Matthew Lewin’s memorial service booklet photo

A JOURNALIST helped edit his own memorial service by writing his own farewell speech before his death and giving it to his stepson to read out.

From old hacks who recalled Matthew Lewin’s kindness as a mentor to neighbours who remembered his quiet good deeds, all were gathered at Burgh House in Hampstead yesterday (Wednesday) to celebrate the life and times of the former Ham & High editor.

Mr Lewin, who died aged 78 in December, started at the newspaper in 1973 and would rise through the ranks to become its editor in 1994.

Following his controversial sacking in 2000, he worked at the New Journal as a food critic, and held various roles at the Royal Free Hospital and the Tavistock NHS Trust. He was the chair of trustees at Burgh House and took up furniture making in his later years.

Mr Lewin, whose funeral took place at Golders Green crematorium earlier in the day, had decided he wanted to say a few words at his own funeral and stepson Saul Myerson read out what he had written.

The speech told of his joy at working as a journalist, joining the Ham & High as a cub reporter and then becoming its news editor, before taking on the top job following the retirement of his mentor, the late Gerry Isaaman.

Mr Lewin grew up in South Africa, and as he told mourners in the speech, he left the apartheid regime as soon as he could. “I did not want to live there when I discovered why we were so comfortably off,” he said.

After completing university, Mr Lewin travelled through South America as a freelance reporter and traversed the USA during the civil rights era, and anti-Vietnam war protest. He eventually settled in London, and recalled the joy he felt when he touched down.

“I was a member of the Enid Blyton Fan Club so thought I’d slot right in,” he said.

“I thought I was coming home but instead I was classed as a ‘bloody foreigner’ with an alien registration book for the next five years. I used to show it to people and say I’d come to Earth to try out your women.”

Matthew Lewin’s widow Vivienne Myerson and his stepsons Saul Myerson (left) and Matt Tamayo-Myerson

Friends recalled his spot-on Donald Duck impression, how as a patient champion at the Royal Free he introduced softly closing dustbins, and the time when, as a young man, he was sent by friends to buy cannabis from a notorious park in Cambridge, Massachusetts – a quest that saw every drug dealer in the neighbourhood flee as word got out that a narcotics agent was approaching dealers and asking to buy their wares.

They also recalled his motto that “only one pure of heart will find a car space in Hampstead”.

One of Mr Lewin’s last words in his service speech was a joke about what happened to the famous newspaper that he had been unceremoniously sacked from after four decades of work.

“I will refrain from saying anything about the paper since I left, except to report it is an absolute load of crap,” Mr Myerson read.

“That’s not because of the reporters, but the management. The six years editing the Ham were the best of my life and it was brutally curtailed by intellectual pygmies.”

Former Ham & High stafff gather to remember Matt Lewin including, above Amanda Blinkhorn, Nigel Sutton and Emily Banks

Mr Lewin said he had thought he wanted to be cremated and then flushed down the nearest toilet but added: “I have since changed my mind. “I would like my ashes scattered on Hampstead Heath and I do like the idea of a bench somewhere too, reading: ‘Matthew Lewin – he loved this view with all his heart, that sentimental old fart.’”