Mervyn Kohler was a man of enormous insight. There was little he didn’t know, and care, about. He was passionate about history and cross about badgers destroying historic sites. He had an unusual knowledge of London’s rivers and sewers.

It was from Mervyn that I stole an enthusiasm for sharing with others the best way to travel by underground between different bits of London. He taught me the importance of the considering the distances between different platforms at interchanges. He was a walking CityMapper.

But of course Mervyn was best known to me, and to many, for his unparalleled insight and enthusiasm for the ageing agenda.

Before joining Help the Aged, Mervyn worked for the Conservative Party. It was only at his memorial service that I learnt that he led there on issues around race and ethnicity. While Mervyn could have probably gone into Government after the 1979 election win, I remember him telling me that opposition was much more fun. He loved campaigning. He wanted to change the world and he thought that was best done from  outside the tent.

Mervyn saw Help the Aged grow from a tiny organisation, to a huge multi-million pound charity supporting hundreds of thousands of older people. From his desk, piled high with papers, he resisted the move  to keeping an electronic diary for years, but when the time finally came he made the shift overnight.  Despite decades in the same sector, he never became predictable. He loved technology and innovation, and was passionate about how they might improve older people’s lives.

Mervyn was a master of detail, but had a knack for explaining technical issues in a way that worked for everyone. Confidently explaining the technicalities of Pension Credit on Radio 4, he managed to balance advocacy, information and advice, with saying something interesting.

These days when colleagues write a dull quote in my name, I think of Mervyn as I urge them to humanise it. He taught me to think about what every issue meant for Mrs. Thomas in Croydon. He didn’t want us to dumb down though; he believed we had a responsibility to educate.

Mervyn liked to do things his own way and his unparalleled knowledge of the issues, and flare for communication made him a favourite of journalists right across the media. I remember one press officer trying in vain to convince him to ask journalists to contact the press office, rather than calling him direct, but Mervyn was unmoved.  I learnt about a judicial review on warm homes launched by Help the Aged and Friends of the Earth against the Government, as it was announced on the media. A shock given I had thought I was leading work in that field, but also a groundbreaking move the likes of which had not been seen before. Another time, our mutual boss, Paul Cann asked me to identify the source of a statistic which Mervyn had quoted stating that 40,000 people per year ended up in accident and emergency due to injuries sustained opening packaging. This widely cited fact appeared in many reports, but as we traced backwards we ultimately found the source to be Mervyn himself, in a Select Committee hearing some years before. No further source was ever found!

Mervyn was a force to be reckoned with in the financial services industry, as much as within the older people’s movement. He never patronised, and if someone said something he disagreed with, he would politely pick them up.

He was a pro-European and a globalist, and loved the geeky detail as much as the big picture. He could talk about EU regulation on pensions and argue with the smartest economist and politician about whether it’s best to measure poverty before or after housing costs.

He was also great company and a supportive colleague. As I look back, I find it’s the little things I remember. Like the out-of-office message from one summer holiday which announced he wouldn’t be replying to emails as he was ‘swanning around the Adriatic.’

I’ll also remember his voice. I’ll remember the boozy pub chats, that ranged across politics and history, the global, the local and everything in between. I always felt so much more informed about the world after talking to Mervyn. There are few days that wouldn’t be improved by a couple of hours chatting to Mervyn – I’ve no doubt if we were talking today we’d range across AI and financial advice, inaction on climate change and much more – but always with that passion for change, and that sense of fun along the way that was essentially Mervyn.