My groomsdudes: #3 the Sherlock to my Watson

I first met Bass sometime at secondary school. I forget exactly when. We were in the same year group but not the same form, so I think it was a while before our paths crossed. It was in media studies where our friendship started to bloom, with Bass enjoying lecturing me about films.

I’ve used a bit of artistic licence there. I can’t remember that far back at my age. I’m just assuming that he lectured me about films as that’s one of his favourite past times. He even does it professionally. Like, really for real cash money and stuff. It’s crazy. Along with our friend Luke, he produces the weekly Story Toolkit podcast.

It is genuinely really quite good if you have any interest in story writing, stories or listening to Bass rant about the recent Star Trek films. I often listen to it on the bus and it’s like Bass is sat next to me ranting about a film we have just watched, only it is even more difficult for me participate in the conversation than usual.

We started to become closer when I accidentally helped to set up a football team for the first time (a story for another day). Bass and myself will probably both admit that we were two of the weakest players on the team. As such, we got placed at full back – Bass at left-back and me at right back – for the majority of the time we played for the team. As far out of the way of danger as possible, yet still involved enough to feel that we were part of the team. I think this gave us some sort of full back bond. I still recall Alex McNeice attempting to explain a sliding tackle to Bass.

Whilst we have a lot in common and enjoy doing many things together, many of my fondest memories of Bass revolve around board games. We became really close when I started living on my own. He would often get me involved when he was arranging a gaming session which I really appreciated as too often, I would just be spending time at my flat on my own feeling isolated. He would introduce me to both new people and new games and I am grateful for both of these things.

One memory that I will never forget is when I got one over on him playing the Battlestar Galactica board game. I was secretly a cylon, which are the bad guys, and Bass was a human. I saw his secret mission card which said that he had to get a certain number of enemy ships surrounding the Galactica otherwise he would fail his mission and as a result, all of the human players would lose.

Seeing this, I started freely sending ships to attack the Galactica. The other players rightly got outraged, until I called on Bass to stand up for me because I knew what his secret mission was. He vouched for me and was 100% sure that I was human. The moment when I later revealed that I was a cylon and I had mind-mastered him all along was one of my greatest board game moments of all time.

Bass once showed me a video of the Shut Up and Sit Down review of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective. We are both big Sherlock fans and he has bought me several copies of the Conan Doyle stories, including one really beautiful version for Christmas last year. I have also bought him Sherlock themed gifts, including a deerstalker, a toy pipe and a magnifying glass. Upon seeing the video, I knew we had to play this game.

Consulting Detective was out of print and I searched for ages until I managed to find a second hand copy of the original printing which wasn’t on sale for a million pounds. There are lots of typographical issues, including some that send you to the wrong location in the game and might mean you miss an important clue. We loved the game nevertheless.

We were, also, quite shockingly poor at it. Like, really really poor. If we were actual detectives, we’re have been busted down to traffic duty within a week. We would often score negative points. There was one time when we played against a real life detective in the hopes that he’s struggle as well and we could feel better about how bad we were. He utterly destroyed us. Bass wrote about it here and it is quite an amusing read, including me having to try to convince him that his midget assassin theory is quite ridiculous.

Despite how poor we are at detectiving, Bass is and always be the Holmes to my Watson. He will be performing MC duties at our wedding and I’m hoping that he busts out some phat rhymes or whatever the kids say these days. That’s what MCs do, right? Although, I’m also hoping he doesn’t do a mic drop as I think we have to pay for any damages.