Will Hardy: An Opec legend

To see Will Hardy in the Reuters Opec “bunker” was to be at a master class in the art of the news agency filing editor. His was an epic sang froid. No matter that someone had let a walkie-talkie battery run low. Nor that the telephones - too - were already alive with other alerts to be dictated to him. Then the FAT froze. It often seemed to do that. The FAT was the Econ fast alert terminal intended to circumvent the handicap of the precious lost seconds that Reuters had somehow got wired in to the editorial system. Will just sat there -  quite calm - and set out to file it over again. Maybe he sighed. I am not sure. And not once did I hear him curse a reporter either. Not even those who didn’t get off the line but instead hung on to demand if their snap was on the screens yet. He was astonishing. A true 24 carat legend of the Opec press corps. ■