Sinclair, 65, died yesterday after a long battle with cancer. He is survived by his wife Kit and children David and Kiri.

"Kevin and I had an adventurous, exciting and loving life for 38 years," Kit told The Standard last night. "His passion for life will live with me forever."

Sinclair was one of the last of the breed of old-school newspapermen - or, as he himself would put it, "hacks" - who did whatever it took to get "the story."

In his nearly 50 years as a hack - including a couple of stints with The Standard - Sinclair often went to extraordinary lengths to unearth the facts, taking nonsense from no one. He learned his trade on the local "rag" in his native New Zealand, where he started aged 15 as a copy boy, and worked on newspapers in Australia before arriving in Hong Kong in 1968.

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Over the next 40 years, he made countless friends - and, doubtless, an enemy or two - with a fierce determination that never failed to get to the heart of the story, whether it involved a resident of Government House or a homeless street sleeper.

A man with a great thirst for knowledge, he also found time to write a number of books on subjects ranging from Chinese cooking to the history of the Hong Kong police force.

Sinclair was long dogged by cancer - and fought it to the very end.

In 1978, he underwent a tracheotomy that robbed him of his natural voice and left him with the trademark hole in his throat through which he learned to speak again.

Sinclair once recalled: "As I was being wheeled into the operating theater, I was determined to pull through - especially as the buggers on the paper were running a book and taking bets on whether I'd survive, with odds-on against."

Even after his operation, Sinclair was never lost for words, nor did he mince them.

A retired GIS officer recalled talking to Sinclair after the throat operation which left him unable to speak.

"Kevin wrote down his questions, and I wrote down the answers. He exploded, writing in his notebook, `I'm not *!&@^+$ deaf!"'

Not only did Sinclair survive that trauma, but his close brush with death taught him that life should be lived to the full.

He was one of the first Western journalists to visit China, even before the "Bamboo Curtain" opened up, and reported from many remote provinces, where he became famous as "the mad gweilo with the hole in his throat."

Sinclair received an MBE from Queen Elizabeth in 1983 for his contribution to the community through journalism.

Only days before his death, Sinclair launched his autobiography - Tell Me A Story: Forty Years of Newspapering in Hong Kong and China - at the Foreign Correspondents' Club, in an emotion-charged event attended by more than 100 friends, including Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen.

But here's the real scoop on Kev: he'd be laughing till he was red in the face - a cleansing ale in hand - if he ever read this.

STEVE SHELLUM