I first met Quentin Crisp in a London theatre dressing room in 1987 – he was asleep when I walked in. He said that a man running a cafe in Camden had given him the surname Crisp (replacing Pratt). "Never work," he advised me. When in New York it was easy to phone him and ask if he'd care to go to Cooper Street restaurant where he'd be happy to talk about surrealism, history, or anything going.

The last time I phoned Crisp, in November 1999, the week before he died, he said: "I long for death." It was, I understand, most likely his last interview. He was shortly to fly to do shows in the UK (and died hours after arriving in Manchester). Yet he explained that he had "almost everything wrong" with him – a hernia "the size of an orange", raging eczema, an enlarged heart, prostate cancer, poor eyesight and a paralysed left hand. The latter meant he couldn't hold his fork properly. His false teeth were increasingly painful, exacerbated by any chewing. Gone were peanuts, but his appetite remained in the form of fondnesses for "poached eggs, soft cheese, fish cakes, tomato soup, chicken soup, mashed potato". Guinness was his morning drink; scotch came later.

I'd called to ask Crisp about his plans for New Year's Eve and the new millennium. "Well, everyone will rush out into the street and drink and shout and wave their arms in the air and have their pockets picked, then go home again. But I shan't. I shall hide. I hope for nothing – nothing – in the new millennium except death. It will get noisier, it will get darker, it will get faster and the music will thump more. But I shall be dead."

I told him he was an angel and he said, "You're very kind" and that he was going to have a mug of tea.