I had to give my seat to George Byrne once.

Actually, that’s completely wrong: I wanted to give it to him… because it was George’s seat. This isn’t common knowledge but critics have a seat preference. In the IFI Screen 2 George would always sit behind me - far right, three rows from the back - and his seat in Screen 3 was far right, four from the back. It was one morning in Screen 3 when someone was in ‘my’ seat so I sat in George’s, figuring he wasn’t going to make it (he was always always on time). But in he came. And stopped. He looked at me, confused.

He stood there, shoulders slumped, a characteristic long exhale (usually saved for after the film - always a sign that George wasn’t a fan). I got up. Gladly. Because it was George’s seat.

You have to respect things like that, and you have to respect people like George Byrne.

Music and film critic George Byrne passed away on Thursday, 2nd April, 2015 and he’s going to be missed. I’m going to miss him. I’m going to miss the chats in the IFI restaurant before screenings (George would branch out here - one of two seats) and movies and music and football were the three sets of our Venn diagram. Although we’d agree for the most part it was when it came to electronic music that we’d part ways, he completely dismissing the entire genre as ‘disco drug music’.

That’s George. Grumpy but funny. A professional grouch with a sense of humour. And I mean that in the best possible terms, I mean it as a compliment.

Because George was my kind of guy, still going to more gigs in a week at 52 than I would manage in a year. He was articulate and passionate and had an encyclopaedic knowledge of music and film. He loved a music documentary. He hated 3D. One time he told me that he had a few hours to kill one Saturday afternoon so just popped in to watch Chinatown.

Just like that. My kind of guy.

There won’t be a notice or a plaque or anything on his seat in Screen 2 or Screen 3 (or his preferred spots in Cineworld and Savoy) and over time there will be new critics and writers coming to screenings and they will unknowingly sit down in these spaces. But when they do, everyone is going to think the same thing:

That’s George’s seat.