I first met Robert Richardson about 30 years ago at the Independent on Sunday. He was a regular on the subeditors’ desk, always full of joie de vivre and stories from old Fleet Street.
When he bumped into you at the coffee machine his opening gambit would be: “Did I ever tell you about …” Perhaps he had – possibly more than once – but he was always so charming and engaging that it seemed churlish to say that you already knew the punchline.
Years later I met him once again at the Observer; it was like being greeted by a favourite uncle who had just been wondering how you had been all this time. None of that “I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met.” If he had gone through a particularly grim piece of copy, he would often conclude by sighing and saying: “Same story, different people …”
Wise words from one of the last of Fleet Street’s gentlemen subeditors.
