Working with Peter Rhodes was great fun and a huge education - he will be truly missed
Deadline is looming. The newsroom is reverberating to the sound of ringing phones, tense hacks hammering away at their keyboards. Any conversations are terse and to the point.
And then sat in the corner of the room, reclining in his chair, Peter Rhodes would be engrossed in a 15-minute debate with a reader about whether young people in the 1960s had better manners than they do today (he didn't think they did).
"People say they don't suffer fools gladly," he once remarked. "I think my problem is that I do."
Peter loved to chat, and I quickly learned that he would chat to anybody about anything and everything. In the cut-throat world of modern journalism, where time is tight and speed is everything, Peter was a firm believer that everybody had a tale to tell, and would listen to anybody. His career had seen him mingle with a glittering array of stars, and in his later years he would constantly email asking me to dig out his old interviews from the archives. But he never seemed happier than when he was engrossed in a lengthy telephone conversation with a reader about the finer points of something he had written in his column. He truly was the readers' friend.
For somebody who was actually a rather mild-mannered and reserved person, he was nevertheless a big presence in the newsroom. I never once heard him raise his voice - in itself quite unusual in a high-pressured environment - but woe-betide anyone who changed his work without consulting him. Every morning he would wander through the sea of sober grey suits dominating the newsroom in his tweed sports jacket and olive-green cords, humming to himself before peering authoritatively over the rim of his half-round spectacles to inspect how his work had been presented. In my early days as a youngish sub-editor on the features desk, I once made the mistake of confusing 'sew' with 'sow' on the headline of something he had written. I never made that mistake again.
But he was also very supportive and he, more than anyone else, encouraged me to make the transition from jobbing news reporter to feature writer. He taught me that facts, figures and information were all very well, but people were what really mattered, and one heartfelt quote was more powerful than a dozen dry statistics. He drummed into me the importance of helping the reader imagine they were in the situation they were reading about, and that every word, every minor detail could make that happen. Reporters conveyed information, but feature writers painted a picture. To say that he taught me all that I know would perhaps be churlish to many others, but he was a great mentor and an influence on my career - but please don't hold that against him.
It was a privilege to take over his role when he retired from the 'day job' in 2012 - and he was the first to congratulate me - but I always knew there would be only one Peter Rhodes.
Peter - who would actually hate being referred to by his first name in print ('they only use first names when it is a child or an old person') - had an incredible talent for turning the most unremarkable domestic situation into a 'ripping yarn', and for finding humour in the most unlikely of situations. The ethical dilemmas of hiring a gardener, or selling a tired old car to a gullible punter, were subjects of his columns from well over 30 years ago, but still raise a smile, and a whole generation of readers followed the story of his daughter Cherie, from infancy to adolescence.
In what can sometimes be an all-consuming industry, Peter was a firm believer that we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously, and that family always came first. 'The graveyards are full of indispensable people', he would often say, and 'few people on their deathbeds wish they had spent more time in the office'. He loved his holidays in Beer, east Devon, and he kept a photograph of his beloved boat on his desk. When he retired, we surreptitiously photocopied the picture, and asked a local artist to turn it into a watercolour - the artist was so honoured that he painted the picture within a couple of days, free of charge.
Working with Peter Rhodes was huge fun, and a great education. He will be missed by those who worked with him - but also by his thousands of loyal readers.
