Turkish (2007-2015)
I cannot profess to have known the great man well, but I admired his work. There are certain posters, that when their name pops up as "Last Post By", you instinctively click in and take a look, to find out what dumb thing they're saying now. Turkish was one of mine.
His professed views were often antagonistic, and his style was to call a spade a spade. But Turkish would not stop at that. If Turkish detected that a spade did not like being called a spade, he would proceed to call it a spade at every possible opportunity. He would go out of his way, he would follow the spade around the forum, and every time its handle popped up above ground, no matter how unrelated the turf might be to the general sphere of digging tools, Turkish would be there. 'That is such a spade thing to say,' Turkish would observe. 'I would expect nothing less, from a spade.'
Lesser men, might have tired of this. But when it came to the stupidity of others, Turkish was gifted with an elephantine memory, and his capacity to remind someone of the dumb thing they once said in 2007, was inexhaustible. In this regard, he provided a valuable and selfless service to the forum. Can we imagine that he actually enjoyed reminding suewhistle on a weekly basis, that she used to live in Italy? No, that is unconscionable. He was sacrificing his own time, perhaps misguidedly, in service to his own prejudice that no-one wants to hear about where people live, unless they happen to live in Hull, or Harrogate, or wherever the fuck it was that he made his own nest.
People will have their own recollections of which subjects drew the Turkish ire, and whether his interventions could be justified. Was the tedium of watching Turkish rail against a ludicrously exaggerated Southampton catchment area, any less exhausting than reading a MLG new stadium thread? It probably was, though it would be a close run thing.
For my part, Turkish was at his best, not when tormenting friends and loved ones amongst our own number, but when he turned his laser-like intellect against the wider world. His aggrandizement of the mythical exploits of the notorious Southampton Firm, always made me smile. It was Turkish who first observed, that Nicola Cortese looks exactly like Nick Nack from The Man With The Golden Gun, and without Turkish, I might never have learned of the fetishistic attention that Cortese placed upon his spoons.
If there is any justice, Turkish will be remembered as our greatest warrior. He was our Braveheart, our Achilles, our Tyson. For the longest time he strode our forum undefeated, nay, even unchallenged. It is only in recent years that the facade began to crack. The first blow fell in 2013, when Turkish was unexpectedly ironed out by an unknown forum no-hoper, Jon Boy Saint, using nothing more than a sub-standard SMS pastie. An awed hush fell over Saintsweb that day. Betting syndicates were crushed, and despite extended inquest, the result stood. It was akin to watching Tyson felled by James Buster Douglas, and though we were all so shocked, we began to feel, that perhaps we ought to have seen it coming. The cracks were always there, had we only thought to look for them.
Whatever the case, he was never quite the same after that. His numerous attempts at a comeback, were never quite convincing. His famed arrogance, was tainted by an unseemly bitterness. He started taking lesser supporting roles in comedy sub-forums, like Ugly Inside. It was beneath him, and worse, he knew it.
But let us not remember the tired husk he became. Let us remember Turkish in his prime, striding through the forum, a giant of his time, swatting down forum flies and idiots, and then spending the next 8 years reminding us, repeatedly, of what he had done. Turkish was both the hero of our forum, and the chronicler of his own legend. He shall be missed.
RIP
