Really sad to read about Steve Dempster. A friend and colleague at Little Lever School, we rented an end terrace in Bromley Cross with Neil Williams for a couple of years.
I'll always remember The Smiths blasting out of his attic bedroom. On one occasion Hand in Glove was playing so loudly that I had to go up and ask him to turn it down, even though I was a fellow Smiths fan. Of course, he wasn't in his room - the volume was cranked so he could hear it in the kitchen two floors below.
He had a dry and sometimes wicked sense of humour, but was above all a very sensitive human being who cared a lot.