Fisher was shocked and saddened by his friend’s untimely death and he attended Thomas’s infamous funeral in Laugharne before

Fisher was shocked and saddened by his friend’s untimely death and he attended Thomas’s infamous funeral in Laugharne before striking out for a new life in Canada.He ended up in Ottawa, where he worked at the Canadian parliament, transcribing the proceedings for their version of Hansard. It was an ideal job for Fisher as it brought him into contact with a rich and colourful social scene which he thrived on. But it also gave him long holidays where he could indulge his passion for travel. To begin with, he was captivated by Spain – in particular Granada and its gypsy population.

Remarkably he won their affection and respect as a flamenco guitarist, dancer, drinker and bon viveur, and was eventually accepted into a gypsy family, even giving away the bride at a huge gypsy wedding.On his retirement, Charles Fisher continued to travel, but now he explored the Far East and Pacific islands. But with the advent of the Second World War, Fisher volunteered and joined the Army Intelligence Corps. His place as co-writer on The Death of the King’s Canary was taken up by John Davenport and the book was eventually published in 1976, with an introduction by Fitzgibbon, who wrote warmly of Fisher’s early involvement.Fisher had married a Spanish singer some years older than himself but by the time of Dylan Thomas’s death in 1953, this marriage had broken up. But Fisher continued to write poetry and plays – his poems were published in the early issues of Kiedrych Rhys’s seminal literary magazine Wales alongside Dylan Thomas and other key Anglo-Welsh writers.Fisher and Thomas stayed in touch and they began to collaborate on a spoof murder mystery, The Death of the King’s Canary.

Dylan Thomas would describe these meetings at length in his 1947 radio broadcast Return Journey, writing “Charlie’s got whiskers now” and saying that he will become famous for “catching the poshest trout”.After their work on the local paper, they both moved up to London – Thomas to pursue his literary career and Fisher to continue his journalism, working for Reuters. All were talented artists in one field or another – the poet Vernon Watkins, the painter Alfred Janes and the musician and polymath Daniel Jones, together with other talented writers and musicians like John Prichard and Tom Warner. Fisher once described Thomas as “looking like an unmade bed”. But Fisher was the complete opposite, a well-groomed dandy, who, every Saturday, would don top-hat and tails and head for the local dinner-dance, where he cut a swathe through the Swansea girls.Fisher and Thomas were both part of a group of bright young men who have come to be known as the “Kardomah Boys”, after the Swansea caf?here they would meet up on an ad hoc basis. He loved the outdoors and country pursuits and was known to arrive at the urban newspaper offices dressed in riding breeches, having hitched his horse to a lamppost outside Even in 1930s Swansea this was eccentric behaviour. Fisher was by far the better journalist and wrote general news, music criticism and a well respected angling column under the by-line “Blue Dun”. He also claims that “Charles Fisher was more than just a journalist and was thought by many to show more promise as a writer than did Dylan”.
Born in Swansea in 1914, Charles Fisher was an almost exact contemporary of Dylan Thomas.