My Friend Sam This the eulogy Dave Pope read at Sam's funeral. I would have been friends with Sam exactly 45 years sometime later in 2020. Like I expect many of you here today I couldn’t describe our relationship as one of plain sailing. Let’s just say occasionally Sam could be pretty blunt. However, most of the time we got on very well and sometimes we were very close. We shared many of the same interests. Student life, socialist politics, Guardian crosswords, chess, juggling, football, tennis and we were part of the same extensive group of friends. It’s just occurred to me while writing this down that in the thousands of hours I spent with Sam we never ran out of conversation. I have to say how astonishing Sam was over the last few weeks of his life. Those of us lucky enough to spend time with Sam in the hospital and the hospice saw someone being true to himself under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. He remained lucid, amusing, articulate and determined to do the right thing. He used the time to set the record straight with all of us. It was a real privilege to be with him. I’ve just time to pick out a couple of things. I’ve gone for student life and juggling. I first met Sam through our involvement in student politics. We held positions on the Bradford University student union executive. We went on plenty of demonstrations, a lot of them against the National Front. We were regulars on the Grunwick picket lines. We travelled up to Edinburgh to support Moray House students in their campaign against education cuts. We occupied our University offices in support of Palestinian rights. Proper student lefties. Less serious stuff was also happening. I saw Lenny Henry on tv last night saying that 53% of the audience for the Saturday morning children’s show Tiswas were adults. If I met Lenny Henry I could tell him that most of those adults were watching from Sam and Babs’ bed in Gaythorne Street off Great Horton Road. Sam was also part of a group of us that spent an inordinate amount of time cheering on tiny clockwork Disney characters battling each other on the kitchen table late into the night. Despite all this Sam still managed to get a 2 : 1. After university Sam worked for Playspace the Bradford children’s charity. It was there that he got into juggling. He got very good at it very quickly and started going over to York with a solo busking show. He never liked to be reminded that part of that show comprised of him juggling 3 teddy bears each named after a famous Russian juggler. Things soon got a lot better though when he formed the Saroste jugglers with Steve Robinson and Ron Binns. They devised a highly skilful club passing routine which at the same time was very funny. He toured Nicaragua with other circus skills performers. He broke the world record for continually juggling 3 objects without stopping or dropping. The objects were oranges and he kept them for years. He helped organise the European Juggling Convention here in Bradford in 1988. After the Sarostes Sam teamed up with Andy Beattie and they became The Samande jugglers. For more than 15 years Sam and Andy performed at the Edinburgh festival. There they gathered huge audiences for their spectacular show. They more than held their own amongst some of the best street performers in the world. A real achievement. If they had been a premier league football team they would have qualified for Europe every season. I know this gave Sam an immense amount of satisfaction. I was with Marion visiting family in Surrey when we got the news that Sam had died. When we got off the train at the Interchange, Bradford felt different. I think it always will from now on.