Can it really have been a decade ago when, in early summer 1998, we heard that one of the finest journalists of the era had so sadly left us?

John (or Jacko as he was know to his colleagues) began his quarter of a century reporters' career for Leader-Times Newspapers in 1974 as a teenager, and my very first encounter with him was in 1977 when he called to our Lancaster Street home to review my very first book on bonnie Colne.

John soon had our family roaring with laughter with his wonderful sense of humour and, for one so young, a wealth of singular and extraordinary anecdotes.

From that day, John became a truly remarkable friend, and as the years rolled by we would share many amazing adventures together.

John, during his time with us, was always larger than life and his sheer zest and enthusiasm in every thing he did was just inspiring. His three great loves in life were his family, wife Judith and their four children, Natalie, Max, Lucy and Luke and his mum, dad and sister, his affinity with the countryside and its wildlife and his wonderful wordsmith skills as a truly magnificent journalist.

His flair and ability shone through when, from 1988 to 1990, John and myself did a series of landmark features entitled "Crambie's Curious Colne". We both climbed to the top of our town hall and parish church and went into the last air-raid shelter and coal mine. We rode horses up Carry Bridge and clambered up to see the gargoyles on the cemetery chapel.

We found the witches gravestone and the elusive striped zander fish. And we both put on tin helmets as we stood in the crater made by the only Second World War bomb dropped on Colne, and not forgetting when John dressed up as Bud Flanagan and me as Chesney Allen as our old pal Anthony Braithwaite captured us "Underneath the Arches" at Primet Bridge viaduct!

They were magical times with a wizard of words.

Now John has left us for the great newsdesk in the sky. I can see his smiling face with his favourite bird, the merlin on his shoulder as he jokes with his colleagues editor Noel Wild, Tim Procter, Leigh Morrissey and George Embley as the typewriters echo round the office.