Sacha Fayers

Published: 16 January, 2014
by TOM FOOT

SACHA Fayers, who died on Christmas Day aged 37, was a connoisseur of life’s little intricacies but remained effortlessly cool nonetheless.

He would have approved of his pulsating musical send-off on Saturday in Shoreditch Town Hall, where around 500 people came to celebrate what his younger brother described as “a life well lived”.

Eldon, 24, told the service: “Dogs, holidays, birthdays, Christmases, lunches, drinks, weekends together. Such is the enduring power and strength of a family unit, even through difficult times. But it is not one’s only community – the number of people in this room is an obvious testament to that. Sacha was a big brother to us all.

“There is no way to capture a life in its entirety and every experience of a loved one is specific to oneself and overlaps with dozens of others. Grief, ultimately, is shared, and mine and your world has changed much since Christmas Day. He never denied he was unwell. He took control of his time and moulded it in his own image.”

Although his “manor” became east London, Sacha grew up in Honeybourne Road, West Hampstead, went to Highgate School and worked for a time in the market in Camden Town.

Knowing that his life would be cut short by incurable cystic fibrosis, he realised early on that the nine-to-five grind was not for him.

Sacha’s quirks, sayings and obsessions shone through in the speeches, which were punctuated by some of his favourite tracks: from LCD Sound System, Primal Scream and Chopin. So did his endless travels, outrage and romanticism, passion for London, good music, lazy-day golf with his mates, and family holidays in St Ives, Cornwall. He was known by many different nicknames: “Laissez-Fayers”, “Sacha Belle”, “Sacha Flares” and  “Skillful Sach”.

His sister Tessa, 35, recalled how she had hoped her first child would be a boy so her kids would grow up with an older brother like she did. She added: “Sacha lived by his own rules. He had the most amazing life. I will miss his explosive giggle and bellowing laugh. We lived in his glow.”

Joe Thornton – a friend from Leicester University – described his mate as a “great visionary of hammock ideas” and how he missed “ripping the piss out of each other”.

He added: “We never knew about his CF until after uni. I cringe when I think how much we would take the piss out of him for how long it would take to eat his food or how slow he was generally. Anyone else would have snapped.”

His girlfriend, Nicole Thorn, recalled how “out of nowhere this most amazing feeling of love came over me”. She said: “It was more intense than I had ever felt it before, it was all around me. It came through my hair, and it came through my eyes and at my heart. And I felt so happy. And I realised that was the final thing he taught me: when someone dies that love does not go.”

Sacha is survived by his mother Helen, father Christopher, sisters Tessa and Anna, brother Eldon and half-brother Doug.