John Hewitt pays tribute to his creative partner of more than 20 years, Michel Huét, who passed away this week.

LS Lowry praised his work at Salford College of Art, and throughout his working life Mich’s sketches and scamps had a delicate beauty all of their own. They were his true medium, even more than the award-winning ads they often became. He often whiled away dull meetings by creating brilliant impromptu portraits of those around the table.

Clothes were another passion. He was, after all, the son of an emigré tailor who came to Manchester from Belgium just after the war. On any given day at work he might turn up in a suit and tie, one of his famous spectacular shirts or ripped jeans decorated with the perfect symbol of his mischievous nature, Bart Simpson.

His CV suggests that he worked at a lot of agencies in a forty-year career, starting at Gee Advertising, The Buchanan Company, Huét Timmins, Huét & Co and latterly Huét Aminto. The truth is that they were all simply Huét, regardless of name or ownership.

Nobody who met Mich him ever forgot him. It was impossible to walk with him around Manchester without bumping into an acquaintance, and he rarely entered a restaurant without being greeted as an old friend by a waiter or maitre d.

Pitching and presenting to clients with him was exhilarating. Account handlers (always referred to as ‘the grownups’) soon learned that if they told him expressly not to say something in the meeting, he would make a point of saying it. Telling him not to present a particularly outrageous layout was equally futile. Even more gallingly, he always got away with it.

In fact clients loved him, delighted to be associated with all that creativity and passion. And Mich’s attitude to clients was that they were his personal possessions. Losing an account was an affront that simply had to be put right and his persistence was superhuman. A certain clothing company was still receiving regular phone calls from him at least twenty years after he had last done a job for them.

That’s what makes me think that, if there’s a Heaven, Mich will be in it. Because otherwise, the great grownup in the sky will be getting an almighty earbashing for the rest of eternity.

John Hewitt was Michel's copywriter partner for more than 20 years.