David Nicholson

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: The New Yorker.

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. ■