Friday 3rd February 2023 at 2.15pm
16th November 1963–13th December 2022
Service conducted by Heather Balon Lay
Order of Service
Processional Music
Sing a Simple Song – Sly and the Family Stone
Welcome and Introduction
Truckhouse – Zag & the Coloured Beads
Thoughts and Memories of Mik
Blue Moon Rising – Junk Time Party
More Thoughts and Memories of Mik
Disappear – The Milk & Honey Band
The Committal
Closing Words
Nimrod – Sir Edward Elgar
Michael John Tubb was born on the sixteenth of November 1963 at St Helier Hospital, Sutton. He grew up in Croydon with his adoptive parents Mavis, a homemaker and Robert, a photographer and teacher. Mavis was from the Waddon Estate where, as a child, Mik’s maternal grandparents and his many cousins still lived. His father’s parents had passed away in the 1940s and Mik had less contact with the rest of his paternal family. His mum is still with us, living in Bexhill-on-Sea, and Mik would regularly go down to visit her as well as ‘phone her every day. His father sadly passed away from Alzheimer’s some years ago, which Mik found devastating as he adored his dad and would talk of him often.
Mik attended Beaumont Primary School, where, at the age of six he first met his oldest and life-long friend Nicky, then Riddlesdown and Woodcote where he took up athletics and began playing the guitar and making music.
After leaving school, Mik spent his time playing a lot of music and playing at festivals while living in squats in London, a time he thoroughly enjoyed but which wasn’t, as he said ‘particularly sustainable’, so aged twenty four, Mik went to University.
He chose Wales as a means to get out of London and attended Lampeter University in West Wales and University College Cardiff, studying English and Philosophy. He was lucky enough to have studied under some of the leading experts in critical theory and was thus able to indulge his life-long passion for Shakespeare. Mik especially enjoyed his time in Wales, both academically and socially, taking in the pubs and the vibrant music and arts scenes. Around ‘92 Mik came back to London and, as he said, ‘faffed around a bit’, doing temporary jobs before joining the Civil Service Immigration and Nationality Directorate as an Asylum Caseworker, a job he found both hugely interesting and humanistically challenging. At that time the department was facing huge changes around processes and Mik was seconded onto the Casework Programme, from where he was taken on by Siemens, the company initiating the new systems. Mik spent around five years working as a management consultant, but private sector attitudes regarding cost-cutting versus genuine improvement didn’t sit well with him so he left Siemens and spent a number of years working in various charities, mainly in the role of directing fundraising, grant applications and suchlike. One such charity was
involved in the criminal justice system dealing with prisoner education, which led to Mik applying for a job back in the Civil Service with the Ministry of Justice, dealing with regional offender management projects. When the regional offices were dissolved, he moved into Estates, delivering new prison places and building new prisons to replace ageing stock and then into Project management and delivery.
Mik had his travails at work, which he found hugely upsetting given his diligence and Protestant Work Ethic but, happily, the section he moved to just before Covid was massively supportive. During Covid the team held regular video meetings about work as you’d expect, but also quizzes, games and the frankly inspired ‘Covid Island Discs’ interviews with individual members of the team. I am very lucky and grateful to have a copy of Mik’s edition, a typically urbane conversation interspersed with typically eclectic music, Stevie Wonder, David Devant and his Spirit Wife, Talking Heads, The Stranglers, Dusty Springfield, Gentle Giant, Sly and the Family Stone.
Mik’s team, both colleagues and management, were hugely supportive, helpful and sympathetic during his illness and have remained so after his passing, for which I am very grateful.
Of course, through all of this, through most of his life since the age of fifteen Mik remained all about the music, playing numerous gigs and regularly rehearsing with many bands – every Monday with Junk Time Party, for example, something he had been doing when I first met him, years before we got together and which he continued to do throughout our many years together. Describing himself as ‘a natural bass player’ Mik continued to rehearse and play, even if it was just playing along to the theme tune of The Sweeney on the telly, or Only Fools and Horses (which he said had a particularly funky bass-line at the end), for as long as he was physically able.
Throughout our time together Mik and I travelled a lot around England but not abroad. Mik had always wanted to go to Italy where his Dad had been stationed during the war and we were planning that holiday when Mik was
diagnosed with liver cancer in June 2022. Initially we were hopeful of the treatment options. In November 2022 Mik was taken to St George’s with an infection which turned out to be more serious than first thought and it became clear that he was not a well bunny.
