It's been announced that Tony K, who, amongst many other achievements, founded Red Rhino Records and signed Pulp for the It album and their first two singles, died at home in Leeds last Thursday after a long battle with cancer.

I first spoke to Tony when I interviewed him for my book six years ago. He really was an incredibly kind and patient man, not least when faced with faced firstly with my inability to arrange a date for the interview and stick to it, and then with a barrage of obscure questions about a couple of records he'd released 20 years before and had probably thought little of since.

I ran into Tony a couple more times in subsequent years - most notably about two years ago. At the time, with a friend, I was looking at starting up a record label (alas, one of those projects that never quite got off the ground) and he was more than glad to give up an evening to sit in a bar letting me buy him Kronenbourg and explaining to me the ins and outs of indie distribution, manufacturing, licensing and more besides. His level of knowledge and experience of how the music industry works on an independent level was probably unrivalled, as shown by his impressive CV - as well as running Red Rhino for a decade, he was a PR and Marketing Consultant, Distributor, General Manager of The Cartel (key '80s indie distributor, without which a lot of indie classics, right up to The Smiths, would never have made it into the shops), played a key part in the success of The Smiths, New Order, Depeche Mode... He broke artists like Gun Club, Red Lorry,Yellow Lorry, Soft Cell, and many others.

Even if he hadn't done a thing since 1983, we'd still all owe a thing or two to someone who was prepared to get behind the fledgling Pulp (and, at the time, probably lose quite a bit of money!) when no one else was interested. And he was a lovely bloke to boot. He's left us far too soon.