MY friend and colleague Adrian Sudbury died last week after a two-year battle with leukaemia.

He was 27.

My sincerest condolences to his parents Kay and Keith, his sister Carrie and all his family at this terrible time. No words of mine can bring any comfort.

At this time of loss, I find myself feeling not so much sad as grateful. I’m privileged to have known such a remarkable man.

I first met Sudders when I started work at the Examiner in August 2006, a few months before he was struck down with the leukaemia.

He was a bright, handsome young lad from Nottinghamshire.

I was new to journalism and Sudders – though two years younger than me – already had a few years in the newsroom under his belt.

Sitting diagonally across from me at our table of four, he did his best to encourage and advise me as I made my way as a reporter. That was Sudders all over – he always had time for people.

He was just such a personable young man, always helpful and positive. Never angry and always enjoying his job.

On the day he died, I kept looking across to his old chair. When I closed my eyes I could still see him, hammering away at his keyboard and laughing about that day’s "reet tale".

But beneath the warmth there was determination. Sudders was, and let’s not forget this, a damn fine journalist.

Shortly after I started at the Examiner he managed to rack up a remarkable five front pages in a row. I joked that we might as well rename the paper the Suddersfield Examiner.

Adrian wanted to work for a national newspaper or the BBC. And there’s no denying he had the talent.

In November 2006 he took a step in the right direction when he was promoted to digital journalist, with responsibility for the Examiner’s re-launched website.

But just two days into his new job, it all went wrong.

Sudders left the office early, pale and spluttering. "I don’t feel right, Baz. I’m going home," he told me. He never returned to work.

Sudders was eventually diagnosed with leukaemia.

He took the news with characteristic optimism. Yes, it was a serious disease but not a death sentence.

It was going to be a hell of a fight but, as a young, fit person, Sudders was better placed than most to win it.

Back in the office, we were all worried. And the people who were most concerned about Sudders were not the reporters who knew him best, but rather the middle-aged women. Perhaps they saw in Adrian the son-in-law they wished to have.

Chemotherapy forced him to spend long periods in the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield. Partly to relieve the tedium, he started keeping an online diary about his disease.

He was determined to explode the myths about leukaemia and encourage more people to become bone marrow donors.

From the start his blogs were great, shot through with humanity and humour. It was journalism at its best, taking the complex subject of leukaemia and explaining it in layman’s terms.

As he prepared for his bone marrow transplant last spring, Sudders asked us to help him make a video diary to show how the procedure had become much more straightforward.

I went down to Sheffield one afternoon with the Examiner’s new video camera to film some of his preparation.

Both Sudders and I were grubby-fingered hacks, more at home with a notebook and pen than a camcorder.

We sat on his hospital bed trying to turn the damn thing on.

"We’re like those two apes in Space Odyssey," Sudders said as we wrestled with the camera. "I’m a little outside my skill set here," he added.

"Yeah, well I can’t even see my ****ing skill set from here," I replied.

After a few minutes we finally worked out the problem – I had forgotten to put the battery in!

There were many ups and downs in the months that followed. First there was the all-clear, then the terrible news that the cancer had returned.

And all the time Sudders blogged about his ordeal, touching people across the world. He became something of a celebrity, doing a lot of TV and radio, always so articulate and always rattling the hearts of everyone listening.

Then on May 14 came the news we all feared. The treatment had failed, Sudders had only months left.

He dedicated the remainder of his life to raising awareness about bone marrow donation and spending time with his friends and family.

As his health waned, Sudders moved to his parents’ home near Mansfield and declared open house. Friends and family turned up every day to spend time with him and help as he made a concerted effort to drink Nottinghamshire dry.

Going to see Sudders at his parents’ home was wonderful. Despite his failing health, he was still the life and soul of the party. I went away thinking that he had cheered me up, when really it should have been the other way round.

And that’s what struck me most about Sudders – his complete lack of self-pity.

There he was, a healthy young man struck down at random by a relentless cancer which condemned him to die well short of 30.

If I had been in his shoes I would have been shaking my fist at the world, howling at the injustice of an early death.

But Sudders never wallowed in his pain.

Because of this, the media – the Examiner included – always labelled him ‘brave’.

Sudders didn’t like the word. "Why am I brave?" he would ask. "All I did was get sick and write about it."

I’m not going to call him ‘brave’ – he deserves more than a journalistic cliché.

I think ‘inspirational’ is much better.