Michael was the last of the Golden Age...
OLD chum Michael Brown would have laughed that I missed his death because of new technology. A friend used Messenger to inform me of the sad event but, being a determined Luddite in certain aspects of communication, I neither understand nor use this system. It is only a month later that I have become aware that the last of the gentlemen reporters, of what I view as the Golden Age of Journalism, died of dementia in a Leeds hospice at the age of 74.
In a fine Yorkshire Post obituary, Stephen Biscoe wrote of him :
“Comfortable in a pub, provided it was one without a juke box, Michael was someone for whom the 1930s were a bit too modern; he affected a mocking disdain for ‘new fangled’ contrivances such as the telephone and motor car.”
Michael lived in Almondbury in the 1970s, when he and the late Alec Ramsden were Huddersfield reporters for the Yorkshire Post. They made a formidable team.
Michael then moved to Leeds and the newspaper’s head office. He retired in 2006 after a career in which he had been reporter, award winning feature writer and Religious Affairs correspondent.
He was built of kindness and dry wit, was a High Church Anglican, a family man, a talented professional and a friend who always made you smile.
He took me to lunch with the Bishop of Wakefield and I took him on a pub crawl in Barnsley.
“It will be very nice when it’s finished,” he said to the barman in the first hos
telry. “Could you recommend a *good* pub?” The question was posed with such innocence that, amazingly, the chap did.
Michael, Alec Ramsden and myself formed the Chip and Pen gentlemen’s lunching club in the 1970s and, although I am non-religious, he was godfather to our younger daughter Sian. The last time we met was at the funeral of another colleague and his wit was as sharp as a Coronation Street script as he cast an eye over people he hadn’t seen in years.
“He was a matinee idol, you know,” he said in hushed tones. “Whatever happened?”
Thanks for the memories, Michael.