Mike Edbrooke had broad shoulders and a good nature

Mike Edbrooke was a dear old colleague. The son of Eddie Edbrooke, himself a Reuters legend, Mike led a publications team for UKI marketing and communications, first under Marion King, then Adrian Duffield and Heather Norman. I was fortunate to join them in 1993 for seven years, and always found Mike cheerful, good-natured and willing to take on whatever Reuters needed - from product manuals to marketing materials at a time when the company was growing in leaps and bounds.

Unlike so many other parts of Reuters, where editorial, marketing, sales and product development had a drill for how things should be done, the UKI publications team - Mike, Dean Matthews, Liz Jordan, Barbara Hand, Tim Coulton and I - literally created some things Reuters had not done before, for which there was no drill: the Product Information Window, UKI Herald, Reuters Magazine. I knew the magazine best, as its editor, and as it grew from 12,000 circulation and 16 pages to 130,000 circulation and 60 pages, Mike and that entire team created a new prize-winning drill.

There was so much churning out of the group, yet Mike had broad shoulders and a good nature not dampened by his daily commute by car to London from Folkestone. I last saw Mike on a Dover-Calais ferry where he was working in the restaurant - steady as a rock on a very rough crossing, offering me a drink with a wide smile under his mustache as others literally cowered or dashed for the loo.

We should hoist a glass to Mike in this holiday season and enjoy the many happy memories we shared on his team. He was 61, sweet and kind. ■