Bill Anderson - Journalist, author and film maker.

(From Yorkshire Post)

From the SAS, to journalism, film-making, public relations, writing books, and, amid all the bubbling ideas, meeting the challenge of bookmakers - and sometimes winning.

Few lives provide as much colour as that of Bill Anderson, who died this week.

He would have been 74 yesterday, but was years younger in his pursuit of life's possibilities. To the very end he was wheeling and dealing in words, and retirement was about the only one in the dictionary he had no time for.

It is a tribute to his perseverance that his final weeks were rewarded with perhaps his greatest triumph. A biography of a gifted artist who had Down's Syndrome, and which he published himself, is selling well, with Japan the latest market to buy it.

Bill was born on Teesside and first made his mark in the Army during National Service. He served in the Green Howards, but after a selection course joined the Special Air Service and saw action during the Malayan Emergency in the early 1950s.

His instinct for communications became apparent while he was recuperating from dysentery. He spent the time finding and writing stories, and earned the nickname 'Scoop'. From Malaya to Malton, he had been trying to unearth them ever since.