Was shocked to hear last night of the sudden death of Anita Roddick, Body Shop founder and campaigner extraordinaire. She was a true pioneer in this field, providing inspiration, time and support to countless other organisations and social entrepreneurs. Amongst those she supported directly were the Big Issue and also the visionary founder of my old organisation, Nicholas Albery. She was a consistent supporter to the Global Ideas Bank (or the Institute for Social Inventions as it was then) and helped Nicholas produce the marvellous Book of Visions, an encyclopaedia of social innovations, in the early 90s.

I met her when I was doing a piece on BBC Radio Five Live about death (long story: see Natural Death Centre); she was doing the subsequent phone-in on ageing. While the news was on, I said which organisation I was from, and how Nicholas had appreciated her help for the organisation. She said to get in touch and she’d be happy to help out. Normally, you’d take that with a pinch of salt, particularly from someone so high profile. But when I got in touch about the possibility of doing a foreword for a publication I was putting together (Setting the World Alight), she couldn’t have been more generous with her time and support. The same was true for a later compendium of social innovations we did for Collins, called 500 Ways to Change the World; not only was she generous with what she wrote ("This magnificent project is a monument to human creativity and generosity of both mind and spirit") but also, again, with her time, writing the foreword herself and getting in touch personally to show support.

More widely, she has had an enormous influence on the rise we have seen in the intervening years of ethical consumerism, fairtrade, social business and social entrepreneurship. It is easy to forget how radical the Body Shop was in the early days in its combination of a political / campaigning agenda with commercial retail. To think now about properly sourced natural ingredients, fairly traded goods, non-animal testing and the like is to think of the norm or the standard. That is the extent to which the world has changed in those 25 or 30 years.

And she also changed the world of business through her unwillingness to compromise: she was not controversial for the sake of it, but because of principled stands. Principles that led her to sell her business to focus on campaigning for human rights and, more recently, hepatitis C. Her website still lists her most recent blog posts from the 6th of September, campaigning for justice for the Angola 3, political prisoners in the US. Still lobbying, pushing for justice and for the things she felt were right.

Her passion and dynamism was palpable, and has been communicated to many hundreds and thousands of people. It is that passion, which she was so brilliantly able to channel and communicate, that will prove her greatest legacy, inspiring others to make change, to change lives and to enthuse and empower others; to demonstrate to others what was possible, and give credence to their dreams and aspirations. She will be sorely missed; let the next generation be inspired to fill the vacuum.