My brother Lawrence Glaister, who has died aged 75 from complications of vascular disease, was a musician and entertainer. For most of his life he made his living busking as a one-man band, playing on the streets of Britain and Europe. From 1977 to 2023 he lived and busked in Norway, where he accompanied his huge repertoire of standard and original songs with guitar, drum, harmonica and jew’s harp.
Lawrence was a hilarious and unpredictable man with many gifts. He was a talented painter, an engaging raconteur and a notorious teller of filthy jokes. He was also a funny but sometimes cruel mimic. He would light up any party with his songs: family favourites included a drinking song dedicated to Guinness, and his own tragicomic Ode to Senile Dementia.
Known for his party tricks and stunts, he would walk on his hands while playing the harmonica, run up an unsupported ladder and sway about alarmingly, or nonchalantly pole vault the washing line. In his 20s he acquired an old black cab and painted it psychedelic colours. He would terrify onlookers by driving it while lying on the roof and steering through the window. This reckless trick was once performed on Bent Hill in Felixstowe, Suffolk, where his family was based in the 1970s.
Born in Dorchester, Oxfordshire, to Jill (nee Crowley), a light-opera singer, and Oliver Glaister, a customs and excise officer, Lawrence attended Kesgrave secondary modern school, in Suffolk, leaving at the age of 14 to join the army as a drummer. He was swiftly discharged because of his flat feet. It was a fortunate development: as a wild, anarchic spirit, Lawrence was unsuited to military life, and he was grateful to regain his freedom at the age of 16, as well as a good payoff.
In the early 1970s, before he started busking full-time, he moved to the Isle of Skye to work as a forester and scallop diver before training as a psychiatric nurse at Craig Phadrig psychiatric hospital in Inverness.
Lawrence was married twice, to Cathy Calviac (1970-75) and to Live Rud (1978-82) – both marriages ended in divorce – and he had several other significant relationships. He had seven children, Daniel and Jennifer, from his first marriage, and Mitka, Luca, Gabriel, Ramona and Samuel, from other relationships. All have inherited his musical talent and unconventional approach to life.
Luca’s death in 2017, at the age of 25, was a sadness from which Lawrence never wholly recovered. His six other children survive him, as do five grandchildren, his siblings, Ginny, Andrew and me, and his mother, Jill.
