I cannot write about every Fleet Street veteran's death on this blog, even of the people I knew let alone the many I didn't, because it would end up becoming a sort of media obituaries slot.
However, I must record the passing of the former Daily Express reporter Michael O'Flaherty. He was one of the paper's staff involved in the Ronnie Biggs scoop of 1974.
After a colleague, Colin MacKenzie, had received the initial tip, he, O'Flaherty and photographer Bill Lovelace set off to Rio de Janeiro and found their man.
[For younger readers: Biggs was convicted of being a member of the 1963 great train robbery gang - see wikipedia - and fled abroad after escaping from prison in 1965].
O'Flaherty was fond of telling how he won some of Biggs's illicit loot by beating him at poker. "I like to think I won back at least some of the stolen money for the Queen," he said.
He worked for the Express for 21 years until 1995 and took up travel writing before moving to South Africa, where he volunteered to teach on behalf of a charity in a deprived township in Port Elizabeth.
He wrote about it in the Daily Mail a couple of years ago in an inspiring article, "I swopped five-star hotels for a slum - and my life's never been richer!"
Born on 20 February 1937, O'Flaherty would have been 75 today had he not succumbed to cancer last week.
Sources: Daily Express/Daily Mail
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