TRIBUTES have been paid to a local author and Saints fan who received a surprise visit from Lawrie McMenemy shortly before he died.

Jim Marsh, 76, was at the Countess Mountbatten Hospice in West End when he suddenly came face to face with the most successful manager in the club’s history.

He was delighted to be presented with a signed photograph of Lawrie, who led Saints to FA Cup glory in 1976.

Mr Marsh’s sister, Susan Willis, of Southampton, said: “We’re so grateful to him for taking the time to do what he did. Seeing his hero was the most magical experience for Jim.

“He didn’t know anything about it beforehand.

“A doctor walked in and said ‘I’ve got a surprise visitor for you’ – standing behind him was Lawrie McMenemy.

"Jim was thrilled to bits.”

Lawrie, one of the hospice’s ambassadors, also spoke to several other patients during a two-hour visit to the facility.

Mr Marsh was born in Southampton and educated at Portswood Secondary Modern. He worked on the railways, spent time in the Merchant Navy and was also employed at the Southampton branch of W H Smith.

After becoming an author he wrote a series of books about the history of his home city.

They included Not a Guide to Southampton, which was published in 2013 and included a foreword by ex-city council leader Royston Smith, now Tory MP for Southampton Itchen, and Growing Up in Wartime Southampton: Someone Else’s Trousers

He wrote: “This book is all you remember of Southampton, all you will come to remember in the future, and everything in between.

“It has made me think of what it means to have been born here, and for me it is a mix of so many things from past and present which make me proud to be local.”

After setting up his own company, Aloejimmy Publishing, he branched out into fiction and wrote about the adventures of a mischievous goldfish called Jayden, who was named after his own grandson.

Mr Marsh, a widower who lived at Belgrave Road in Southampton, had lung cancer.

His condition deteriorated about three months ago and he was admitted to the hospice but died in a nursing home. He leaves a son, also called James.