My father, Colin James Warner, was and will remain a force of nature. He would always joke
that he was an anti-social man and yet everyone would gravitate towards him in any given
room. He was incredibly charismatic, witty and every line or factoid he would come out with
would have to be taken with not a pinch but a gallon of salt.
I’m sure we’ve all at one point been a victim of his wit… my personal favourite is that he
once shared with my Grandmother that his grandfather died at Auschwitz…. the catch being
that he was a guard who fell out of a watchtower!
It is an honour and a daunting task to pay tribute to him, he is the most brilliant man I’ve
ever known and all anyone could ever hope for in a dad or in a friend. He is the rare person
that would move Earth for those he cared for, without even having to be asked, without
questioning. His life, his career, his adolescence, his personality – they seem almost to
contradict each other at times, he was a complex man but at his very core he was decent,
loving and honest… and he had the rare skill of always knowing the right thing to say
without ever telling you what you wanted to hear.
Colin Warner was born on the 31st of August 1957 in Hemel Hempstead and at just 9 months
old was adopted by Jim and Lily Warner and raised in London along with his sister Linda.
Whilst I never met his Mother, he spoke vividly about her and unlike many of the children
he would later come to care for, he was fortunate to find a home in which he was loved.
My dad was never a great lover of authority, a trait that he successfully managed to pass
down to myself and George. He had no real interest in academics in his youth, yet over the
years he amassed what would become a great fountain of useless information and whilst he
never completed school, he passed with first class honours from the University of Google.
At only 15 years old he joined the Army and on the day of his 18th Birthday he was shipped
to Northern Ireland for his first of many tours of duty during the height of The Troubles in
the 1970’s. He would tell stories of his service sparingly and you could tell that he didn’t
enjoy recalling the more serious details. What we do know and what he would happily
reminisce to us about with his signature cheeky grin, was that his disregard for authority
was never quashed by his commanding officers. During his tenure in the Armed Forces, my
Dad yoyo’d between the ranks of Private and Bombardier with the veracity of a pneumatic
drill. An episode involving him and a case of an officer’s cheese collection gone missing was
a particular highlight.
In his early 20’s he left the Armed Forces and joined the French Foreign Legion where he
served for a year, largely in peacekeeping operations across Africa. He eventually became
disillusioned with life in the legion and left in the dead of night in the back of a lorry, in John
Le Carre worthy fashion. For years afterwards he would always treat travelling back to
France with tongue-in-cheek concern…. However…. He was never one to shy away from a
booze cruise…..After leaving the forces my dad worked a number of jobs ranging from private security and
investigation to night club bouncer work. He would always recall with pride how he told
John Lennon’s son that he “didn’t care if he was Mickey Mouse you’re not getting in in those
shoes”. During this period he met Nigel, his biological brother. They became best friends
and spoke daily and even though they didn’t meet until their twenties they were extremely
close friends and brothers.
In the late 80’s my dad took a job with the coop working as part of their security team, the
woman that hired him, Marianne, became his wife and then eventually my mother. They
were an incredible team for many years, running coop’s security teams in London. They
married in 1993 and I came along in ’94 and my brother, George, in ’96. They spent almost
every waking hour together, they were incredible, how many couples can maintain a strong
and healthy relationship both personally and professional? They created a business together
in the late 90’s, Southern Care Limited, which ran a number of care houses for troubled
youths and was for a long time very successful. My dad looked after the operational aspects
and was excellent with dealing with these children on a straight-forward and stern level
before which they weren’t accustomed, my mother was brilliant at the financial side..
although my dad would always joke that she spends too much!
Eventually they closed the business and my dad spent his final working years doing cash-
and-carry jobs for the likes of G4S and Loomis. His final professional act of rebellion was
stashing supermarket sprat fish under the grill of one of the secure trucks on his last day…
knowing that the smell wouldn’t come until he was long gone.
My brother and I had a former Armed force dad and a former police officer mum so you
might imagine that not much slipped past them growing up! We were incredibly lucky
however, to have been raised by two parents that loved each other so deeply and would do
anything for each other and us.
One of my dad’s favourite sayings is that “I have seen no evidence that with greater age
comes greater wisdom”, well you were wise and you were great up until the very end.
The past year and a half has been exceptionally difficult for us all. We cried and we laughed
through the ups and downs, the hope and the devastation. We came together as family and
as friends to support my dad in this fight and we grew closer for it… and though there may
be one less in our tribe we will grow closer still. I wish I could have just one more day with
him, one more day to tell him how much he means to us all, but you don’t get that day. And
the truth is that we were eventually on borrowed time and whilst the extra year we spent
together will never be enough, I can say with absolute conviction that it was a pleasure to
have known you and never, not even for a second, a burden. I love you
His life was as colourful as his language and like any life worth discussing cannot possibly be
served justice by such a few words.
Eulogy by James Warner
James
6th October 2019