In 2002 my friend Lorcan Devine, a business administrator, who has died of an aneurysm aged 52, began helping out at his brother's pub, the Old Red Lion in Islington, north London. It was not so much that Lorcan had found the pub, more that the Old Red had found him. Lorcan was invaluable. In 2004 he became the landlord. He made that pub a haven, bolstering its fringe theatre reputation, hosting cabaret with the likes of John Hegley and Simon Munnery, and making almost anyone who came in feel at the centre of the universe. Lorcan extracted life stories from the flintiest souls, and while he was a man increasingly bewildered by the modern world, he was also strangely in tune with it; a beacon for the real in Islington. Born in Dublin, Lorcan was a fifth child and a third son. When he was two the family relocated to Harlow, Essex, where his father became manager of a shoe shop. A sickly child, Lorcan was close to his mother; he was not so much her favourite son, more the one she worried about most. He inherited her warmth, sharing an ability to touch people very deeply, very quickly. He was educated at Netteswell school and captained the rugby and football teams. A "cockney red", he was passionate about Manchester United and sneaked off to their London games. After excellent A-levels, he read international relations at the London School of Economics (1975-78). He was also bassist in a band, the Rabbits. Van Morrison and Neil Young were his heroes. After graduation Lorcan nursed his father through terminal cancer. In 1981, the Rabbits' Kitchen Parties EP, a masterly piece of surrealism, was released, and Lorcan began working for Our Price records in Harlow. I met him in the late 1980s, by which time he was an Our Price area manager. I was later his deputy in the north-west, during the "Madchester" era. In the mid-1990s he left Our Price, took a Lancaster University MBA and then a post with the Impulse retail chain. Then came a return to London, the Old Red, and administration of Offside Sports photography. Lorcan's marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by his beloved children, Alice and Joe, and his partner Angela.