Mik always talked about us getting married so we were, on 26th November, in the hospital. It was a beautiful ceremony but largely surreal, Mik in the bed and myself, two lovely registrars and our two witnesses who both happen to be, shall we say ‘robust’ ex-rugby players, all squeezed quite comically
into the curtained cubicle, or “shit wedding marquee…” Mik and I were delighted to be married and even more delighted when he was discharged from St George’s. Unfortunately he developed a chest infection soon after and was taken into Croydon University Hospital. He was desperate to come home again but sadly wasn’t strong enough for that to be an option.
Mik passed away on 13 December 2022 at Croydon University Hospital.
Throughout his life Mik was a great collector of three things: books, shirts and, mainly, friends. He still has stack upon stack of all three and although the material things may, over time, dissipate, I know the friendships never will.
I miss, and will always miss, his mellifluous voice, his laugh and his unfeasibly loud sneeze as well as his love, warmth, humanity and intelligence, his sense of fun and his essential ‘Mikness’. He was a force of nature in so many ways and we have lost a rare talent and a beautiful soul. Sweet dreams Mr Mikkel, love you. Xx ‘Er indoors, Angela.
Some tributes to Mik...
Afriendship started on my very first day at Beaumont Junior School when Mick shared his lunch with me. It developed over numerous helpings of Mum’s cakes. I was in awe of Mick, he was in all probability the most accomplished and talented man I have ever known. He leaves an enormous void in Mum’s, Ali’s and my life.
Nicky
My childhood in Wales was rather violent and abused, not at home but at school and in the village. So at fifteen, when I moved with my mother to Purley, and encountered Mik at Riddlesdown school, he was this big pacifist who was great fun to be around, a clever and supremely witty man of immense intellect and knowledge. He made a big impression. His benevolent philosophy, which he applied in his life even then, showed a maturity of spirit that was rare.
He was a great friend, helping me out many times, even putting up with me crashing on his couch and turning his kitchen into an improvised recording studio, amongst other transgressions.
Many memories of sharing good times and exploring and
sharing music, but none that stand out, or are suitable for a service.
Just a great friend, I loved him deeply.
Andrew Gooding (Taff)Ifirstmet Mik way back in 1983 in the Ship, Croydon we spent many hours in there but drifted as our lives moved in different directions. Imagine my surprise when in 1993, of all the offices in Croydon for him to walk into and start working at, was mine at Immigration. Some things never change, and we pretty much carried on as before. Many a lunchtime was spent in the Grouse and Claret playing pinball and Friday lunchtimes involved drinking till 3pm, then back to work until 3.45 then back over the grouse shoving money in the pinball machine.
I remember (about 1994-95) a group of us took a sunny day off work and went down to Brighton, for a fun time. We somehow got split up- randomly Annie and I bumped into Mik about three hours later, we rejoiced at the fortune of it and went to various pubs to celebrate and ended up in Revenge until about 4am. We had a good few drinks, and a good dance. Mik didn’t really leave the dancefloor most of the night, bopping about in his cords, loud shirt and jacket whereas there were a load of Miss things with tops off having the inevitable fashion parade. We got the milk train back to Croydon. His synopsis: “I caught sight of myself in the mirrored wall, I looked like a fool… but I didn’t care!” TBH he probably looked the coolest person there and was having the best time!
We spent many hours together over the thirty nine
years I’ve known him, we’ve laughed loads, we’ve drunk loads.
He’s played in many bands, an absolutely cracking musician. I saw him in a few, from gigs at a 1980 something Croydon musicians collective (CMC) Stanley halls all-dayer in South Norwood, through to his days with Junk time party. The biggest regret? Not getting to see him play Stonehenge in ‘84 or the Milk and Honey band in Brighton.
He’ll be missed – his resonant voice, great laugh, excellent sense of humour and bass skills.
RIP fella.
Jo Forbes-GiffordMik possessed a quiet charisma that I don’t think he realised he had. He was so easy to be around. He had an infinite amount of patience with his friends and acquaintances, never a bad word about anybody.
Having known him for forty years or more, we rubbed along together well.
I loved him, of course, we all did.
Paul“Fuck me, he’s a bit tasty!”
