Hundreds of friends and colleagues turned out to pay their respects as a popular North-East journalist was laid to rest yesterday.

Ian Laws, left, digital editor of the Sunderland Echo, died from a suspected heart attack last month at the age of 41.

Among the mourners at Gateshead’s Holy Trinity Church was Neil Speight, who gave Ian his first job as a trainee reporter on the Scarborough Evening News in 1991,

Here is his own personal tribute to a man who, in his words, represented everything that’s good about our trade.

A cold, unforgiving wind swept over the northern hills as one of regional journalism’s finest sons was laid to rest on Monday. It belied the reality of warmth of feeling among those gathered at a simple church in Gateshead.

At 41, Ian Laws was cut down in the prime of his life.

Everything good about our trade came to the fore as those of us in the print industry stood side by side, faintly embarrassed by our proximity to the immeasurably more important family grief as first, at church, and then at the crematorium, Ian was moved beyond our touch.

Hard-bitten journos were moved to tears, eyes moistened as words tried to do justice to the life of a genuine ‘good guy.’

A softly spoken minister did his best to assuage the grief, paying tribute to a life honestly lived to the full while those of us who knew Ian Laws, from boy to man, tried to come to terms with the unfairness of God’s equation put before us.

An essential journey north to pay tribute to this life cut so short had to be made, and the realisation why came in the car park outside the church, and an hour before Ian arrived on his final journey.

One stony-faced son of Northumbria was already in the car park, adorned with a scarf and shirt of Ian’s beloved Sunderland.

But he wasn’t there for talk of football. “Ian helped me out when I had a problem,” he said. “Ian took on my case and won it. He felt a sense of injustice and used his newspaper to help me. Afterwards we became friends and we shared a love of Sunderland, but I will never forget how he helped me.”

If any of us still committed to print journalism needed a reason to recommit to our faith, the man who felt he had to pay personal tribute to Ian Laws summed it up.

Ian would have been so proud of that. Let’s keep his faith.