By Anthony Roberts, Director of Colchester Arts Centre

In the modern age you can get to know someone quite well before you actually meet them.

I suppose online dating might be the best example of this right now. I need to get in touch with Errol Brown and advise him to update his famous Hot Chocolate hit.

These days it’s not so much “It Started with a Kiss” as “It Started with a Click”.

Clicks turn into texts, texts turn into emails, emails turn into phone calls and phone calls might eventually turn into that very first face-to-face meeting. By the time that happens you might have known each other for years.

But however well you have got to know each other online and over the phone that first face-to-face meeting is always unforgettable.

I ought to point out at this point that it was not online dating that brought me into contact with Ben Howard.

Although the first time I met him it did seem I’d known him for an age. But then we all knew him. Except we didn’t know him.

He was the guy who Kept Colchester Cool.

My expectation, with absolutely no evidence to support it (except good old-fashioned prejudice and assumption) was that a teenage wizard of the computer age would appear before me and talk enthusiastically about a band I’ve never heard of for half an hour.

Who I met was a beautifully modest, somewhat shy, cultured man. Erudite beyond his modesty, eloquent and aware, a grown up.

What was immediately apparent was this was a guy that oozed integrity. There was no front, no false charm, no attempt to ingratiate, manipulate or impress. I mean, yes, he was charming but not in that dreadful obsequious way, in a good way. This guy was clever, talented, motivated but he was also completely real.

At the time he was also in the forefront of organising and championing Colchester Free Festival, an event which in many ways mirrored the guy himself. It was completely transparent, built upon trust and integrity, rooted in the community and massively popular.

Today, Ben is moving on from the 8 years he has spent working at a small desk at the Colchester Arts Centre as our main man for communications and all things media.

In that time he has not only helped us reach thousands of people and sold thousands of tickets for us but he has brought his own voice to the venue and we are richer for it.

He never came looking for a job but somehow it’s sort of ended up like that. I’m so thankful that it did.