Dave Peacock
Bass player, Chas ‘n’ Dave
Mik as a musician had an amazing combination of ability, originality and generosity. I believe that he didn’t take up the guitar before he was about fifteen, and for a few years he only owned a nylon strung acoustic. This proved to be a springboard not a limitation. He learned to read music and developed his technique from learning Bach exercises and bits of flamenco. Crucially he developed his right hand as well as his left, and this opened the door to musical possibilities unimagined by the rest of us, who were more interested in the noises we could make with effects pedals.
From the very beginning, Mik’s musical ideas were surprising and free from cliché, even when they were simple, and effortlessly groovy, even when they were complicated. Gradually the messing around with instruments at people’s houses and improvising songs into a cassette recorder coalesced into a band, Zag and the Coloured Beads, with a fairly stable line up – Ian (aka Zag), Mik, Tom and myself, and later Paul and Bob. Most of this band’s best material was built on Mik’s inspired guitar and bass parts. They were ludicrous, they were jazzy, they were sinister,
sometimes they were all three. He gave us the spirit. We just tried to catch the ideas as they flew out and put them in some sort of order.
Around the same time Mik was writing lots of short poems, which were by turns silly, unnerving, plaintive and suggestive. Some of them ended being band lyrics. He had a way with a phrase. The Zag and the Coloured Beads tape title ‘Loaf of Legs’ was pure Mik, as was the (much later) title of the Milk and Honey Band album ‘Dog-
arguments, never angry even when he had a right to be, patiently playing the same thing over and over, making the rest of us laugh. He was happy to dress up foolishly on stage, but in a way it was the opposite of showing off – it was hiding in a costume. He was comfortable off to the side of the stage – and the one thing we could never get him to do was sing. I have only one record of Mik singing lead vocals, on an early song called ‘My parrot’s got out’, but I know he wouldn’t thank me for playing it to anyone.
Wryneck, PCP, Junk Time Party, The Milk and Honey Band, the Topsters, Tryst, Magic Brother and, between about 20052010, a new incarnation of the Beads. In later years Mik suffered from pain in his hands, but his love and enthusiasm for collaborative creativity and for playing live never wavered. “When are we going to do some music?“ was the first question he would ask practically every time we met, staring straight into my eyes like a bassplaying puppy. And those times just sitting in a room, working stuff out, conjuring stuff up, getting each other – they were precious. Needless to say we’d be off down the pub once we felt we’d earned it, and that was great too.
he was always busy contributing to other bands including Alpha Road with Asif, Brian, Andrew and Clive, Riske Little Dick with Andrew Gooding and others, and Bing Organs’ Beastly Scrapings with Paul and Rachel. He added nylon guitar to one of my favourite songs by the band Ring and was also one of their go-go dancers.
In the 1990s and 2000s Mik shifted to mainly playing bass, often under the shadowy alias ‘W. Juicy’. He played in many bands, notably
Mik loved sport in all its forms, both competing and watching and possibly his biggest moment came in 1978 when he won the English Schools Athletics Championship competing in the Junior shot put. His achievement made the pages of the Croydon Advertiser who reported:
Shot putter Tubb, 14, competing in his first nationals hit his opponents with an unbeatable 14.9m (48.9ft) with his first putt in the Junior Shot (4kg (8.8lb)), winning by 89cm. He only took up the shot when he first went to Woodcote three years ago and, like his coach, he is a member of Surrey Beagles. Tubb adds the national title to the Croydon, Surrey and Southern Counties crowns he won earlier in the season.
As well as this, frankly astonishing, achievement, Mik was a demonically fast bowler and an excellent pool player (sadly his break to black clearance in the Odd Shoe pub is lost to posterity as there was only one other person in the pub to witness it and no CCTV
– we know this because he asked for a copy!). He credited his pool prowess to his time spent in pubs while at University in Wales.
On top of that Mik was also good at darts, played golf, once won the Conker Championship at the Royal Standard and could
course (he was always disappointed by the lack of field events coverage on TV) and always enjoyed the Christmas tradition of World’s Stongest Man as well as watching old episodes of insane ’70s telly programme ‘Indoor League’ hosted by Fred Trueman (he was particularly delighted when one of his old athletics coaches popped up on the show competing in the arm wrestling).
In common with most aspects of his life, Mik was enthusiastic and knowledgeable about every facet of sport but he loved cricket the most and, as it turns out, could chuck very heavy things a very very long way…
play a mean hand of cribbage.
He adored watching cricket or listening to Test Match Special, was a Crystal Palace supporter and as rugby fan, supported England, Wales (because of his Uni days) and ‘his bredren’ Ireland because of family ties, which made watching The Six Nations something of an ethical dilemma.
