When I first encountered him, in Boston in the mid-nineties, I found him off-putting.
Gacy, the killer clown, was prison pen pals with another Museum of Death resident GG Allen; a punk musician whose work in the 80s and 90s was so disturbing and unhinged that even those who worshiped serial killers found him off-putting.
Stern thought the whole thing was strange, Howie voiced concern over the lack of formal training, but Sharon was the one to really sink her claws in, claiming that she had re-watched all of the footage of Andrew's previous performances and found him to be "off" vocally.
Until the last few days visitors had found him sounding off, as usual, against favourite targets – the folly of politicians, publishers and privatised train companies, the pleasures of food and drink, the stupidity of manufacturers' safety warnings.
The police had found him, pulled him off and brought him into us.
The Rev. Gregg Mecca, 53, a close friend and the pastor at St. Peter, accompanied Monsignor Wallin and some friends to a Broadway musical in early 2011 and found him "very off-kilter".
Main character Harper Stewart, played by Taye Diggs, was about to strike it big as an author in "The Best Man," but the sequel finds him out of work, laid off from his university professorship, and unable to sell his latest novel.
The Riddle of the Sands (1979), an adaptation of Erskine Childers novel, was a boy's own adventure that found him in his element off the German Frisian Islands stringing up a camera in a yacht's rigging.
He came home from hospital, said he was OK, then shot himself; Bingo found him with his head blown off.
Even Scholem found him "fanatically closed off".
He stayed there until 1963, when two young white men found him and hauled him off to help lead the blues revival.
