew us to Alderney and to France with his characteristic muddle of panache and assiduity. Such a thrill it was to be skimming through the ever thickening clouds with him: “Nigel, how do you know we won’t hit anything?” “Well, it’s a big sky.” His maths brain, so suited to music shone through also in the air. Clearly competent, knowledgeable, painstaking in his pre-flight checks, a full safety briefing “whoever sits by the door has to open it if I land on the sea because otherwise the cabin will fill with water…but we’ll break up on impact anyway so it’s irrelevant really.”
He was the smoothest lander of an aircraft I’ve ever known, lightly brushing the tarmac and all done nonchantly with just one hand, the other pressed against the cockpit ceiling for no discernible reason at all. I am sure it was just two fingers he used on the controls but that is probably the exaggeration of memory. It would at least have been his style. He assured one humourless French air traffic controller in absolutely no uncertain terms that yes indeed he was a pilot, before adding to us off mic “and a much better controller than you will ever be”. Classic Finch.
So much has been said already of the last, sad, stirring chapter of Nigel’s story. I can resort only to cliché when I say the Lord works in mysterious ways. Some know that already with heart-rendering immediacy, others of us are learning it properly for the first time. To say we were proud of him is mere understatement, to say we were honoured to know him is not enough. He faced his declining health head on, pragmatically, ever stoical and uncomplaining of his luck, thinking of the good of others more so than ever and his bravery was nearly impossible to bear.
He lived a rich, a full and a good life and was the generous genius that brought music to many, together with Mike the formative figure to so many juniors, the lynchpin of musical theatre in this region and, above all, an inspiration.
Farewell to a friend who played more right notes with his little finger than most of us will ever sing properly in our lifetimes. Thank you for everything, more than we can say. For the fun, for the belief, for hammering out the bassline when some of us just couldn’t get it. All performances will be in your memory now. Your baton, your glasses and your Rioja are still in the pit where they belong - but they are not you. Goodbye kind, catty, worthy, “don’t-give-an-inch” Nigel Finch. He finally left us to the sounds of the Beautiful Blue Danube by Johann Strauss II and took his bow with unfailing timing and flamboyance to the final, glorious flourish of that great work. It was, as was all of it really, a performance he could have justly looked upon with a smile, taking of his specs and nodding in his uniquely Nigel way, “awesome.”