Mik enjoyed watching most sports – boxing, horse and greyhound racing, athletics of
The exuberance and enthusiasm with which Mik lived his life was a flash of colour in a too often grey world. As a musician he was of course a legend: a master of fuzz bass and intricate guitar playing, the latter a gift he would always play down with great modesty. His dancing was a unique joy; indeed his impression of Britney Spears, something of a party piece, will live long in the memories of those who saw it. Mik was up for anything: I even got him to impersonate The City of Glasgow steam locomotive once – and very good at it he was too. I don’t know why he was never invited on Strictly Come Dancing – he could even dance to his favourite track off John Peel’s Archive Things, a recording of a tribesman from Papua New Guinea blowing through a live beetle (he could also bop to a recording of girls in Malaysia slapping the sea).
It was my special pleasure to make Mik laugh – because when he did his face was an absolute picture: a complete surrender to the moment, eyebrows up, head back, eyes brimming. Over the years we developed a parlour game of snatching words from general conversation to form band names or the names of albums, and many were the chuckles. There were literally hundreds, possibly thousands of names. Tartan Carpet was one, and Mik Tubb’s Eggy Bread another (a reference to Mik’s legendary skill with the breakfast dish). The latter band’s putative single, You Crippled My Nipple, caused us great amusement. The precise musical nature of its accompanying album, Mik Tubb’s Orphic Egg, and its long numbers, Divinity Fudge and Yorkshire Old Wives’ Sod was tantalisingly unclear (but we knew for sure that the drummer was one Barney ‘Whippsy’ Flange and the guitarist was Bob Dribbleshaw aka Shanty Brunch). No doubt they would have reflected Mik’s musical enthusiasms: from Steve Hillage to the Trumpton soundtrack by way of Frank Zappa’s Peaches and Regalia and the theme to Out of Town with Jack Hargreaves (‘it’s Recuerdos de la Alhambra,’ Mik would say with a perfect accent). We had hoped to record some of these invented fancies; we can never have them now.
But along with his great levity, Mik thought seriously about things. Not only did he believe in the basic human right of decent corduroy, he knew
that world peace might, just might, be brought about by the widespread distribution of Fairisle Knit tank-tops. On these last sartorial matters, a word must be said about Mik’s clothing. Along with an array of colourful shirts, he had an eye for a muscular overcoat. Perhaps the star item in this line was ‘Big Vern’, his voluminous sheepskin market-trader’s coat, an indestructible relic of a tougher age, inherited from his father. You could probably wear it to the South Pole. Then there was – and this is the most enduring mystery of his wardrobe – the legendary safari suit. The safari suit! Oh, how we begged him to wear it out. Sometimes he claimed the jacket was lost or that he would need a big search to find the trousers. Like jam tomorrow, we never saw the safari suit but it remains the true grail of the Tubb habiliment. If I had my way it would be in a glass case at the Hard Rock Café along with his bass.
Joking apart, Mik did think seriously about things. That fine mind of his, so adept at crosswords and puzzles and steeped in books and music, had a strong belief in social fairness and, above all, decency and manners. No one was left out of Mik’s generous-hearted worldview. Indeed, it feels that another fragment of a kinder, gentler England has vanished with his passing.
Nick Booth
Alongside all his other attributes
Mik had the rare and endlessly endearing quality of being able to laugh at himself. The impish giggle he had when relating tales of misfortune, invariably his own, was a joy. He was, at heart, a bit of a silly sausage.
Lobby…
Lobby was a lobster. Mik rescued him during a trip to the seaside, transporting Lobby in a bucket clutched between his little knees in the back of the family car all the way home to Croydon. Having been left outside the family home briefly while Mik went to get the salt water out of his trousers, unfortunate little Lobby was promptly Thermidored by a direct lightning strike to the bucket. Sadly lobby followed in the short lived tradition of Mik’s previous pet, Sammy the Snail…
Shoes...
Mik once told me that as a small child he was invited to a summer birthday party. All the kiddies
were busy playing, with Mik happily climbing a tree, when all the kids were called in for jelly and cake. In his haste to get down from the tree, Mik caught his red patent leather sandals on a branch and was left hanging upside down by his shoe outside while everyone else was busy eating cake…
Cam e ra...
