Tributes paid to '˜great character' Geordie Tuft

Mr Tuft, a regular contributor to BBC Radio Ulster’s Gerry Anderson show, died in a house fire in Loughbrickland yesterday.

The Fire Service is treating the blaze as accidental.

Paying tribute Mr Coyle said “Geordie was a great character of the programme and a great friend of the programme”.

He said he was “a man who brought many’s a laugh and we really enjoyed his company” adding “we enjoyed his company and he was such a nice man” but “you just didn’t what he was going to get up to or what he was going to say”.

Mr Coyle added: “It is so sad. It really is so sad. It is nice to think when we think of Geordie it will being a smile to our faces because of the character that he was.”

Earlier, also on BBC, Michael Bradley, who produced the Gerry Anderson Show, said it was a “very sad day”.

“I remember Geordie coming in to an outside broadcast and it was like Elvis entering the building,” he said.

“Gerry Anderson and Sean Coyle always knew what made him tick,” he added.

“Callers to the programme would sometimes pretend to be colourful characters. Geordie was one of a kind though.

“A lot of people will be thinking about him today and listening back to clips of him.”