Originally Posted by
CTMilller
Many thanks for passing on this news, Ericslad, and please thank Frank Casper for his communication. I'd not heard this until I read your post and, despite knowing that SugarTiler always skated on very thin ice health-wise, news of his passing still came as something of a shock.
I got to know Sugar through the Millermad board and always enjoyed his wit and knowledge on here. Who can forget his epic arguments with Zilzal about the damage caused to the club by the Pursehouse family, his threats to have Eggy Rimes and the other enforcer from Tickhill come after those who crossed him and what he would do when he ruled the world. His musical knowledge was prodigious and his quiz questions almost unanswerable. (I never believed that sound engineer, Dinky Dawson, brought Roger McGuinn and all The Byrds round to Dinky's mum's house in Rotherham for a cup of tea before the group's Sheffield gig until Sugar produce a photograph to prove it...)
The man behind Sugar Tiler was a deeply interesting character. I've just been reading through some of the dozens of emails we shared over the past thirteen years or so. He was Rotherham Grammar School boy who spent most of his working life with Mind, the mental health charity.
However in his younger years, he worked for WEA, (Warner - Elektra - Atlantic,) the music company, in various roles connected to A and R. He spent some time living in Los Angeles and working for WEA and seemed to know a lot of the great and good connected to the music industry. One of my favourite stories concerned Jackson Browne (a hero of mine) who Sugar had to look after on his first visit to the UK to promote his first album. He spoke of taking a very young and wide-eyed Jackson and David Lindley, his brilliant accompanist, to a recording session at the BBC studios and then to an evening at the Speakeasy Club.
Sugar grew up in the East Dene area and was a lifelong Millers fan. Although we didn't know each other then, we would have stood just a few feet apart on Kids Corner in front of the main stand at Millmoor in 1960/61. Apart from periods in London and the USA, he always lived in the Rotherham area - most recently in the Walkley area of Sheffield. Sugar's wife was a producer for Radio Sheffield and they seemed to have a lot of contacts with people in the entertainment industry.
I've emailed one of his two daughters today to offer my condolences. I think there may be a couple of people who read Millersmad who were at school with him and may have known him better than I did. If so, apologies if anything I've said doesn't ring true.
Although we corresponded for more than thirteen years, we only met twice - given where I've been living. (Both times were pub rendez-vous, of course: the first the platform bar at Sheffield Midland station; the second the Stag on Bawtry Road going out towards The Brecks.) Sugar was also burdened for a large number of his later years by a life threatening and debilitating illness which meant he spent long periods in hospital and was pretty much housebound from the pandemic onwards. I wouldn't be surprised if this was what did for him.
Requiescat In Pacem, old lad...you'll be missed.
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