Obituary: Ken Owen: 1935-2015

Ken Owen: 1935-2015... A complex man who demanded and got the best. (Image extracted from YouTube)

"Legendary newsman", "mentor", "good writer", "lousy with staff", "irascible genius", "friend", and "one of the best political columnists the country has ever had," are just some of the terms those paying tribute to Owen have posted following his death late last week...

For more:

• Times Live: Ken Owen: Brilliant, bolshie editor and columnist... "1935-2015: Ken Owen, who has died in Cape Town at the age of 80, was the editor of the Sunday Times from 1990 to 1996 and probably the most controversial and brilliant political columnist South Africa has ever had."

  In its obituary, Times Live goes on to say: "'Brilliant' is an overused word and seldom justified. But in Owen's case, it was. His newspaper columns, which appeared on a weekly basis from 1969 until he retired from the Sunday Times, were consistently brilliant, even if their brilliance was the only consistent thing about them..."

• BD Live: Decent, if irascible, Ken Owen did not go gentle into the good night... "It was impossible to be ambivalent about former newspaper editor Ken Owen," says BD Live "...whether you were a reader of his articles, a colleague in his newsrooms or one of his bosses. Owen could be irascible, demanding, bullying, generous, impetuous, intolerant, brilliant, insecure and intellectual..."