Tributes have been paid to Berkshire journalist Colin Birch, who has died after a long battle against cancer.

The 60-year-old died in Thames Valley Hospice in Hatch Lane, Windsor.

Ironically, in the early 1980s he had been at the forefront of a campaign started by local newspaper The Leader to raise money to set up the hospice.

Colin had been at the forefront of events in Windsor since 1974 when he started work at The Express, a paper he returned to in recent years.

He began his career on The Rotherham Advertiser, before going on to the Sheffield Morning Telegraph.

After moving south he began work at the Windsor Express in 1974, later working as a freelance for a news agency regularly contributing stories to the national papers.

Colleague Chris Patching, a former editor of the Maidenhead Advertiser who worked with Colin on the Leader, said: "Colin was one of the provincial journalistic greats.

"He was equally comfortable interviewing everyone from a mayor of the royal borough, to a high flyer in the business world, to the proverbial man in the street.

"Colin had an uncanny knack of regularly providing front page scoops. His contacts book read like a who's who of the good and the great. He was my best man and my son's godfather, and above all, my family's best friend."