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11 August 1946 - 8 June 2025
Roger was born in Enfield where his accountant father had been a wartime air warden and later the family moved to Abingdon, to Picklers Hill, opposite Sam Parker, the much loved French master at Abingdon School, which Roger entered through the 11+.
At Abingdon, Roger was a keen sportsman, playing flanker for a successful first fifteen and later for York University, but his overwhelming passion from childhood was cycling and this he pursued to within a few weeks of his death and like Kenneth Grahame’s Toad, loved the open road, wheeling all over Britain, with regular annual trips with friends to the Alps and the demanding climbs of the Tour de France.
After university, in 1969, he entered advertising in the West End where he was able to pursue another love, that of song writing and which gave access to song publishers and producers through whom he could sell his songs to existing artists or perform them in his own right, appearing in clubs and pubs and restaurants and wine bars in London and the home counties.
Periodically, always short of money, he dabbled in modelling, and on one occasion was tempted by a magazine to pose nude, as Burt Reynolds, only declining when his then girlfriend vehemently objected! At this time, true to his astrological sign, Leo, his wild ‘big hair’ gave more than a passing likeness to the Hollywood star.
Eventually he entered teaching at a school near Reading, thinking it would give more time for composing, but this didn’t work out and so for a while he became a part time builder / lorry driver in Old Windsor with time to perform his songs in the trendier areas of Windsor, Weybridge, Chertsey, and Kingston.
Finally, he tired of scratching a living and took a part-time lecturer’s role in English and General Studies at Windsor College where he was very popular with students and staff alike, eventually being offered a full-time post in 1979. At this time, he had acquired the nickname ‘Jason’ from his likeness to Peter Wyngarde, the actor who played Jason King in a TV series, popular at the time.
In 1989 he moved to the south of France when offered a job at The Mougin International School, but this only lasted a year as The Gulf War intervened and many of the students returned to the USA. He returned to agency teaching in London but hated it. He then moved to Gran Canaria, where he taught at The International School for a time, before returning to France to teach English in Nice. Living on his own, he found this quite lonely and returned to England, first settling in a coach house in Warfield, Berkshire, and later moving to Motcombe, Dorset, where he happily lived until his death from pancreatic cancer.
I lost contact with Roger after school but years later, whilst recovering from serious motor bike injuries he appeared, not exactly angel-like, at the foot of my hospital bed and we picked up as if there had been no gap.
At the gathering to celebrate Roger’s life there were many who had been taught by him and it struck how many had been inspired by him and influenced by him in very individual ways.
This account of Roger’s life was shared with me by Mike Daniels, his close friend of fifty years. Their friendship began when Mike was a college student taught and helped by Roger to undertake university studies and then as friends sharing a love of cycling and music and sports cars, another penchant of Roger’s who reportedly had owned more than 78 cars, one for every year of his life!
Mike says that the constants in Roger’s life were his relationships—although he never fully committed to any one in particular, he retained many; his love of music, including writing and performing hundreds of songs; his creativity, expressed through poetry and short stories as well as his music; his passion for sports cars, which he both restored and enjoyed; and a devotion to cycling, riding several times a week and covering at least 5,000 miles each year.
But above all Mike praised his constancy of friendship and his consistency with his close friends whom he prized above all.
Anthony 'Chip' Johnson (1965)
