Michael Littlejohns

Michael Littlejohns was my first real Reuters boss. As a trainee in London, everyone was of course my boss, but Mike was the one who taught me how to be a correspondent. And he did so in the simplest of ways. I was 23 and he was two decades older in age and many more in experience, but he treated me as an equal. He set the standard and it was my job to meet it.

I arrived in the middle of the UN General Assembly, the fifth and most junior member of the bureau, with the task of covering the Latin American stories. On my second day, Mike sent me off to interview the Chilean ambassador. I suspect it was a test: the fellow never stopped talking and rarely produced a story. A few days later, it was the Bolivian president. That was better: he stripped off his shirt to show the scars where a line if bullets had failed to kill him.

Mike was highly competitive, pleased to beat the AP or UPI by a minute or two on breaking stories. And there was no one faster at writing - and typing with two fingers - than Mike. He’d sweep into the bureau, announcing or denouncing whatever he had just discovered from his building full of contacts. Among them, it transpired, there were also many “deadbeats” - a description he savoured and one that featured in my own lexicon for many years.

But Mike was also immensely loyal to his team. I was meant to be in New York for three months, but, once I had passed the “deadbeat” test, he arranged for it to become a permanent assignment. When I was shipped off to Argentina for a few months, he kept open my slot at the UN. And when I decided to leave Reuters to freelance in Mexico, he was full of encouragement.

Three images of Mike stay with me. In the heat of a story, he’d wave his arms around like an Army signaller, sending off his reporters to distant boozy corners of the Delegates’ Lounge, expecting us to return with nuggets of news or gossip. In contrast, when the Security Council was meeting at an explosive international moment, Mike would have his feet up on his desk (the East River visible through the window behind him), puffing on his pipe and taking shorthand – a portrait of a man on top of his job. Finally, I can still see and hear Mike’s great laugh. And nothing amused him more than the many absurdities of the great diplomatic circus taking place before our eyes. ■