Assistant editor Jim Parker poured his heart out in his latest Parker’s Pen column for the Torquay Herald Express.

The main article was headed “The hardest story of all to write” and paid tribute to his father, who has died.

Jim began it by saying: “This is the most difficult job in my journalistic career”.

He went on to describe his father, Jim snr, as “a straight-speaking giant of a man, hard on the outside but soft on the inside”.

Jim recalled his father managing a youth football side that became the first to beat a much-feared rival team, with the whole village turning out to see “the Davids against the Goliaths”.

“I scored one of the goals, which helped us to victory,” he wrote. “I can still see dad now running on to the pitch at the final whistle to throw his arms around me in a rare, public show of his feelings, which, in truth, were never, ever far from the surface.

“Oh, for one of those embraces now, dad. Night, God Bless.”

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