“The term ‘cricket tragic’ is often heard in Australia. I consider myself to be more of a cricket melodramatic – basically a tragic, but with the occasional bout of euphoria thrown in.” These are not words you might expect to read on an official web page of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). But then the author of those words, my friend Tony Brennan, who has died aged 53 after suffering from cancer, was an unexpected kind of diplomat.
A career that took in senior posts on three continents – deputy high commissioner in Australia, chargé d’affaires in Sudan, and adviser (on secondment) in the office of the Czech president, among other important roles – never suppressed his warmth and generosity, nor ruled out the pursuit of other passions: comedy and, indeed, cricket.
Tony was born in London, to Australian parents, Kevin Brennan, an actor, and his wife, Edna (nee Pearce, and known as Eddie). His older brother, Martin, had been born three years earlier. After school at Latymer Upper in west London, in 1985 Tony went to Wadham College, Oxford, where he studied maths – some of the time.
There he became a driving (if unassuming) force in the emergence of a new generation of comedians and performers, launching a comedy club, the Oxford Revue Workshop, in the cellar of the Oxford Union modelled not on the exclusive society feel of Footlights but on the more progressive clubs that had been growing in London for the previous decade.
Artists such as Armando Iannucci, David Schneider, Richard Herring, Stewart Lee, Sally Phillips, Emma Kennedy and Al Murray all made their first regular appearances there and benefited from the energy and imagination Tony displayed during the 1980s. People involved made friends that were to last a lifetime in the supportive atmosphere Tony subtly engineered.
After a brief period working for the technology group IBM and two stints for Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), Tony joined the FCO in 1994. In Prague, working as first secretary in the British embassy, he met Marketa Mullerova, whom he was to marry in 2005. Their son, Nico, was born in Australia in 2013.
While head of the FCO’s Zimbabwe section (2002-04), Tony was in the right place at the right time to help the international cricketer Henry Olonga escape the threat of arrest and reach safety in the UK. They played cricket together in due course and attended each other’s weddings.
In Australia Tony was first diagnosed with the uveal melanoma that was ultimately to prove fatal. Even here, though, the potential for comedy could not be denied. As he observed to the surgeon who was about to remove the affected eye, admiring the instruments on display in the operating theatre: “Be careful, you could have someone’s eye out with that lot.” He had been performing as a standup while in Canberra.
Tony had been due to take up the post of ambassador to Slovakia this autumn. According to his former FCO colleague Tom Fletcher: “Tony would say that he would never make the world’s greatest cricketer, comedian or diplomat. But I have no doubt that he was the world’s greatest cricket-playing comedian diplomat.”
He is survived by Marketa and Nico, and by Eddie, Martin and his nieces, Hannah, Lauren and Caitlin.
