A regional business editor who also chaired the world’s oldest press club has died aged 84.

Tributes have been paid to Calvin Pugsley, who ran the business desk at the then-Birmingham Evening Mail.

Merthyr Tydfil-born Calvin, pictured, was also one of the first journalists on the scene at the Aberfan disaster, reaching the Welsh village by riding on the back of one of the rescue lorries.

According to his daughter Carolyn, her father never got over the “terrible sight” that greeted his eyes when he covered the tragedy for the Mail.

She said: “Dad could never talk about Aberfan without getting visibly choked up. He knew two of the men killed personally, and the stories of human tragedy shook him right until the end.”

Calvin joined the Mail as industrial correspondent in 1965, before becoming the paper’s business editor.

He was elected chairman of Birmingham Press Club in 1968 and the following year interviewed John Lennon, during his bed-in for peace at the Hilton Hotel, in Amsterdam.

The interview focused on the takeover bid by Associated Television for Northern Songs, the company which owned the copyright to songs by Lennon and McCartney.

Calvin assumed a key role when members of the National Union of Journalists employed by the Birmingham Post and Mail Ltd stopped work in 1975 in a pay dispute that lasted nine weeks – one of the most protracted strikes in the post-war history of British provincial journalism.

He used his contacts with the trade unions in Birmingham to win industrial and financial support and also acted as a quartermaster, sourcing and distributing food parcels to colleagues on strike.

Through his influence, the Press Club acted as a meeting place for the striking journalists and provided a focal point for social contact and up-to-date information.

Calvin later said the fact that the strike remained solid until the end was a “great source of personal satisfaction” for him.

Calvin left journalism to pursue a career in public relations in 1976, when he returned to Wales to be appointed as the first head of information at the then-newly established Welsh Development Agency.

He later became head of communications at the Countryside Commission, in Cheltenham in 1985, before taking early retirement to run his own public relations consultancy in 1993.

Calvin retired to Orleton, a village near Ludlow, before finally settling in Haverfordwest.

He died in Pembrokeshire and is survived by his partner Mabyn Charlton, 83, his former wife Angela, 83. his children Julian, a 51-year-old musician, and 48-year-old Carolyn, the director of communications agency Freshwater, as well as daughter-in-law Sarah, 51, and grandchildren Daisy, 15, and Noah, 10.

Calvin’s memorial service took place yesterday at St Martin of Tours Church, Haverfordwest.