How would you know if one of your colleagues was a murderer? When police announced the man they’d arrested for multiple horrific murders was Dennis Nilsen, many of his former colleagues — including me — were amazed, but perhaps not completely incredulous.
Des worked with me at the Hotel and Catering Jobcentre in 1980 and he was unquestionably odd. My wife recalled him saying in the office one day: ‘You know it would be really easy to pick up some rootless young man in a bar and knock them off. Who’d notice? Who’d care?’
For his colleagues it was just another rant, a weird take on his continuing critique of Thatcher’s Britain. ‘Oh shut up, Des!’, they no doubt thought.
David Tennant — whose portrayal of Nilsen in the recent ITV drama Des was faultless — described Des in an interview as ‘actually rather boring’. But he wasn’t bland. Des had strong views on all sorts of things. An open-plan office gave him a captive audience to share his thoughts with.
I used to joke that Des took up so much of my time as his manager I really ought to have him written into my job description. In the ITV drama, he congratulates Brian Masters on his book Killing For Company, then tosses him a notebook filled with his comments. It’s an experience I was familiar with. Des was the local rep for the junior civil servants’ union and I had to read his endless stream of handwritten notes spelling out his complaints at length.
Relations between us weren’t always good. I once informed Des that I would not allow him to work with the public: ‘Your manner in relationships with your colleagues is usually outspoken and often overbearing.
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