I thought this was a neat article about Syd, and that maybe some of you would like to see it.  Cheers.

My lovably ordinary brother Syd
Tim Willis - The Times - July 16, 2006

The ‘crazy diamond’ founder of Pink Floyd was no acid casualty or recluse. He loved art and DIY, his sister Rosemary tells his biographer Tim Willis in her first interview for 30 years

When the death of 60-year-old Roger “Syd” Barrett was announced on Tuesday, the media raised an astonishing last hurrah for the founder of Pink Floyd, the “crazy diamond” who had shunned the public gaze for decades.
The descriptions of him as a “mad genius”, “recluse” and “acid casualty” were far off the mark, however, according to his sister Rosemary.

When I wrote Barrett’s biography, Madcap, four years ago I had off-the-record guidance from Rosemary — his junior by two years and closest friend. Last week, after his death, we spoke again and this time she went on the record — the first time she has given a press interview for more than 30 years.

She described him as a loving man who “simply couldn’t understand” the continued interest in his distant Pink Floyd years and was too absorbed in his own thoughts to spare time for fans.

While her account is naturally fond, one should remember that she has spent much of her working life as a nurse and therefore sees no stigma in mental illness. As children, she and Barrett shared a bedroom and she recalls him leaping from his sheets to conduct an imaginary orchestra. He always had an extraordinary mind, bordering on the autistic or Aspergic. He had a rare talent to exploit ambiguities in language and also experienced synaesthesia — the ability to “see sounds and hear colours” — which was to be a huge influence on his music in his psychedelic phase.

As a performing artist, signed to a label, he was under enormous strain. Not only did he find fame a two-edged sword, he was also deeply resistant to his record company’s commercial demands. He was run ragged. Between January 1966, when the Floyd turned professional, and January 1968, Barrett played 220 gigs around Britain — not to mention broadcasting and performances abroad — as well as writing, recording and co-producing two hit singles, most of the band’s first album and part of the second.

While his enthusiastic ingestion of any drugs available might have triggered some disturbing behaviour, such stress might tip anyone into nervous collapse.

From 1981, when he returned from London to the suburbs of his native Cambridge, resumed the name Roger and set up home in his mother’s modest semi, he made faltering but significant progress.

Rosemary is adamant that he neither suffered from mental illness nor received treatment for it at any time since they resumed regular contact 25 years ago. At first he did spend some time in a private “home for lost souls” — Greenwoods in Essex — but she says there was no formal therapy programme there. (“And besides, he didn’t mix, because he was very content to be basket weaving and making things.”) Later he agreed to some sessions with a psychiatrist at Fulbourn psychiatric hospital, Cambridge, but neither medication nor therapy was considered appropriate.

He might have continued to find social interaction difficult — when I knocked on his door while writing my book he greeted me in his underpants and avoided conversation by saying that he was just looking after the house — but the idea that he “didn’t recognise he was Syd” is nonsense. His troubled years had been so painful that even thinking about his former incarnation upset him, so he made a conscious effort to avoid that trap.

Because he was so interested in his own thoughts, his sister said, he often forgot about the mundane chores essential to comfort. To keep an eye on him, she would visit or phone every day and sometimes accompany him on expeditions into town.

Earlier this year an old friend saw the pair in Robert Sayles, the Cambridge department store, and went up to renew their acquaintance. “Hello, Syd,” he said. “Do you remember me?”

“Yup,” replied Barrett. But Rosemary cut in with “Roger is only interested in buying some ties today”, and led her brother away. Now she admits she might have been over-protective.