" I think it was generally known that Jim had prostrate cancer for almost three years. He had suffered enormously in that time with all the different treatments he was given to try and hold the disease, and he certainly put up a good fight. Although the sad news of his passing was not unexpected, it was still a shock when it happened.
" I'd like to share a few of my personal memories of Jim with you.
" I first made contact with him early in 1998 when he wrote to me after reading one of my articles in the magazine. It soon became apparent that we were on the same wavelength where record collecting was concerned. We exchanged Wants Lists and were able to help each other out with some elusive items. In the autumn of that same year, he set up a website for the GMAS on his own initiative, after having suggested such a website three years earlier and receiving no response at all to his suggestion !
" At the time, I was working on a new edition of the Discography, and Jim very kindly offered to do the illustrations which I couldn't manage on the photocopier. In the event, he did them all apart from the 78 and 45 labels. The Discography went on sale at the end of 1999, and after it was sold out, Jim transferred it to his website. I should explain that I wrote the whole thing out in longhand, sent a few pages at a time to Mike McHugh in Australia, who typed it out for me on his word processor and returned the completed pages to me. Jim borrowed Mike's floppy disks and somehow managed to transfer these on to his website without having to re-type the whole work. I know this caused him some considerable technical problems, but he liked a challenge and soon overcame the difficulties.
" Jim was a very generous man. Besides setting up and running the website, and doing the Discography illustrations all at his own expense, he looked for, and obtained, severalrecords for me over the years. If anything out of the ordinary came up on the internet, he'd be on the phone to me straight away, often on a daily basis, and he used to get up at all hours of the night to secure a winning bid on eBay in the dying seconds of an auction. If he saw any unusual record labels or photos relating to Guy, he would download them and they would be in my post the next day. On another occassion, he repaired an amplifier for me. Back in 1980 I'd bought this amplifier as a spare, and put it into storage without ever using it. I brought it out about six years ago, and after aweek or so, an oily substance seeped out underneath and it packed up ! I told Jim and he just said : 'The capacitors have gone - send it up here !'. He did the necessary, and it's still working good as new. I've certainly got a lot to thank him for.
" Jim was employed as a Statistician for Shell, and had worked with computers since the 1960's when one computer would fill a room. He was a perfectionist, and if anyone sent him anything which didn't come up to expectations, they soon knew about it ! He was also a keen angler, not just for the pleasure of reeling them in, but also to provide a tasty meal when he went home.
" Apart from Guy, he was a huge fan of Al Jolson, Jo Stafford, Frankie Laine, Elaine Paige and Billie Jo Spears. Coming more up to date, he liked The Corrs and enjoyed seeing them in concert, and he was also a fan of Katherine Jenkins.
" I never met Jim, but having spoken to him almost every week for the past eight years, I feel I got to know him pretty well.
" I attended his funeral with George Howell and Allan Rabone, and our sincere condolences go out to his wife Elizabeth, and their daughter Shirley, and sons Jim, Ian and Colin and their families. "
Taken from GMAS magazine Page 21.
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