After more than 60 years as a journalist, KM Group columnist Martin Jackson dictated his final story from his hospital bed just 24 hours before he died.

The article is published in the February edition of Kent Business, the group's monthly supplement. It includes recollections of encounters with showbiz legends - and a poignant signing off as he recognises it will be his final column.

Numerous tributes have been paid to 75-year-old Martin, from Hawkhurst. He worked for many years on national newspapers and was a founder and director of Television South, the independent TV company for the region before Meridian. He was a member of the advisory board for Kent County Council's Kent TV and had written his Kent Business column for 16 years.

Tanya Oliver, the Director of Strategic Development and Public Access at Kent County Council said: "Martin was a real asset to the Kent TV Board as he had such amazing experience, was a real visionary and had an excellent sense of humour.

"I will never forget that one of the meetings he attended he came straight from being discharged from hospital after an operation! Such was his commitment.

"His support for filming and television in the county and how important it was to local businesses was also inspirational and we valued his support for what we are trying to achieve through the Kent Film Office - he was a true advocate."

BBC correspondent Nick Higham said: "I worked with Martin in the 1980s when he was editor of Broadcast and enjoyed it a lot: he was entertaining, stimulating, sometimes sardonic, occasionally scurrilous, exceedingly well-connected and editorially acute: a proper Fleet Street hack, and we all looked up to him."

Rex Cooper, Editor of Kent Profile magazine, described Martin as an old school journalist. He told this anecdote dating back to their first meeting in 1958 when he was a student in London and Martin was a press officer at Associated Television (ATV) Midlands:

"Early one Friday evening I was thumbing a lift - as penniless students and servicemen did in those days - to Birmingham, for a weekend with a girlfriend. After a 10-minute wait in the Edgware Road, Martin pulled up, said he was going all the way to Birmingham and told me to hop in.

"There was no M1 nor M6 in those days, so the journey, right into the middle of Birmingham to the ATV studios, must have taken three or four hours. In that time he regaled me with stories about his job and about the television people he knew and, when I told him I was in fact studying journalism, he was even more enthusiastic to talk up the calling.

"On arrival he told me: 'I do this drive every Friday evening at the same time; if you want to go with me, be in the same place, but I won’t wait if you are not there.' Over the next few months I enjoyed seven or eight more free rides to Birmingham with conversation that did much to convince me that I was choosing the right job for me."

• More tributes in the Kent Business supplement in the Kent Messenger, Medway Messenger, Kentish Gazette, Kentish Express week ending February 5.