This is a short update from November 2019. I was about to leave for Rio de Janeiro, and people kept asking me what had happened to Tom Torero.
Had he disappeared? Was something wrong? Why wasn't he answering?
The question had started arriving in my inbox, even though it was Tom's community and Tom's decision what to tell them. I had spoken to him recently. That gave me something to say, but it didn't make me his spokesman.
I am not Tom's secretary
That was my answer to the flood of messages. With the usual nonsense about glasses, a pencil skirt and having been promoted to bringing him coffee and a croissant.
Behind the joke was a simple boundary. If somebody chooses to step back from his public channels, his friends don't automatically inherit the job of explaining his private life to everyone who asks.
I understood the concern. People were writing because they cared. But I wasn't going to turn a brief public update into a detailed account on somebody else's behalf.
Keep the date attached
At the time of this recording, I told listeners that I had spoken to Tom and reassured them about his immediate wellbeing. That statement belongs to November 2019. It is not a current update, an obituary or an explanation of later events.
The public clip ends there. I moved the longer conversation into the member podcast, so this page doesn't claim to reproduce that private discussion.
Watch the original clip above for the short version in my own voice. For the actual game conversations we recorded together, explore the podcast archive and search for Tom Torero.
