I wonder if Jeff remembers old "Grunty" Thrustwell, very much the heart of the Advocate through the post-war decades. It was Grunty who realised that advertising space would become much more valuable if the paper ran stories declaring that, for real estate or indeed any commodity, it was both the perfect time to buy and also the perfect time to sell, because prices have never been so high or so low. Grunty also revolutionised the practice of local government by introducing the euphemism "stakeholder", most notably in the several times that he refused the editorship, saying that a person with so many "key stakeholders" lacked the necessary "plausible deniability" and "clean hands" for the role. How things have changed! Nevertheless, he was undeniably "the face of the Advocate" for many years, launching many a multi-story car park, and cutting the ribbon on countless dank shopping arcades, malls, vacant lots, insurance fires, shooting galleries, and bordellos.

Some say that old Grunty lost his touch in the 80s. I prefer to think that he mellowed. He never lost the trademark moustache that ran from either side of his mouth right down deep into his abundant chest hair. Nor did he ever lose his newsman's nose for a story. Many an Advocate old lag will remember him tearing a press release off the fax machine, and running into the typing pool crying "This is gold! Give it my byline, and a picture of some boats, or an old lady, or some heartwarming s**t! I'm off to get bladdered!" It was after just such an occasion that the fateful pedestrian crossing light malfunction, the one which ended his life, ended his life. That freight truck still plies the pockmarked highways of the mid north coast, ever since adorned with the puce ribbon that his family trust has adopted as the symbol of the charity established in his name, "Journalism Without Journalists".