The late Eric Gordon in our offices in Camden Town

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IT’S bittersweet that the Camden New Journal celebrates its anniversary this week without the man who gave the most to the newspaper which exists before you today.

For 39 of our 40 years, co-founder Eric Gordon lead from the front as its editor: a driving force behind its inception and then ruggedly in charge right up to his death last year.

The first anniversary of his passing comes up in a couple of weeks, but his growl still thunders through my ears on press night. I still think of him every week and what he’d make of each edition, the successes and the mistakes.

Of the former, he would be conspicuously slow to praise colleagues, and awards were largely regarded as baubles; prizes for doing your job, he suggested, reasonably when you think about it. Of the latter, he would remain calm when threatened with bully-boy libel lawyers, and yet he could frantically rage over the structure of a news-in-brief item or a planning meeting accidentally left uncovered.

These contradictions were part of living with Eric; and it did feel like living rather than working after so many shared hours at 40 Camden Road as a family of colleagues. I think he described our set-up as a dysfunctional family a couple of times, but Eric embraced the chaos of reporters running in different directions, chasing hints and tips.

His surprises and an unconventional, unorthodox approach certainly made for a better paper.

No idea was ruled out, no investigation or interview considered impossible. It was wise never to say “we won’t be able to speak to so or so”.

Why not?

He might not have said it to us, but I think he would have loved, and even been jealous of, reporter Dan Carrier’s aid van trip to Poland this week. I could imagine him trying to go himself.

Still, living here with him could be relentlessly dizzy. One day something was urgent to Eric and unmissable, the next his interest had passed to something else; new ideas and stories always throbbing through the angry vein by his temple.

He wouldn’t care that our newsroom was as shabby as something from Spotlight, but then suddenly wanted to buy a coat for the scruffiest trainee in the office.

He would play the terrifying editor but then be affectionate and avuncular; once disappearing to buy apple pie and custard for a colleague who had told him he had just broken up with his girlfriend. Some people at the Town Hall actually knew him by the nickname “uncle”.

Another contradiction: He’d say “you do too much” before suggesting several other stories to chase.

If this tribute sounds like notes for an employment tribunal, then rewind back to the week of his death and reread the expressions of admiration from so many writers who saw him as their mentor. So many have gone on to the national titles, but haven’t forgotten… living with Eric.

Covid lockdowns had thrown up hurdles for all of us but he was still working at 89, totally obsessed with making sure the CNJ tried to maintain its core purpose and values, as detailed in this week’s paper and these celebratory pages.

He swam on despite the numerous economic grenades that have disrupted the local newspaper industry: the economic downturns, the pandemic, the spread of cheap internet news and ruthless media monopolies.

Having taken on the role of editor, I realise now how much he protected us from as reporters. He had let us just get on with our snooping without letting us get overwhelmed by all the dangers and risks a newspaper can face. A pragmatic leader, his heart, however, was still in being a journalist himself, seeing stories where others couldn’t and showing patience with those who had been unheard elsewhere.

This was perhaps best illustrated in his John Gulliver columns which were always challenging, often witty.

And to think he had such a colourful life before all of this. In the 1960s, not too unlike the global interest in Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe this week I suppose, Eric was held in China for two years with his first wife Marie and son, Kim. This enduring adventurer had been trying to take out notes from his time observing Maoism while working at a publishing company.

There was great press interest when he was brought home and a fantastic interview can be dug out of him being interviewed by David Dimbleby, chain smoking nonchalantly – the rascal – and explaining his ideals to an interviewer who would perhaps never understand.

“The trouble with you is you’ve never been locked up” was one of his favourite mock complaints decades later, as he whistled his way through a charmed office – and as we baulked at his fiendish acts, like putting fish in the microwave.

But for all the unpredictability and the late nights when he seemed cantankerous for the sake of it, most of us valued each drop of advice.

He knew how to open up a story, how to pull answers out from underneath a carpet of communications officers.

He knew how to campaign, and he knew the paper was nothing without its readers. That’s why the moments when he took time to chat, even if he was sometimes feigning interest in the things he thought you were interested in, felt so special.

Each meandering conversation could unlock a diamond.

I can’t pretend that some nights I hated what could seem like endless calls ­– he was lucky my own family were as patient as his about his midnight dials.

But I’m also not the only one who doesn’t mind admitting I wish the phone would ring one more time, however late.

“It’s me, Eric”, I will forever hear him saying, as if it could ever be anybody else. What do you think about Ukraine? What on earth is Dan doing? And Nazanin?

And then dutifully: “Oh, how are Arsenal getting on?”