When I was a child, the usual Sunday fare was a roast dinner at noon. At our table, once the last spoonful of dessert was eaten, the cry would go up: Tell us a story, Dad. He would launch into the most improbable stories, which he made up as he went, always with himself as the central character.

A favourite was the shooting of two tigers in India with one bullet. The bullet passed through the first tiger and also killed the one behind. It took some time for my brother, my sisters and myself to realise that these stories were pure fiction but it made no difference. We still wanted to hear and enjoy them.

Dad could step in as an impromptu MC at any function, often at schools. He could fill the gap at any concert by presenting one of his monologues. Rudyard Kipling poems were special favourites. Here the Celt in him was again in evidence as he had all these poems in his head.

On numerous occasions he was Father Christmas but this caused a problem as the older children recognised him because of his Welsh accent and this upset the smaller children who still believed in Santa Claus.

These activities covered the school lives of four children and I am sure there are people in Hobart who still remember him.

He was a crew member of HMAS Vampire when it was sunk by Japanese planes in 1942 but this was an event about which he was strangely silent. He was President of the Cambrian Society for some years and was made a Life Member.

He might have been a bit of a "Welsh windbag" at times but he had style and he never lost his sense of fun.