Robert Waterhouse writes: Against his better judgment, John Cole took me on as a reporter at the Guardian's offices in Gray's Inn Road in 1968. I'd been art and theatre critic in Manchester and was hoping to broaden my experience in London.
In true Guardian style, John didn't "tell" you what to do. He opened doors: you were invited in and expected to make the most of it. In those busy times, juniors were the responsibility of his deputy, Jean Stead, and of the night news editor, Dennis Barker, who sent me off during the "autumn of discontent" to the sit-ins at the London School of Economics, night after nerve-wracking night. "Bob, you look like a student. Find out what's going on," said Dennis. I never did.
Jean put me on the trail of Enoch Powell, shortly after the "rivers of blood" speech. Powell was attending the opening of a primary school with mainly Asian kids in his Wolverhampton constituency. He just glared from the stage, never saying a word. That suited my lack of shorthand.
I was buffeted outside Rhodesia House, missed Prince Charles surveying his Aberystwyth University accommodation (my car broke down) and libelled David Coleman in an off-the-cuff television review.
If I later learned that John always had his doubts about me, he never showed them. When I moved on to magazines the following spring, he shook my hand warmly and wished me well. He was probably more relieved than I.
Robert Chesshyre writes: John Cole was a colleague on the Observer in the late 1970s. He was a man of determined personality, and conferences could be (and often were) stormy as we argued about Northern Ireland or labour relations. However, outside the conference room he was uncommonly decent and sane. He may have lived and breathed politics as his trade, but he never played office politics. He never joined or formed factions. As soon as he left for the BBC, a historically harmonious office split into rival groups.
As deputy editor, John dealt with conflicting interests and ambitions in a way that was respected and accepted. Although he worked on the Observer for only a short part of his long career, he made good friends and (always with Madge, his wife) he attended gatherings of former staff as long as he could.