Just saw this now - so sorry to learn of his passing. His trip reports were stunning - this one still makes me laugh with abandon

http://www.fodors.com/community/asia...the-ganges.cfm

Just to let you all know that the amazing life of Dogster will be celebrated today, Aus east coast time 13.30, at the Fairfax Theatre, Arts Centre, Melbourne.

And for those who are feeling starved of his writing and don't know of his travel and family history blogsites - please enjoy these - they are truly delightful

http://thedogster.wordpress.com

www.triffitt.wordpress.com

And note that they come in a number of subblogs also worth searching...

I've found so far - thedogster1, thedogster2, etc - up to thedogster6

and triffitt1, etc up to triffit5

A few sections are not public, but there's hours / months of enjoyment to be found.

I have passed on to his family members and friends the condolences his travel family members have posted on this site

I'm hoping to publish on YouTube an 8-minute summary video of some of his work.
I'll let you know if / when that happens.

A rare treasure, Dogster - we'll all miss him

wattz

Thanks for letting us know, wattz. Do let us know about the YouTube summary video.

Oops - further to mine above - here's yet another Dogster blog.

http://yellowbrickroadshows.wordpress.com/

This is his own archive of his early theatre work.

He always was and always will be a "naughty boy".
Nothing delighted him more.

There may be more Dogster blogs to be found. If I find any I'll let you know.

wattz

Thanks for the update wattz. May I ask how you know digester, perhaps you had worked with him on some project? I am curious as you have <i>"passed on to his family members and friends the condolences his travel family members have posted on this site"</I>.

Anyways great to know that our condolences are being extended to his family.

Oh dear it's happening again! Sorry but I meant to write "dogster" and not "digester"!

Nigel on YouTube
OK - here is the first of two Nigel videos I'll post on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuOXp...ature=youtu.be

This one is public - the second will need to be 'restricted' to better respect some copyright holders, and so it won't show up in standard YouTube searches. I'll post the link here later.

re Hanuman query as to how I know Nigel / Dogster - strange to say I didn't, personally, though I'm a close friend of many who worked with him over the years so I knew a great deal about his work and the strange / wonderful man he was. This first YouTube video is from one I shot in 2002 when asked to make a video record of the Puppetry Summit. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I was asked to assemble a "Tribute Video" for today's Celebration of Nigel's life & work. A few days ago I met his nearest relative, cousin Sarah, and it was then I passed on your condolences.

I knew nothing of his Blogs and his Fodor chats until a week or so ago when I was trawling the web for images and so on that could be used in the Tribute video. I'm very glad to have met you all here - you became his new family (after his personal family, from whom he was largely very separate, and his Theatre Family, some of whom remained very close for decades.)

Just reading all your engagements with him, and his with you all, was a wonderful experience.
He was such a "solo" soul, as you know, but he clearly valued the love and support you gave him in his final travelling years. As much as he was a 'grumpy' loner, his blogs show him to value the families he was part of. Being adopted, and discovering that only in his early 30s, put him in a strange space - he realised he didn't know who he was (ie his blood heritage) but we can see from his Blogs and chatroom engagements that he found a way to embrace his adopted family, and the other adopted family (all of you) he discovered in his later years.
So, thank you all. It's clear you made his last few years such a pleasure, picked him up when he was down and so on. Good on you, as we Aussies say.

Now - I was concerned his Travel and Family blogs did not disappear due to his no longer maintaining them, so I explored a bit and found a great free program called GetLeft that allowed me to download all his blogsites onto my hard disc - and access them normally, as an archive, without an internet connection. I tell you this because the total disc space needed for the more than a dozen Triffitt blogs (including all the pictures) is less than 60Mb - so, if any of you travellers wants to take his writing with you when you are venturing out of internet range - this is one easy way to do it.

