How I loved Herbert Kretzmer. Back in the 1980s he was the Daily Mail television critic and I was a young Thames TV producer/director with a passion for secret filming trips to South Africa.
When I had a rough cut ready, I would call Herbie and he would come into our tiny, smelly viewing room and go through it carefully with me on our old Acmade film editing machine. He was a wise and discreet counsellor about his home country and always gave me sparkling and encouraging reviews.