Guria in Excelsis

John hated being called a salesman. He was a "biz dev" guy or better yet, an entrepreneur, maybe even a visionary. Most of all, though, he was a showman, someone who wanted to live in the limelight. His student days as "ents officer" were always close at hand. And there was that glint in his eye when name-dropping celebrity chums or clients, like the band Massive Attack. Yes, the world has definitely lost more than just a salesman.

We met in 2000 as employees of Marketing Week magazine, producing an internet-focused spin-off, me on the journalistic side and he on the sales biz dev side. Alongside us was his junior partner JJ. Initially things went well as we rode a cresting wave of Web enthusiasm. But after the dotcom bubble burst, our advertising revenue began to collapse and my promised editorial support never arrived. We gradually crossed into dangerous desperado territory, tearing down the iron curtain between our two professions. I ended up going on countless business lunches with John, as we both tried to woo new advertisers. Meanwhile, John began to fantasize about having his own column in the magazine. He would, he assured me, bring a unique perspective.

We were a classic combination of chalk and cheese, a real odd couple: John's glass was always half-full while mine was half-empty. I was a pedantic, words person while John certainly wasn't. Watching him operate, up close and personal, was fascinating to me, who had always been kept far away from the non-editorial side of things. I felt like David Attenborough gazing at some exotic wildlife. As I sat through all those client-schmoozing lunches, I marvelled at John's ability to speak a kind of language that seemed nonsensical and bizarre. And yet it sort of worked, at least as far as his audience was concerned. In fact I too was usually persuaded by John's daft charm, his enthusiasm and flattery and all-round zest for life.

Of course he had his demons and weaknesses, as do many in the persuasion business. Being relentlessly positive and gung-ho can make a man tired and promotional. For John, there was a heavy price to pay in terms of his health.

But despite the darkening shadow towards the end of John's life, my memories of him are full of fun and laughter. I particularly remember nearly losing all composure as we sat opposite a sober and stern client at lunch. On our way to the restaurant I had told John how amusing I found it that he still seemed to be living in the 1980s, with his fondness for liquid lunches, while all around him clients were defecting to the mineral water generation. Ever the persuader, John's patter would invariably go: "Drinks ? Wine ? Red ? White ? Sancerre ?" It was doubly funny: first because of his trying to arm-twist them into drinking alcohol and, second, because he would always end up proposing the only type of wine he actually knew by name.

The real gem in this comedy was the way he would pause before each question, trying to sound nonchalant, as if he had no agenda, while the pause before "Sancerre?" was meant to imply that as a wine connoisseur he had just thought of a particularly suitable grape for today. On the aforementioned lunch John knew that I knew his dirty little secret, and we both struggled heroically not to collapse into childish giggles. For a few very long seconds our professionalism hung by a thread.

There are many other fond memories of my almost three years working with John, and he liked to reminisce about our "glory days" long after they were over. John found me as intriguingly different to himself as I did him. Yet we also clicked, I suppose, as mavericks, oddballs, outsiders and this unlikely connection is what sustained our friendship after we'd both left the sinking ship.

John's powers of persuasion led me to set up this blog, whose original mission was to promote the Sao Paulo office of a digital marketing agency he was trying to establish. He called it Queensberry Rules Media because we were supposed to be a fine English Gentleman whose pedigree and integrity would separate us from the crowd. The name seemed a bit naff to me but once again John's enthusiasm carried the day as he spoke about his plans for a Queensberry Rules global empire. For various reasons it never got off the ground and this blog soon morphed into a personal account of my colourful but troubled time in Brazil.

My contact with John in recent years was more by phone than in person but we would often have lengthy chats covering the gamut of personal, political, business, news and gossip. And of course he would always compliment me on my skills as a journalist and writer. Since I was no longer making a living as such, it was a welcome ego boost. In our most recent, and as it turned out, final phone chat, John's flattery went into overdrive.

I knew John had had at least one brush with death but most of us fail to connect such near-misses with the real thing. When it comes to death, proximity doesn't really exist: you're either alive or you're dead. So when I was sent an email by JJ informing me that "our brother" John had passed away, I was shocked. Really shocked. And that feeling seemed to grow over the next couple of days. How could it be that someone as full of life as John was suddenly gone ?

I suppose his untimely passing will one day seem less shocking. But for now I feel his loss more than I could have imagined, as I'm sure do many others who might previously have thought of John as "just" a work colleague. Whether he was a salesman, or an entrepreneur or an ents officer, or a web optimisation guru or the King of Big Red Bus party hires, John was, above all, a big-hearted friend, a dreamer whose grandiose plans and ambitions never quite managed to hide his touching vulnerability. And as a friend, he knew the value of loyalty.

Johny G, "007", you were one of a kind. I will miss you and remember you with a smile, even if I don't feel like smiling just yet.

Rest in peace, John.