By Alec Hogg
Former miner and stockbroker turned financial journalist David Gleason passed away on Friday. He was 73. He died with his boots on, right until his death penning his popular Torque column four days a week for Business Day newspaper. Gleason was also active on Twitter, Thursday morning he shared two of his thoughts on the microblogging site.
Gleason moved into journalism in 1992, writing initially on mining for the  Financial Mail before producing a more wide ranging column for Business Day. When he was fired (it happens more often than you’d expect in journalism) I enticed him over to Moneyweb. He wrote for us for a few years during which we worked together on a jointly-produced seminar for his Dealmakers magazine.
Although our relationship ended when Gleason took his column back to Business Day, we remained on cordial terms. He was the person who called in the early hours of 28 September 2005 to tell me mining entrepreneur Brett Kebble had been murdered. Gleason’s close relationship with the controversial Kebble was one of the few issues over which we were at odds. Over his superb, highly readable writing, never.
BDLive quotes Business Day and Financial Mail editor-in-chief Peter Bruce describing Gleason as “an extraordinary journalist and entrepreneur. He brought a wonderful quality of mischief and sharpness to his writing. It made him many friends and many enemies, which, in any meaningful journalistic career, is as it should be.“
Bruce added: “I will miss him greatly. We often clashed over the past 20 years but he was easy to forgive and just as easily forgave. I deeply value the work he did on Business Day and I know his always entertaining Torque column, which he wrote daily and without ever missing deadline, will be difficult, if not impossible, to replace.”
Opinionated and irreverent to the end: David Gleason’s last tweet:
Raising interest rates to combat imported inflation is farting against thunder. It hurts us and achieves nothing. Kantor is on the button
— David Gleason (@TheTorqueColumn) February 13, 2014
