First journalist on the scene of Great Train Robbery loses his fight against coronavirus

Dennis Aris, who was the first reporter on the scene of the Great Train Robbery back in August 1963 after receiving a tip-off, had been admitted to Furness General Hospital where he was diagnosed with the virus.

Although he looked to have been showing signs of recovery, further complications set in and he died on Tuesday, March 31. He had no underlying health conditions.

Dennis was born in Leighton Buzzard to Jim (Cecil) and Olive Aris and grew up in Nelson Road.

He was part of the Heath Band where he played the baritone and was very musically committed. With his younger brother Stephen in March 1966 they went to the Anglia studios in Norwich and the pair of them were the first people to play classical music on electric guitars on TV.

After his stint in the 1960s on the LBO (Beds and Bucks Observer at the time) as well as the Dunstable Gazette, he moved to Devon to work on the Honiton Herald before returning to the LBO.

In 1972 he moved to the Lake District with his late wife Stella and their daughter Merryll to join the Westmorland Gazette as a general reporter. He also had a ten-year spell with the North West Evening Mail, Barrow, before rejoining the Westmorland Gazette until his retirement in 2008.

After Stella's death in 1994, he later met his second wife Jean, a nurse, and the couple married in 1997.

Recalling his time in Bedfordshire, former Dunstable Gazette and LBO editor John Buckledee said: " I remember him as a real outdoor man. One of his big hobbies was canoeing. He once attempted to navigate stretches of the Grand Union including the arm of the waterway leading to Aylesbury. The canal had silted up in those days and he got stuck near Tring!

"He lived with his wife in a cottage at Edlesborough, near the church, and left the Gazette for his dream job as a reporter on a paper in the Lake District. I have a memory of him doing major features about Dunstable survivors of the First World War and about the so-called "Battle of Brewers Hill" in Dunstable."

Denis O'Donoghue joined the Dunstable Gazette when Dennis was on the staff in the late 1960s and recalled how he was "a mischievous guy in a very quiet way, always up for a laugh and a prank".

He remembered how Dennis, when filing wedding report copy about a couple from the local police force, had rounded it off with a sentence along the lines of "The bride carried a bouquet of roses, gladioli, myosotis, a truncheon and a pair of handcuffs".

He said: "The editor later admitted that he'd become bored with reading dozens of these reports and skipped over this one, resulting in him having to visit the couple to apologise!

"Another report featured a bride whose going-away outfit was a mini-dress and mesh tights. The report ended with: 'The groom wore a three-piece suit and a hopeful expression'!"