This is taken from The Independent:

Colin Vines
Secretary to Lord Beaverbrook
(and Bush House newsroom veteran)
Published: 01 June 2007

Colin Michael Packenham Vines, writer: born Guildford, Surrey 1 September 1933; married 1967 Joy Grant (two sons, one daughter); died Oxford 12 April 2007.

"You're like a chicken without a head!" cried a furious and exasperated Lord Beaverbrook to his young, gauche secretary Colin Vines in 1962, one of many incidents recounted in Vines's book, A Little Nut-brown Man: my three years with Lord Beaverbrook (1968), which was memorably described by the historian A.J.P. Taylor as "the funniest book since The Diary of a Nobody".

Acclaimed for its clarity and humour, the book is a vivid account what it was like working for the "fiendish genius" press baron Beaverbrook, who even in his eighties - and ailing - had lost none of his verve, ferocity and spark. He had Vines, a 28-year-old, chain-smoking nervous wreck, dangling from a string. Beaverbrook was terribly mischievous. For example, sitting outside his villa in the South of France, he would say "Read the leader in The Times," and would then turn the swimming pool on to bring water up from the sea, forcing Vines to read over the dreadful noise.

To make matters worse, Vines was a pretty bad secretary. "Colin Vines was so stupid that he entertained Beaverbrook through his stupidity," said A.J.P. Taylor. One of his biggest failings was his absent-mindedness. Things got lost, things got muddled. Once, Beaverbrook asked Vines the date: he could not even remember the day. When Vines, rather proudly, told Beaverbrook he had now been in his employ for two years, there was silence, until Beaverbrook replied, "It seems more like ten."

Vines (my father) lived on a knife-edge, in daily anticipation of being sacked on the spot. But it never happened. The interesting aspect of this complex and often very amusing relationship was that Beaverbrook liked him. Ultimately, he could not really make out "young Lochinvar" and in doing so was presented with a challenge. "I don't understand you at all. No. I regard you as a puzzle," he said.

Life working for Beaverbrook was never dull and there was a string of distinguished visitors to his villa in the South of France. Most memorably, Winston Churchill, very old, came to dinner "and he and Lord Beaverbrook sang together old songs of distant memory, an amazing and rather sad sound".

A Little Nut-brown Man is also a vivid, often moving portrayal of an old man in decline - the twiddling of his toes in a bowl of water, the grind of the stairlift. Towards the end, "he sat huddled in an armchair by the fireplace in the bedroom. He tried to answer letters, but he could not." And: "He closed his eyes. He relaxed into sleep. I left him, and did not see him again until he was dead, utterly, completely, exhausted."

Colin Vines was born in Guildford in 1933 and had an itinerent education at a variety of prep and public schools, including Dartmouth and Cranleigh. This was followed by a spell studying law and then a job as secretary to a colonial judge in Sierra Leone. But although bright, he suffered from a chronic lack of direction and ambition. This baffled him, just as it had baffled Beaverbrook, who had hoped to find a position for him on the Express. By the time A Little Nut-brown Man was published, Vines was working as a clerk in the newsroom at the BBC World Service.

Not only did he remain in the newsroom for the rest of his working life, he also remained a clerk. He toyed with becoming a sub-editor, but his hatred of journalese, his reluctance to find an "angle" or a hook to a story was a hindrance: he couldn't - or rather wouldn't - do it. A chat in the 1970s with a BBC personnel officer drew the simple conclusion: "Colin, there is no place for you at the BBC!"

Later, the BBC introduced televisions into the newsroom. These were on constantly and drove Vines berserk. He took early retirement at the age of 54. He continued to write - or "scribble", as he always called it - and the diary he started as a boy has recently been accepted by the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

Lucy Vines