Today, on 30th October 2011, nine years ago Cyril left this earth to be, as he described it, 'blasted into outer space'.

Close to Halloween, whose origin dates back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, this day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death.

Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. Cyril's fantasy world could be construed as somewhere between this world and another and we remember him fondly for all his eccentricities.