I really don’t know where you start to talk about Dave. The man, the myth, the leg-end. To try and sum up this man is impossible, the beautiful words that people have posted on here give just a small glimpse into who Cookie was. So I reckon he’d like a story. Cardboard trophies It was a Christmas in DN1, there was a student review in the ‘great hall’. The kids were faffing about on stage; the teachers were judging (silently) from the wings. Secretly, we were all there for one thing. Everyone wanted a cardboard trophy. The ‘showcase’ finished, and all of a sudden, it felt like we were in the Kodak theatre. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but ‘Best 6th form teacher’ (or something like that), went to Marshy. He’d trousered one. I was stood at the back, adjacent to Cookie, just on the right. There was an aura, emanating from his mere presence. It smelt like shiraz (we’d had a glass). As the students built up to the main event (that Rob Barratt was filming), Cookie dropped in that he’d won ‘Teacher of the year’ in 5 of the previous 7 years. Normally, you take something like this with a pinch of salt, but coming from Cookie, you believed it. He’d timed it perfectly, in boxing parlance, we were onto the main event. I will never, ever forget what happened next… Students: ‘And so, we go onto the main award. This year’s teacher of the year is…’ Cookie is at my side. He steps forward. The kids say ‘Mr Rob Barratt’ I could not stop laughing. Cookie ‘walked the dog back’, straightened his non-existent tie and tried to not look crestfallen. I knew he’d felt a body blow, so I did what any good friend would do, I put the boot in. ‘Ah, you’ve sh*t out there Cookie, unlucky mate!’ If only that was it. Unbeknown to myself (and the rest of the auditorium), the kids had decided to up the ante. We were about to see something special. Like Columbo always said, there was ‘just one more thing’ Students: ‘We have just one more trophy to award. We’ve presented the teacher of the year to Mr Barratt, but we felt we needed to do something extra special for this man. And so, the inaugural winner of the ETERNAL LEGEND AWARD goes to Mr Cooke!’ I could not believe it. Dave was smiling from ear to ear! The man strolled up, accepted his large cardboard trophy graciously (as he always did) and exited stage right, passing our camera man Rob Barratt. As he got to Rob, he took one look at his ‘Teacher of the year’ pot and proceeded to say: ‘Look at that Rob, yours fits nicely into the top of mine!’ Classic Cookie. The English department will attest to this, that damn trophy stayed in their office for many a term, and it was thoroughly befitting of the man. He truly was a pillack of society, a debit to his profession and definitely an eternal leg-end. Sleep well mate.