Patrick Massey

I valued Pat hugely as a friend and colleague - he was the best intro-writer I ever encountered at Reuters, and I learned a lot from him during the old London Bureau days in the late ‘sixties, not long after he came over from the AP.

I had managed to snaffle Pat from World Desk. We then took to holding London Bureau auditions in the Hoop and Grapes, with landlord Ted looking on benignly. Sung fervently enough, "The Mountains of Mourne" could secure a person a coveted place in the bureau (assuming a modicum of talent as well). Pat was a magnet for talent, and we soon had what some people rated the classiest bureau in all of Reuters. Not only Pat but also Rick Norsworthy, Art Spiegelman and a bevy of other top reporters and deskmen. Heady days. The competition with AP was head-on, and we usually won.

As happens at Reuters, our paths split, we all went our different ways and sadly I never worked closely with Pat after that. But it was always a joy to catch up with him when we coincided in London - maybe at the City Golf Club by the crypt of St Bride's (no golf interest at all, it was just a trick to get a booze licence) or the Punch.

Some small details stick in the mind: I remember Pat not only had a loping gait as some have noted here but, as the night progressed, a backwards tilt. This was especially notable when he and his old drinking chum, a UPI Japanese reporter called Aki, were out together at one of those late-late haunts like the Working Men's Newspaper Club and Institute, a printer's dive fondly known as the Chew and Spew. With Aki, the more he drank the more he leaned forward from the waist. In the wee small hours you might find Pat and Aki standing at the bar - Aki by this time bent almost double and Pat rocking back on his heels at an angle of 45 degrees, too far apart to converse. 

Pat will be missed by a great many people - the tributes here show the fond respect in which he was so widely held. He was a star in an era when quality really mattered. ■