February began in North Yorkshire with the retirement of North Yorkshire’s Deputy Chief Constable, Adam Briggs, who had been embroiled in controversy.

Andrew Tiplady, a 31-year-old cystic fibrosis sufferer from Haxby, died while waiting for a lung transplant. His father, Mike, backed The Press’s Lifesavers appeal by urging more people to join the national organ donor register.

Artist David Hockney brought his most recent work Bigger Trees Near Warter – a huge painting measuring 15ft by 40ft – to York Art Gallery, pausing on the steps to complain that there was nowhere in York to “sit down and have a cigarette.” And bats scuppered plans to bring a big wheel back to York, in the Museum gardens.

Anthony William Booth was barred for six months from every pub in York city centre – except his local, The Priory in Micklegate.

York Stop The Cuts campaigners launched a week of action to protest at the spending squeeze, which left City of York Council facing the prospect of trimming £21 million from its budget.

Clive Gott, the motivational speaker and marathon runner, died suddenly aged just 52. He had a “king-sized personality and tremendous warmth,” said his grieving partner Elaine Hanzak.

Child sex killer Colin Hatch was murdered in Full Sutton prison; and a mystery hero was so appalled by the street-mugging of an 86-year-old woman in Acomb that he withdrew £200 from a cashpoint, and promptly gave it to the victim.

Chancellor George Osborne hit the banks with a surprise £800 million tax raid – a move greeted with shock and anger by the banks, with some bank bosses reported to be ‘livid’.

Internationally, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was toppled after an 18-day revolution, and unrest in the Arab World spread to Libya and Bahrain, leading to the Bahrain grand prix being cancelled, and plans being drawn up to evacuate hundreds of international oil workers, among them Britons, from the Libyan desert. A devastating earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, left scores of people dead: among them Greg Tobin, a 25-year-old North Yorkshire chef, hip-hop DJ and former Tadcaster Grammar School pupil. “He was one of the kindest guys I have ever met,”

said Harry Singh, an organiser of the Lyrically Justified nights in Leeds, where Greg performed.

“He was a joker and he was very popular.”