The Evening Standard has paid tribute to chief sub-editor on the international pages Seamus Potter who has died of throat cancer aged 57.
The paper said in its report that he added a “literary and arty elan” to the paper when he first joined it in the late seventies. In 1987 he became deputy editor of the shortlived London Evening News – a title which was revived by Lord Rothermere to see off Robert Maxwell’s London Daily News.
After stints at the Sunday Telegraph and Daily Telegraph he was production editor of The Sportsman – the daily betting newspaper which was launched in 2005 and lasted just over a year.
The Standard reports that as a young man Potter once jumped off a ferry into the Irish Sea to save a cartoonist who had dived overboard for a wager.
The Standard reported: “A man of firm views, Seamus was a loyal and committed journalist and friend who accepted the onset of throat cancer with dignity, stoicism and a complete lack of self-pity.
“His son Luis and his sister Lucinda were by his bedside during his last weeks in Trinity Hospice, Clapham.
“A private family funeral service will be held. The Evening Standard is planning a memorial service later in the year.”
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