Ian McMillan: He’s the biggest loser I’ve ever met... and it’s catching

There was a familiar haunted and desperate look in my mate Tony the Cartoonist’s eyes. He was looking round, twisting his head almost through 360 degrees like a Lancashire owl. He was patting his pockets rhythmically and opening and closing his briefcase. I tried not to look. He forced me to look by saying, “I think I’ve lost my wallet.” I looked. I shook my head. The briefcase opening and closing routine moved up a gear.
By The Newsroom
Published 18th Mar 2013, 00:00 BST

Tony Husband is an old mate of mine and a brilliant cartoonist and we’ve worked together happily for many years so I know he won’t mind me saying he’s a loser. Tony the Loser; not in any social or cultural sense. He just loses things. All the time. He’s a sieve. He’s a sock with a hole in it. He’s a gap in the floorboards and a crack on the path. If something can be lost, he’ll lose it. In fact, I reckon he should save time and just chuck things away as soon as he buys them.

We travel the country a lot performing our poemy/cartoony show and there’ll be a point most days when we’re on the road when he’ll say, “Can we go back to that tea shop? I think I left my phone on that bench.” Once, we were coming out of a pub and making our way back to our B&B when someone came out of the tap room and shouted, “Anybody left their keys, wallet and phone?” Tony: guilty.

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We were in a school in Norfolk when the latest wallet-losing episode began. It was lunchtime so we scoured the staffroom. We searched the hall. Tony went back to the place we’d stayed the night before. No luck.

He then went back to the pub we’d called in the night before. Had a wallet been handed in? Yes, one had. Tony brightened up. “A wallet got found on the floor last night and we’ve put it in the safe,” said the woman behind the bar. “Could you just tell me what colour it is?” Tony didn’t hesitate. “Black,” he said confidently. The woman frowned. “I mean brown. I mean black. I mean blackish brown.”

He’d not only lost the wallet, he’d 
lost all recollection of what it looked 
like. That’s what I call Losing With 
Style. I was going to call it Losing With Knobs On, but he’d just have lost 
the knobs.

But here’s a funny thing. Being a 
loser is contagious. The other day, 
after I’d spent a bit of time with Tony, I was in a café (I realise that much of my life is spent in cafés) and, for reasons of comfort and possible spillage, 
had moved from a sofa to a hard seat. A chap came over and said, “I’ve just found a mobile phone on the sofa: is it yours?” It was. Then I had a call from a taxi firm I use: “We’ve found a set 
of keys on the back seat of the taxi 
that took you earlier. Are they yours?” They were. Gulp. Somehow Tony’s loser-microbes have transmitted themselves to me and I’ve become 
what doctors describe as object-wobbly, a technical term meaning that things will slip from my grasp and hide, giggling, whether I want them 
to or not.

I’ll buy two copies of the Yorkshire Post today, because I’m bound to lose one. Or both. Maybe I’ll buy three.

Related topics:LancashireNorfolk