As regular readers will know, Salut! is predominantly about France and matters Anglo-French. But other subjects are mentioned at the top of the page and this is a tribute I had to write ...
Twice in the last month or two, I have sat in my French bunker and written articles for the spoof front pages traditionally prepared at newspaper offices when colleagues leave to work elsewhere, join other redundant job-seekers or begin retirement.
Jim Allan's departure is more final and there will be no mock-up P1. Last week, he lost a long struggle against cancer and died aged 75.
Jim was a reporter when I first knew him, one of the best around but also among the most decent people you could hope to meet on whatever assignment you had both been sent.
His background was working class; his father was a Geordie, though his own accent was pure London. There were no airs and graces; there was, as one former colleague has observed, a self-deprecating aspect to his approach to life and work and, while he earned the admiration of those who worked with him, he was never heard to boast about his successes.
I wish no disrespect to the many fine people who still work for The Daily Telegraph, or to the more recent achievements of which it can be proud, but even broadsheet journalism has become a good deal more shrill these days.
Jim was a fixture of the paper at a time when it won great acclaim for its comprehensive but also thoroughly honest and measured treatment of news.
No one was ever in doubt about the Telegraph's politics but these did not intrude on to the news pages and many prominent figures who opposed those politics rated its qualities highly.
Jim towards the end of his life, with Wendy Holden at a Telegraph reunion
Jim covered events in most of the world's trouble spots, from Belfast to Beirut and beyond.
In Tehran, during the revolution that toppled the Shah, he had to witness the ceremonial disposal of all stocks of the evil alcohol at his hotel. The story must have been painful to write.
In Lebanon, as Julian Nundy (former Independent and DT correspondent in Paris) recalls, there was "a great moment when Jim shamed a drunken US Marine major into handing his gun to reception in the Beirut Commodore hotel circa 1982-83. When the major protested that the gun (which he had been waving around in the bar) was empty, Jim said very calmly,'empty guns kill, Major'. And the major gave it to reception for safekeeping."
His presence on a visit by the then Pope to Wales, on which I also reported, sticks in my own mind, not only for his calm, methodical attention to detail but for his superb company each evening when work was done.
Since in one location we had to share a hotel room, I also became acquainted with his custom of getting up twice or more during the night to make himself tea and smoke a cigarette. Reflecting more on the occasion, I realise I may be confusing a papal visit with the first made to the Principality by the Prince and Princess of Wales as a married couple; what is important is that Jim made a more lasting impression on me than any of them.
"A lovely man and a great reporter. I was a sub-editor at the DT to his stories and I never had to change a word - a comma here and there perhaps. I loved subbing his stuff because it meant I was being useful without doing anything!"- Julian Young
Later, Jim was the Telegraph's news editor - and therefore my immediate boss - and an excellent one, too. If I remember correctly, he was added to the newsdesk team, in the ostensibly modest role of No 3, in one of the earlier decisions taken under the new editorship of Sir, then plain Mr, Max Hastings.
Greater things, clearly, were planned for him. The news editor, a no-nonsense but highly popular veteran called Mike Green, had taken voluntary redundancy ("if you can't join 'em, beat it" was the last line of his farewell speech) and Jim, aided by some careful behind-the-scenes manipulation designed to keep as many old ways intact as possible, was catapulted from No 3 to No 1 when the time came to decide who should take his place.
Jim, right, with another old colleague, John Stuart
He took the same values that had served him (and journalism) well on the road into his new executive duties.
Reporters were expected to work hard and produce strong, compelling copy, but were also encouraged to play hard, as Jim always did. It was an age, now long gone, of long liquid lunch breaks and, invariably, further refreshment in the evening before homeward journeys were contemplated. It is a miracle that careers or marriages survived these habits, but somehow they did, with disproportionately few casualties.
As a relatively junior reporter - the Telegraph, in common with other newspapers (and, I am sure, other businesses), had a star system - I had considered Mike Green an immensely accomplished news editor. Jim saw to it that the paper's quality of news coverage was not merely maintained but improved.
"A great and decent man"- Richard Spencer, later to occupy the same position on the paper
He never lost that decency. I have clear memories of taking a call from him one Saturday afternoon and being asked to go to Sheffield; the Hillsborough disaster had just occurred and Jim, if not actually in tears, was audibly distressed.
Plaudits for praiseworthy work were warm and generous, sometimes accompanied by the left-over trips from the travel section that were within Jim's gift. Rebukes, when merited, were delivered gently, almost apologetically. "This story is not quite up to your usual standard," he said to me once about a frankly poor piece of work.
Eventually, Max wanted another set of changes. It may be that Jim was too old-fashioned, too hard-nosed for an age that called, in Max's judgement, for more gentleman reporters and executives and fewer of the old school. All the same, Jim was invited to stay on and name his own new role. However genuine this offer may have been, he chose to make a clean break.
Quickly, he found a new home at the Evening Standard, where another group of reporters, sub-editors and specialists came to appreciate his professional and human qualities.
"He brought that gentleness and sanity to bear on the desk at the Standard, too. Professional, humane and damned good fun in the pub ... a gentle man with a wicked dry wit and a fabulous fund of anecdotes which he generously shared over many a beer- Gervase Webb
And later still, after Max Hastings became editor of the Standard and once more dispensed with Jim's services in one of the mad, cost-cutting culls that have occurred over and again throughout our industry and others, he popped up back at the Telegraph. Past retirement age, he was nevertheless happy to take occasional casual shifts on the foreign desk, sharing his wisdom and experience with a new generation of correspondents around the world.
News of Jim's death, in the same week that I heard that three other characters from journalism's better times (Bob McGowan, Garth Gibbs and Barry Wigmore) had also died, filled me with sadness, but also guilt. We had lost touch since the various departures from the Telegraph and my own moves to jobs overseas. It somehow seemed inappropriate to reappear just as the end was approaching; I now wish I had overcome such reservations and made contact in any case.
Jim's passing does not rob journalism of a great practitioner because he had given the trade all that it could fairly have expected of him, and more. It does, however, deprive the world of an exceptional man and I wish his beloved Deirdre bon courage. Thanks, oddly enough, to Max Hastings, she should at least have two spoof front pages, from friends at the DT and the Standard, to bring an occasional smile to her face.
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