I got talking to Brian's sister Penny about what got him started as a journalist and how he learnt to write so well. It turned out he did a lot of subbing in his early career, first at the long gone Bristol Evening World, where he was a youthful deputy chief sub-editor, then at the Daily Mirror, before he joined the BBC - again as a subeditor.
It's a fast disappearing craft, even at national newspapers, but I'd guess that honing other writers' copy into the straightforward, muscular language that was then the USP of the Mirror had its influence on Brian.
That sparseness characterised Brian's writing for television. He was always short and succinct, even, or perhaps especially, when covering a huge story. Take his report on the fall of Saigon in 1975: here's the second line: "Civil war ended and so did South Vietnam."
But he was a complete master of the broadcast arts, too; a mastery built on his partnership with that incomparable cameraman Eric Thirer. Their report on the fall of Saigon includes that classic piece to camera: "This was our car when we started off the morning, with the Union Jack. The Union Jack's still intact but our car isn't."
Brian always had a sharp ear for detail, too: here in 1980 he introduces his exclusive interview with Idi Amin in Saudi Arabia: "I found Idi Amin, Big Daddy as he still likes to be called, living quietly in a brand new house that has been given to him. With one of his wives and 25 of his children."
The audience at the tribute event enjoyed all the great clips. But what struck many of us most was his Gulf War report from 2003 where Brian witnessed the first missiles being launched against Baghdad. He runs natural sound a full 15 seconds - through the missile countdown and the sound of two missiles blasting skywards - before coming back with a script line. What confidence he had to just let the pictures tell the story.
Brian Barron 1940-2009
