As a fellow journalist I have followed the career of David Banks in newspapers over the years, without ever suspecting he was also “Big Arthur”, with whom I had shared journalism training in Manchester in the 1960s (obituary, 22 March). We both attended day-release courses in shorthand, law and local government at St John’s College in the city, as apprenticed reporters, while working for our respective weekly newspapers in Cheshire.
With a personality to match his 6ft 5in frame, he will have been the perfect iconoclast to navigate his way around people such as Maxwell, Mackenzie and Murdoch in his subsequent executive roles on both sides of the Atlantic.
To his many young Manchester colleagues he was a constant source of great good humour and a reminder not to take the craft of newspapers too seriously.
