I first met Bert while working at C# House in the 1960s and he helped and encouraged me tremendously when I first started out as a music journalist. He used to send me lengthy, single-spaced screeds of typed 'notes' which I plagiarised shamelessly.

Fortunately I didn't personally find him a 'letch' - I think he reserved this for the female 'stars' rather than the behind-the-scenes workers.