Barry May
Hugh Pain
Sunday 28 February 2010
Hugh's erudition and dry wit were obvious to all who had the pleasure of working with him, as did I on the business news unit while he was recovering from being blown up in Bosnia.
Perhaps less well known is that as well as taking pride in his large collection of first editions of Hardy, Orwell, and others, Hugh was tickled by the risqué rhymes crafted by Ian Dury, English rocker and quotidian lyricist. He did a convincing impression of Dury, faux Essex accent and all, singing about conquests (“I’m not a blinking thicky/I'm Billericay Dickie/And I'm doing very well”). Such delights brightened our days on the desk.
Barry May
Perhaps less well known is that as well as taking pride in his large collection of first editions of Hardy, Orwell, and others, Hugh was tickled by the risqué rhymes crafted by Ian Dury, English rocker and quotidian lyricist. He did a convincing impression of Dury, faux Essex accent and all, singing about conquests (“I’m not a blinking thicky/I'm Billericay Dickie/And I'm doing very well”). Such delights brightened our days on the desk.
Barry May
David Nicholson
Monday 03 August 2009
Dave Nicholson and I shared a love of jazz and would compare notes about favourite musicians, favourite tunes. We both liked bebop, especially its finest exponent, Charlie Parker. Dave was also an avid reader of The New Yorker (he was reading it just hours before he died) and one piece he shared with me more than a year ago neatly combined both interests. It was titled Bird-watcher; you can read it here:
● http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/19/080519fa_fact_remnick
Dave was a founder member of the ● Short Lunch Club which commemorates George Short, who was responsible for his joining Reuters when they met in New York in 1973. After a particularly protracted session of the Club in the Crown & Sugar Loaf last year, Dave wrote: “I’m just slowly emerging from the recovery ward after consuming about 5.98 hectolitres of the old vin blanc on Thursday. To borrow a phrase from PG Wodehouse, I was awakened the next morning by the roar of butterfly wings outside my bedroom window.”
Dave would also share other stuff he found on the web – most recently a tirade by Katie Couric on the Huffington Post blog about all the errors in The New York Times' appraisal of the late Walter Cronkite.
Dave was a loyal supporter of The Baron: he would send me tips about stuff of interest “in case you unsaw”. And when I put a “Donate” button on the Home page earlier this year, Dave was first to send money to support this website. “I dropped a dime (so to speak) and sent The Baron a quarter via PayPal,” he wrote. It was a good deal more than 25 cents.
Great editor, great man, great friend.
Barry May
● http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/19/080519fa_fact_remnick
Dave was a founder member of the ● Short Lunch Club which commemorates George Short, who was responsible for his joining Reuters when they met in New York in 1973. After a particularly protracted session of the Club in the Crown & Sugar Loaf last year, Dave wrote: “I’m just slowly emerging from the recovery ward after consuming about 5.98 hectolitres of the old vin blanc on Thursday. To borrow a phrase from PG Wodehouse, I was awakened the next morning by the roar of butterfly wings outside my bedroom window.”
Dave would also share other stuff he found on the web – most recently a tirade by Katie Couric on the Huffington Post blog about all the errors in The New York Times' appraisal of the late Walter Cronkite.
Dave was a loyal supporter of The Baron: he would send me tips about stuff of interest “in case you unsaw”. And when I put a “Donate” button on the Home page earlier this year, Dave was first to send money to support this website. “I dropped a dime (so to speak) and sent The Baron a quarter via PayPal,” he wrote. It was a good deal more than 25 cents.
Great editor, great man, great friend.
Barry May
Arthur Spiegelman
Monday 22 December 2008
Many tributes here and elsewhere have referred to Arthur’s artistry with words and Brian Bain recalls his kindly nature. He was a giant, as Brian says, and a gentle one at that. His way of dealing with conflict was to defuse the tension with ingenious humour. In New York in the late 1970s he was hauled before the boss at 1700 Broadway, Mel Beiser, to be rebuked for some now unremembered misdemeanour. Art’s riposte was to crawl under the boss’s desk and refuse to come out until the shouting stopped. Employee relations manuals didn’t teach managers what to do in the face of such imagination.
Barry May
Barry May
