I am proud to have known Mike Smith and to have had the benefit of his advice when he very firmly discouraged me from joining the other losers when I was thinking of becoming a parliamentary candidate for the Howden & Haltemprice by-election called by David Davis in July 2008. It was he who suggested that I go up instead to help David Davis and do a bit of networking, and that was what I did.
http://thevoiceofreason-ann.blogspot.com/2009/03/howden-haltemprice-election-10-july.html
We first met online when crossing swords with each other on the treatment of homosexuals. It emerged that he did not propose to do anything horrible to them, and only wanted to be rude about them, which seemed fair enough to me.
He was a larger than life figure - in both senses of the word - and was widely known to be litigious. I only recently discovered that he suffered from manic depression.
This does tally with his tendency to be recklessly indiscreet at times which I imagine he would later regret. Indeed, I imagine that this cycle of exuberance and then later regret may be quite damaging to one's psyche.
When younger, I myself used to suffer a little from serial episodes of grandiloquent exuberance followed by regret, remorse and shame. It seems that as I grow older, I become more confident and less plagued by feelings of regret and shame. Perhaps this is one of the unsung benefits of maturity and experience, and I am happy to report that I am now under a more even keel.
Mike threw himself off Porchester Castle, which is to me a gesture grandly dramatic, heroic and romantic. I like to think I would have done the same, were I minded to commit suicide and lived near a castle.
The first time I met him was at the Bung Hole in the Strand, and we later attended a dinner at Simpsons in the Strand
http://www.simpsonsinthestrand.co.uk/restaurant.php at which Simon Heffer, who was guest of honour, was wearing a kilt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Keith_Smith
http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/8954068.Desperate_plea_to_stop_suicide_at_castle/
He became unwell in early 2008 and attempted to move the CDA closer to the centre ground, and warmly endorsed party leader David Cameron's "Agenda for Change", declaring in a speech that he wants to see more members of minority groups taking senior positions within the Conservative Party.
I remember him telling me that he had decided to support Cameron because he knew Cameron was going to win and he was tired of being in the fringes of UKIP.
Some time later he switched back to being on the fringes, because he just "couldn't stand it any more".
Whatever one thought of Mike - and he had many enemies - one of his particular charms was his radiant and disarming honesty.
How well I remember him taking me around the Bournemouth Conference 2006 and knowing exactly which fringe meetings provided the best hospitality - the dullest ones of course - eg the Country Land and Business Association, the Manchester Airport Group. The hospitality of the Freedom Association - Better Off Out Prohibition Do was however both entertaining and generous.
We saw Francis Maude and I remember Mike mockingly saying "Hello Francis" like a schoolboy mocking a prefect, which only elicited a cold silence. It was in Bournemouth that Mike admitted to me that he was a bit soft on getting rid of the welfare state. I also remember him complaining that Theresa May only climbed to her position she did just because she was a woman and could get away with dressing like like a vulgar attention-seeking tart. If he could he would do the same too, if that was a way up the greasy pole, but of course that option was not open to him, being a mere man.
I remember too him speaking at the UKIP press conference, which Sky were filming. Those of us who wanted to smoke, including Nigel Farage, spilled out into the garden of this hotel but were told to go back in by security, in case we were terrorists in possession of rocket launchers which we could fire from the garden into the likes of Cameron and his cronies who were in buildings visible from where we were.
Once I incurred his wrath because I innocently reported a dinner he was organising on
http://www.1party4all.co.uk This was because he feared sabotage by his detractors whom he thought would play tricks to get it cancelled. He very graciously accepted the profuse apologies I offered.
After he decided to climb aboard the Cameron Catamaran he held a dinner which I attended out of loyalty. I already knew he had gone native because the subject of the talk was not about immigration, the EU or the cowardice and hypocrisy of Cameron and the usual topics, but English music.
The last public occasion was at the Swinton Circle meeting when he announced, apropos of nothing, that he would destroy Alan Harvey, who had apparently libeled him.
He has gone, but will not be forgotten, a giant amongst pygmies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portchester_Castle
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article743902.ece
http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/newshome/Tributes-paid-to-political-figure.6404791.jp
http://announcements.telegraph.co.uk/deaths/118761/keith-smith
