Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson, the Beer Hunter, died 30 August 2007, aged 65

It is so hard to describe someone who is loved by everyone. No, …was loved by everybody. Ok, perhaps Michael was not loved by everyone. I could easily think of a few editors and publishers whose patience Michael wore thin by not delivering on time. But do they count? Do they matter?

Brewers, beer drinkers, readers: they all loved him. In their thousands, their hundredthousands if the sales figures of his books are anything to go by. They loved him because he was passionate. Because he was passionate about something that in corporate speak has deteriorated to an acronym: FMCG.

Michael loved beer. He also loved whiskies. But it is his Beer Hunter persona that will prove his most enduring legacy. Tasting beer, judging beer, writing about beer, talking about beer while travelling the world in search of yet more interesting beers. That’s what Michael did for a living. The lucky b******. Many of you probably envied him for his job. But don’t fool yourself. Michael was on a mission. Despite his gentlemanly appearance and his almost self-effacing demeanour, especially with women, he was a pedagogue. Not quite the English public school type, the cane-on-fingertips-headmaster. No, he of the soft words, the reasoning, the logical argument.

Michael was out to educate. To tell people which was a good beer and which was a bad beer and which to drink. Like all pedagogues, he knew right and wrong, black and white. Heavens forbid, you admitted to enjoying a corporate lager every now and then. That would have put an end to a friendship.

He took his work very seriously. One day in Australia he forced himself to do an impromptu beer tasting at the crack of worm’s fart (his words!) because he could not possibly carry all the bottles of beer back to London with him. Tasting beers when you have just got out of bed is not everybody’s idea of a good start into the day. Michael was a pro. He wanted to know what the beers tasted like. And if he had to taste these beers first thing in the morning, so be it.

Michael always reminded me of an Oxford don. Or a Cambridge don. In any case, you get the idea. Ink-stained fingers, slightly tousled hair, clothes of good quality but worn until they looked as if their wearer lived in them. If Michael had not had a sure touch for the most garish ties, you would have attributed to him a total disregard for outward appearances.

The meeting of true minds. That’s what he sought in writing. Michael was a prolific writer. In fact, “Prolific” should have been his middle name. Over the past thirty years, he has written eighteen different books, which were translated into twenty languages. Not to forget the countless articles which came out of this big writing machine.

Despite his shyness, Michael loved people. Like-minded people. For the chance of lecturing on his favourite topics Michael would have travelled the globe. No trip was too hard or too cumbersome for him. Not even during the past few years when the illness had already taken its toll on him.

Known only to his closest friends, Michael had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease for more than ten years. It was in his last column for an American magazine that he decided to break the news to the world.

Apparently, by Wednesday, the day he died, he had completed every outstanding piece of work. His desk was clear - probably for the first time in almost half a century.

It was as if he anticipated a Mort Subite after that near brush with death last year in Denver when he suffered a minor heart attack.

Still, Michael was full of plans for the future. There was to be another book on whiskies, there was to be a book on his battle against Parkinson’s, there was even talk about a book on his childhood in England.

His memoirs would have made fascinating reading, especially as Michael over the past few years had become more and more aware of his Jewish origins. Alas, we shall never be able to read the education sentimentale of a Lithuanian Jewish Yorkshire Englishman. Which is a shame.

Plenty of friends around the world will drink a glass of beer to him tonight.

I think someone should say Kaddish for him.

Ina Verstl