Me and Ian enthralled by Ashes cricket at Lord’s, 1 July 2023. Sally resting her eyes ever so slightly. Janie took the picture.
With a mixture of sadness and reflection, I learnt that Ian Theodoreson has died, having bravely fought the onset and relentlessness of muscular dystrophy for several years.
Ian has kept a beautifully written and thought-provoking blog, Living In Hope – click here to see the whole blog, since he retired in 2017. His final message, announcing his own departure in his inimitable style and with his undying faith, is embedded below:
My personal memories of Ian, as a client, mentor and friend, date back to the winter of 1988/89, as described in the following Ogblog piece about my very first consultancy assignment:
Just in case you don’t click, it was not Ian who reduced me to tears on that assignment…it was the assignment. And it is hardly a spoiler in these circumstances to let slip that it all came right in the end.
In work terms, I didn’t come across Ian again until the mid 1990s, by which time I had started up The Z/Yen Group and Ian had moved to Barnardo’s. Ian felt motivated to throw Z/Yen’s name into the pot when Barnardo’s was seeking some strategic advice that was up our street and the rest is history, workwise.
As far as I know, Ian never actually commissioned any work from Z/Yen directly. He would throw our name into the pot when “who might we use for this?” discussions were taking place, presumably with a commendation, but certainly not an instruction to select us. This applied at Barnardo’s and latterly The Church of England, where Z/Yen (and I) remain actively engaged to this day.
I didn’t realise in those early days that Ian shared my love for cricket. True, he had given his blessing to the (somewhat crazy) idea that tiny Z/Yen should take on massive Barnardo’s at cricket…
…but Ian neither played in, nor attended those matches. Once we had conjoined The Children’s Society with that cricket tradition, it ran for many years, indeed into the 2010s.
Ian and I first went to the cricket together at Lord’s in 2009, to see a T20 world cup double-header. I have written that day up here.
Indeed, to avoid the risk of boring the casual reader at this juncture, here is a link to Ian’s tag on my blog, which will pick up every article in which he is tagged, the last few of which (apart from this one which will be at the top) will be visits to cricket matches. Interested readers can burrow away through that tag.
When I started to sense some burnout in my work, in early 2014, Ian was the person to whom I turned for a chat and some friendly advice. Ian claimed never to understand why I was so grateful to him for his advice at that time. As far as he was concerned, we’d had a coffee together and a quick chat, during which he had said, possibly as a sort-of throw away remark…
…it seems to me that you do still enjoy the various work activities that you do, it’s just that you are doing too much of it…
…which was a “penny-drop” moment for me and started me on my path to a more balanced portfolio of work, writing, charitable activities and sport.
I shall forever be grateful to Ian for his support and friendship.
I have tried to return that kindness since and, in many ways unfortunately, had some opportunities to do so when Ian became indisposed.
When the pandemic struck, Ian mentioned on his blog that he felt short of stories. His indisposition meant that his world was becoming smaller and now everyone else’s world was temporarily smaller, so he felt bereft of stories.
That gave me an idea. I suggested to Rohan Candappa, who organised our informal writing club, Threadmash and was planning to take the idea onto Zoom for the pandemic, that we invite Ian to join the club virtually.
Rohan, being Rohan, of course said yes.
This worked brilliantly well for all concerned, as Ian’s first performance piece attests:
The other thing I was able to do, post pandemic, was arrange a couple of visits to Lord’s for Ian to see some cricket. We had planned to do this in 2020 for Ian’s birthday, as there was to be a test match in June coinciding with that day. But of course that year it was not to be.
Indeed it wasn’t until 2022 that Lord’s opened up again sufficiently for us to put that plan into action and in 2023, for the Ashes, I managed to arrange not only for Ian and Sally but also for Janie to join us.
Ian titled his final blog piece So Long & Thanks For All the Fish. This reminds me of a couple of other anecdotes about Ian. To my shame, in the hardcover (& therefore also Kindle) version of my and Michael Mainelli’s hit book, The Price Of Fish, I misspelt Ian’s name. Ian thought this was funny, especially as he had provided for an earlier book, Information Technology For The Not For Profit Sector, a glowing foreword which, for some years, was the only mention people might find about him on the internet.
I therefore nicknamed Ian “Iain Spellright” for whimsical King Cricket pieces, where everyone has a nickname (mine is Ged, Janie’s is Daisy). The following King Cricket piece is actually one of my favourite memories of spending time at Lord’s with Ian. Published in 2020, it actually relates to an exceptionally hot day in 2014 when Ian and I nearly fried, but still had a good time:
So long Ian and thanks for all the happy memories.