Sadly, I never met the recently departed Mike McCarthy when he was in his prime. By the time I joined C&SC in 1996, this legendarily passionate rascal already had a few strokes under his belt, fuelled by his enormous appetite for life and all its poisons.
Depending on how well his pills were working, this chain-smoking Old Motor and C&SC stalwart whose adventures I had been following for more than 15 years in those titles (and before in others) would have incredibly short but articulate outbursts or be barely comprehensible.
Of course everyone regaled me with stories of what Mike used to be like (see our obituary and Mick Walsh's column in the April issue of C&SC for more of that), of his escapades and many dubious conquests, and Mike himself never bored of retelling his proudest moment, when he needled racing legend Phil Hill so much that the quiet Californian called him an "assle" (it's phonetic!).
As Mike's health worsened his time in the office reduced until he officially retired in 1999, though even then we would still receive a weekly visit, eventually diminishing to a quick monthly drop-in to pick up a new issue.
I concede that this portrait of a great man in decline may seem rather depressing, but on a positive note, even then there were ways in which the real McCarthy still shone through – he was still hilarious, he was still a menace on the roads and he was still a menace in print. His body may have been debilitated, but his mind was as sharp as ever.