Mike Clancy, full of mischief

How sad: Mike and I were great friends during my 1983-86 stint in New York and for a while he and Donna Mae lived in the same Brooklyn apartment block as Gwen and I. Mike and I used the local Irish bar and grill and apart from the pleasure of his company it was useful during that intense period of the Northern Irish troubles to have a red-haired companion called Clancy in such establishments if you happened to have an English accent.

He was full of mischief. I laboured home from a night shift with a curiously heavy shoulder bag to discover that Mike had added two New York telephone directories to the contents. Another time he insisted on masterminding a dinner party for news editor Andy Nibley and, despite his wife’s warnings, ignited the garlic bread setting off the building's smoke alarms. Mike joined in the mirth - eventually.

RIP old friend. ■