He presented a programme called Teen Talk, like Questions and Answers for teenagers. A nun in my school thought I'd be the best person to send even though I was only 13. I asked why parents are always getting their children to stop sucking their thumbs - it's free, it doesn't make you fat and it doesn't give you cancer. And all of the other older teenagers dug out of me. But afterwards he asked me to be on the panel the following week. They'd never had a teenager on the panel. So I said, "Why would you want me to do that?" and he said, "Why wouldn't I?" and I said, "Because all I did was cause a "ght". And he beamed at me. I realised then that that was what television was about! From then on, whether he was editing pages in a newspaper or doing TV programmes, I'd get a call. He was my husband's best man at our wedding and the godfather of our son.

What qualities made him a good mentor?

Well, he's witty. He makes people laugh. People learn much easier when they're laughing. And he was a genius at names. Carr Communications never puts out nameplates. It's every trainer's job to learn the name within two minutes, because people's names are vital. And he was brilliant at talent-spotting. Most people have more talent than they know, and he could spot it and help them to develop it.

Was there any particular incident that influenced you?

Once he was training people from Trinity, and he was recording 11 really tough interviews with different professors for demonstration purposes. He could absolutely devastate them! When he came out, one of the engineers told him that a camera lead had been disconnected and that there was no tape. I was standing there shaking, because how do you do an entire course when you don't have tape? And Bunny turned to me and said, "This is where you learn the difference between a professional and an amateur. An amateur can be very good, but a professional can be very good now." And he did it all from memory.

In conclusion?

He was a mentor in the gentlest, most unpatronising way. At the end of the day you'd "nd yourself drinking coffee with him and after two hours you'd think, "I need to go home and write down what that man said, because it was so incredibly insightful and witty and beautiful."

Churchill said "people like to learn but they don't like to be taught". Bunny was a genius at helping people to learn without having them feel like they were being taught.

Terry Prone is a director at Carr Communications.

Bunny Carr was its founder (In conversation with Patrick Freyne)