Mik was sent up to Manchester for a work meeting and, having time to kill, went for a wander around town, taking photos as he went. It was only when he got home and showed Angela the pictures that it was revealed he’d had his phone camera turned the wrong way around so had come back with about twenty photos of his own face, wearing a variety of concentrated expressions, with tiny bits of Manchester visible behind him. He blamed the fact it was sunny and he wasn’t wearing his readers. The last photo before he presumably accidentally turned the camera around the right way was a picture of Mik’s face squinting in front of a billboard which happened to show a lightbulb just above his head…
Slapstick...
Mik had an innate talent for inadvertent slapstick, the first time he met his now in-laws not only did his trousers fall down but he managed to fall
backwards off a garden chair and cover himself in wine. When Junk Time Party won the battle of the bands at The Ship pub, Mik went up to the stage for the presentation where he promptly tripped, fell flat on his face and lay there, prone, as another band member calmly stepped over him and collected the plaudits.
At a birthday party for his nephew there was a bouncy castle and, to be fair this one wasn’t Miks fault as he and a small bespectacled child just happened to have a synchronous bounce, sending them both hurtling toward each other.
When they’d managed to work out whose glasses had flown where and reunited them, all was well, apart from the look the kid gave Mik when he went to say goodbye at the end of the party… daggers!
Cake..
Mik was a good cook, but always slightly haphazard in following recipes, always wanting to throw mostly bizarre ingredients into whatever he was cooking. It made for some interesting culinary experiences. Baking however, which requires precision, almost scientific attention to detail, was not a strong point. He once decided to make a cake, with his
customary gung-ho approach to ingredients and also sizing (it turns out an eight inch cake tin does not equate to 2 loaf tins). The ensuing lava explosion was of such magnitude and consistency that in the end we decided it would be easier, rather than try to clean it, to just buy a new oven.
There’s one about a suppository but I’m not sure anyone needs to know about that...
Pool
Mik, his then partner Naomi and myself got a taste for Pool. I think he may have started playing before we both did and he quickly became very good at it. He was a flashy player, knocking the balls around the baize with a flourish and quite often would pot three or four balls off a thunderous break.
One time, on a Saturday afternoon in the Blue Anchor, Mik broke, the cue ball leapt off his table, landed on an adjacent table and potted the black, leaving the players bewildered, but amused.
Paul Howard
Bacon Sandwich
Naomi recounts the time when she and Mik lived in Essex Grove, Crystal Palace and they had a guest staying over who happened to be vegetarian. At the time, Mik, himself was ‘vegetarian’. After a session down the pub Mik came back, felt hungry and decided to make himself a bacon sandwich and was tucking into it when their guest turned up and began to walk into the kitchen. Mik panicked and having nowhere to hide the sandwich, stuffed it down his underpants.
Art College Heist
Mik, Paz and Paul were in The Ship, Croydon, drinking pints of Fuller’s ESB, one evening when Paul (who was attending art college, studying Fine Art) came up with the idea of liberating some canvases from the former Croydon College annexe in Scarbrook Road (literally a stone’s throw from the pub), which was in the just about to be demolished to make way for flats.
After finishing their fourth pint, the intrepid fools found it easy to break into the pre-demolition site, wandered around the three floors of the building, discovering an old science lab on the top floor in a state of disrepair, complete with roosting pigeons. The rows of wooden desks, with bunson burners and glass partitions on top of them (presumiably to contain unwanted explosions) were too much for the drunken mini-mob. Once one wooden chair leg had
been tentativley tested against a square of Edwardian glass, a collective red mist descended and parts of the room was smashed to bits with a relish that can only be put down to the effects of the ale. The building was going to be demolished and they thought ‘what the Hell?’ After, half an hour of possibly the best fun ever, during a lull in the destruction, one of the three heard distant voices, then, looking out of a still-intact window noticed a number of torches shining below. It quickly became apparent that this was the Fuzz (twenty or more of them) coming up the stairs. Rather than give up, the trio managed to find a cupboard to hide in, hopefully waiting for Plod to go away, which of course they didn’t.
Back at the police station, when Mik’s pockets were being searched, they found a foilwrapped piece of cake from his mum and a matchbox with a dead thing in it.
We’ve created a just giving page to support animal charities that were close to Mik’s heart. The charities are the Racehorse Sanctuary, the Retired Greyhound Trust, London Wildlife Protection and Croydon Animal Samaritans. You can donate by scanning this QR code or there will be a bucket going around the bar later for donations. Thank you!
