Bob Coole, who died on Wednesday aged 80, was a sub-editor and features executive of such rare talent that it is, for once, appropriate to employ the cliché “legendary”.

Several former Fleet Street editors lined up to praise a man regarded as a master technician. Like his fellow subs on a string of newspapers – notably, the Daily Mirror, The Sun and the Daily Express – they regarded the speed and accuracy of Bob’s subbing with awe.

When he turned up on the subs bench at The Sun in 1972, where I was deputy chief sub, I was told that his greatest skill was in transforming a mountain of agency copy into a coherent 250-word story without missing any salient fact.