More later when I've uploaded the second Triffitt YouTube video

wattz (aka Tony Watts, [email protected])

Tony,

Thanks for letting us know your connection to Nigel. If you need photographs from his "Fodors" friends of our GTG then do let us know. I have a few, Carol (simpsonc510) and a few others have pictures of our meeting with him.

And.. thanks for the youtube video!

Good on YOU, wattz, for showing up here and connecting dogster's virtual friends/fans to those in Nigel's real life.

I had thought about what would happen to the blogs when the domains expire - so glad that someone is watching over them.

And thanks for posting the youtube video. Not exactly the persona I pictured from his writings, but many terrific quotes about creativity and growing older from the self-described "benign tribal elder."

"I don't have the need to be controversial anymore," he says. Maybe not in his career, but dogster unleashed that controversy here in his travel writing, and we all were treated to a smart and funny deconstruction of the in-the-box tourist route.

Thanks Crosscheck. I'm also glad I've connected the two streams of his life.
re The Blogs: given Wordpress is a free service, I suspect the blogs will just stay in place as they are, but just in case not, I thought it best to archive them. There will be some discussion among family and friends about the possibility of publishing (some of?) the content in book form - but as Nigel says somewhere in all that - books might be a dying form and a Web Book of some sort might be the way to go. I will keep you informed on that one.

And Hanuman - yes, I'd really appreciate you (and any other travellers) sending me some Nigel travel photos - email to me at [email protected] and I'll forward them on to his family and friends.

Here's the second YouTube instalment - as noted, please respect the copyright matters in this one - ie watch but don't copy!

http://youtu.be/-gbKjXJmhL8

tony

OMG @ minute mark 5:11 there's Nigel in younger days! Quite a different bloke from the guy I've met both his looks and the way he talks. Thanks Tony and I'll send you my pictures ASAP.

Tony, I will search my photo folders and get some sent off to you in the next few days. I'm flying today so will not be on line for an extended time. But certainly within the next couple of days, I can get some photos emailed.
Carol

Thank you for sharing these videos with us, wattz.

What an amazing video, what an amazing man.

Oh, I so enjoyed these, especially the keynote address excerpts.

The only improvement would be if the scoundrel himself would post, revealing that staging his own sudden death was all a delicious hoax and a fitting crowning achievement to his creative career. If only...

Thanks, wattz.

Thank you Hanuman for those photos. I've forwarded them to Nigel's family & friends. It was good to see Nigel looking so relaxed and happy in those pics.
And to Carol, Kathie, nanabee & myra, I'm happy I could share a little of his Celebration with you. The Celebration yesterday was a great event - the theatre jammed to the ceiling (of course!).
Here are some words from an email I received last night about it - Nigel's final glowing review ...

"It was brilliant- a wonderful audience full of laughter- tears-sadness- joy- amazement of his many achievements in his life. The dvd was brilliant- a beautiful celebration for the man.

- the speakers were all superb- the paper plate and streamer throw were a fabulous finish."

The audience throwing paper plates and streamers was the way Nigel's big breakthrough show - Secrets - ended. If you want a way to say Bon Voyage to Dogster - he'd enjoy you doing that.

Thanks again for all your kindnesses to your dear friend and our dear friend, Nigel Dogster Triffitt

tony

Wattz, good on YOU mate! thanks sooo much.

ps i love the "complete pain in the arse" at 1:17 on the first vid.

BTW, funyy we should be marking the youtube with the time. In one of my India posts, i referred to something on youtube in that way, and Dog wrote back wondering what on earth that meant!!

wattz - thanks so much for the vids, especially since I didn't get to meet dogster in person. Loved the flying bus, and it was cool to get to see a clip of Tap Dogs.

fodorites - I just looked for dogster's very first thread here, on Bhutan, and couldn't find it. Do you know if he took it down, or did the editors prune his older TRs?

Tony,

I've met dogster 8 or 9 times since he loves to stop by or visit Bangkok. There are more photos and even video clips if I can ever find them I'll forward more.