I count myself very lucky to have worked for Andreas

A good journalistic career is about lucky breaks as well as hard graft. I got mine courtesy of a man with a port-wine nose, expensively cut suits, a Garrick club tie and a surprisingly mischievous schoolboy grin.

- By ANDREW MARR

Much has been made in obituaries of Andreas Whittam Smith of the role luck played in his life and the launching of The Independent newspaper. Lucky to be City editor at The Daily Telegraph as it was clear that the paper was in deep financial trouble and yet there was money to be invested in journalism. Lucky to be hiring journalists and making the numbers add up just at the time Rupert Murdoch was breaking the print unions, and seeing an exodus of experienced, talented journalists from The Times. Lucky to be writing the wave of entrepreneurial vigour as the Thatcherite bust turned to boom.

But all of this is to miss the central point. Many people could have been lucky in newspaper journalism in 1986. Only Andreas had the vision, energy and courage to do what nobody else could and, with Matthew Symonds and Stephen Glover, launch the first new quality broadsheet newspaper since early Victorian times.