BY NOW most of you will have heard the devastating news that our former editor, Neal Butterworth, has died of cancer.

At this point it would be so easy to take the coward’s way out and say there are no words.

What can anyone say at a time like this?

But when he was my boss Neal would never have stood for that because he knew that our job was to find the right words.

Whether he was making a speech to a charity dinner, talking to one of our more eccentric readers on the phone, or writing the award-winning column which gently made his family life sound like something from a Peter Kay sketch, Neal’s words were as precision-perfect as a freshly-sharpened pencil.

Of course he had his faults; not allowing my column to ever criticise George Best ‘because he was one of my heroes, Faith’, insisting he was on a diet then nicking the last piece of office Toblerone, and pranking members of staff by pretending to be a mad person on the blower (yes, I fell for it) are just a few.

But the thing about Neal was that you knew that whatever he was asking you to do, he could probably do himself, and much better, because he was a born writer and a born newspaperman.

This may not sound like much compared to all his other achievements but in our strange and sometimes downright absurd industry, there really is no higher praise.

Neal Butterworth is the bloke who gave me this column and, in that spirit of immense gratitude for the opportunity and immense sadness that we’ve been deprived of his company and his talents far too soon, I dedicate this one to him.

God bless, Neal, and thanks for everything.