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I don’t write the kind of obituaries where people say, ‘he was a saint, no one had a bad word to say about him’ etc. But Charlie was different and I said it about him often enough while he was still with us.

Charlie took so many of us under his wings at different times and for different things. For me he was an inspiration that you could follow your love of music and maybe not make a career but perhaps make a life out of it at least. Charlie was a unique journalist with a perfect pair of ears. And yes, he was the antithesis of slick on the radio but he was always well informed, with an interesting perspective and a love of the music and that mattered. More than that it worked. Having seen him in the studio a couple of times I can also say that he produced a live performance from guests in a brilliant fashion.

He’d been ill, really ill and then he seemed to get over it and it was such a huge relief. But of course it never went away and in the last few weeks he had been waiting for a heart operation. Even then he was busily tweaking stuff on his label site and conducting a rebranding exercise with his business partner right up until the end. I really don’t think he thought he was going to go this soon and I don’t think many others did either. Seeing the news that he has died was an awful shock.

I’ll really miss Charlie. We had an angel for a while.