Picture Special The late, great Bob McGowan

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By TERRY MANNERS

These wonderful pictures of our dear friend and colleague the late, great Bob McGowan, have been sent to the Drone with love from his dear wife Pauline and daughter Emma so that we might share them with our Fleet Street fraternity.

He somehow comes to life in our minds all over again as we see him cycling with photographer John Downing on the deck of the Ark Royal … and toasting his wife on their anniversary in one of their last pictures at a bar in Denia, Spain, while he was undergoing chemotherapy.

Pauline says: “We had a super day, we took the ferry from Javea to Denia, had lunch in Marques de Campo (Denia High Street colloquially) and then sailed back. The picture is grainy, but also Bob was full of steroids. 

I have sent one of Bob in the year he was 65, when we went to Madrid to show you he was wearing quite well beforehand, bless him… 

“I often wondered why my Bob married a nutcase, but then he was pretty much a grade A nutcase himself. Miss him like mad.”

Thank you for sharing the pictures and Bob’s life with us Pauline and Em, truly.

* Bob died in August 2011 aged 67 — Ed

SHIP MATES: Bob and photographer John Downing cycling on the deck of the aircraft carrier Ark Royal on its last voyage before it was broken up

ON THE EQUATOR: Bob with photographer Reg Lancaster, right, and chums in Uganda

WAR REPORTERS: In Afghanistan with Alastair McQueen

HAVING FUN: In Afghanistan with photographer Steve Wood, right, and Ken ‘Grandad’ Clarke. Ken, a reporter with the Telegraph, got his nickname because he was once stopped and questioned by Russian soldiers who called him Grandad because of his grey hair

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LOOKING WELL: Bob in Madrid aged 65, two years before he died  

ONE OF THE LAST PICS: Pauline took this photo of Bob enjoying lunch in Denia, Spain

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