Our friend, Ambrose Rigby, who has died suddenly aged 70, was a man of singular presence. Even when he was absent, no gathering of friends would transpire without some mention of his idiosyncrasy. However, behind his buoyant exterior lay a self-sufficient and introspective loneliness which, at times, left him adrift.
Ambrose was born in Exmouth, Devon, and educated at Worth school, West Sussex, and Downside, Somerset. This Catholic upbringing afforded him reassurance, but also lingering anxiety. He began to read English at St Catherine's College, Oxford, but his interest in what made people tick led him to change to PPP (psychology, philosophy and physiology). A year out assisting at the city's Warneford psychiatric hospital proved seminal.
After graduating, Ambrose taught in Brent, north-west London, witnessing there, first-hand, the misfortune of the disadvantaged young. This encouraged him to take an MA in educational psychology at Birmingham. By 1970, he was working in Dorset as a principal educational psychologist. Then in 1978 he moved to the Tavistock Clinic in London.
Unfortunately, an old sporting injury became critical, forcing his retirement. After two years, he became a schools psychologist in Somerset before, in 1988, moving to County Durham to work at the innovative Aycliffe Centre for Children (now Aycliffe Young People's Centre), set up to rehabilitate young offenders.
At first encouraged by the methods used there, his confidence in them waned, and this, along with ill-health, prompted his resignation. After recuperation, he became counsellor to the pupils at Worth, his first alma mater. His interaction with young people was based on open-hearted kindness and creative compassion. To friends, his infectious energy, guileless humour and eccentric enthusiasms made him very endearing, if not always predictable.
Ambrose is survived by two brothers and three sisters.