Remembering ‘The Minister’, aka Patrick Paines

William Cash | 29th November 2020 | Uncategorised
Patrick Paines The Minsiter
Patrick Paines with Susannah D’Oly from his Cambridge days

William Cash pays tribute to ‘The Minister’, his friend Patrick Paines, whose funeral service in the Canterbury Cathedral crypt, led by the Cathedral's Dean, took place today

This is written with great sadness at the very dining room table in Shropshire where my dear old friend, the brilliant raconteur, would-be politician and City financier Patrick Paines would so often be the very last person left sitting, often until 3am. Patrick was an usher at my 2003 wedding, and regular house guest for twenty years. He is the first of my truly close friends to die – stoically on November 8th at the age of 53 from a fast spreading cancer. So I’m writing this ‘The Patrick I Knew’ obit with a tragic sense of resigned irony in the fact that a man with 1950’s matinee idol looks who was so popular and loved – a star of his Cambridge generation and the post Big Bang City - will be denied the chance, due to a second lockdown, for his many friends to say a proper graveside goodbye. He was dubbed ‘The Minister’ due to his command over any room when he was on form. As any visitor to his London mews house downstairs loo will have noticed, Patrick was also ‘Commander Paines’  aft...

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