My friend Rick Anderson, who has died aged 73 of a respiratory disorder, was Ein Lebenskünstler – the practically untranslatable German word for a person who puts a positive spin on all that life has to throw at them.
Born in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, Rick was the son of John Anderson and his wife, Franca (nee Cerciello), who had come from Naples to get married after the second world war. Rick was the oldest of their three children. He said that that when he was young his father advised him “whatever else, be funny”. And he certainly was, throughout a full and colourful life.
Rick and I met at Dunstable grammar, which had the trappings of a public school, so we did not really fit in. Still, he played in the first rock band permitted in a school concert in the early 1960s. He had a fine voice and when we were not discussing books (memorably Sartre) and films (memorably Bergman), we sang in pubs and folk clubs.
Rick spent a VSO year in Ghana before undertaking a psychology and sociology degree at Leeds. There, as everywhere, he made enduring friendships. Then he went to Italy and joined (his words) “half the research groups in the mezzogiorno”. When I left London to farm in Wales, Rick the Roman scholar sent me a copy of Cato’s On Agriculture.
Working as an assistant professor in the department of political sciences at Messina University in 1970, Rick met Renato Orlando, who later established the Puntazzo bar-restaurant in Ginostra on volcanic Stromboli, a magnet for artists and intellectuals, and for some years accessible only by boat.
Rick and I prepared our trips to Stromboli and Messina with culinary stopovers and visits to La Feltrinelli bookshop in Naples. Rick never went anywhere without a book and during his winter vacations to Key West, Florida, with his partner Deb Kamofsky, they were nicknamed “the readers”.
In 1979, back in the UK, Rick took on a number of short-term jobs, and at one point agreed to transport fruit and vegetables for me. He was soon using his van to make deliveries for London print cooperatives and discovering a flair for business.
He applied this talent to his printing and publishing interests, which led to the foundation of Anderson Fraser, the design and production company he established in 1988 with Deb, and continued to manage until his death.
Rick loved London’s ethnic diversity just as he loved the cultural heterogeneity of Naples and Sicily. An inveterate flâneur, he strolled through his favourite city haunts and, for the last 30 years, enjoyed Saturday lunch with many friends at Joe Allen’s restaurant in Covent Garden.
He is survived by Deb, his mother, his sister, Rita, and brother, David.
