EXPRESSMAN Tom Brown has revealed an email he received from Brian Hitchen a few days before the former Sunday Express editor was killed.
Tom said: 'Brian Hitchen was everything you’d want in an editor and a colleague – tough, jovial, ultra-loyal to his troops and a thorough pro whose motto was ‘no bullshit’.
There is a terrible irony I had an exchange of e-mails with Brian last week about how I was fed up hearing bad news and he replied:
You are right, Tom. It's truly amazing. However, too often these
internet brings news on someone's passing. Remember the days when we all got
pissed on cheap plonk at engagement parties? Then on champagne, bought by
the bride's daddy, at weddings? And now it is funerals and bloody memorial services. I sometimes sit in St. Bride's listening to the eulogies, and
wonder if I'm at the right church. Because I don't recognise the paragons of virtue they are spouting about.
I long to hear someone say: "Charlie Whatnot was a right bastard. But he was a professional, through and through".
Tom, (pictured above right) added: 'The first part didn't apply to Brian, whom I remember as always jovial and fair-minded – but we weren't to know the second part was his own epitaph.’