***INCOMPLETE***1
(Des Colquhoun AM: 1931-2005 was a journalist colleague of Max and co-columnist at The Advertiser)
Oh, capricious fate. On a day The Advertiser is in high spirits over its part in freeing Edward Splatt2, we lose some of our heart.
Max Fatchen retires today. And The Advertiser will never be the same again.
A newspaper is many things and requires many skills. But I know of no other paper that can boast the unique talents of Max Fatchen, the bard of Smithfield, wherever that is, and of all SA.
Max has been a journalist all his life. He’s covered the big stories and the hard ones. But his greatest gift to us has been his inimitable verse, in which he turns the events of the day into perceptive fun or poignancy.
That, and his infinite ability to people and places to life by fondly smithing words on the anvil of his keyboard. And he has cheered us on hard days with so many belly-laughs—with a belly like his there could be no other kind.
God knows where it all comes from, this abundance of ideas expressed with a literary richness rarely found outside the theatre. But it has long added a significant dimension to this paper in mirroring the spirit of our community.
Max loves the sea. One of our colleagues asked the other day: “How can be describe the sea so often so splendidly and never repeat himself?” How Indeed? But he’s up every day before dawn to start the restless pacing in the slippers of his mind. He works on his pieces on the Smithfield station and on the train to work.
Deadlined inspiration
Then the real pacing begins, a profound swanning between the newsroom desks, and perhaps a few visits to the canteen for sustenance; deadlined inspiration is a consuming parasite, and Max is not a bad consumer himself.
Max will stop and say hullo to workmates, his solemn blimp of a face plumping into a comfortable smile. He’s always interesting and interested, but while you chat you can sense the relentless preoccupation with his real purpose: to write.
When he’s not writing he fiddles nervously with whatever tie he’s selected from the worst collection in the country. No, the world. But in the irrational eddying tensions of a newsroom he is our Gibraltar, there and sane when madness flies.
He is a gentleman, and gentle man who has made a sweet virtue of loving to be loved. In appearance and personality, he could have been a monk though I have caught him… 3