Anita Roddick is irreplaceable in British public life. She leaves a completely unfillable space, a hole the size of the Amazon jungle and the shape of a bottle of Peppermint foot lotion.

The first time I met this pioneer of fair trade and organic industry a decade ago, she blasted me for wearing Nike trainers, gave me a reading list of environmental books and told me to go to Latin America. She was an inspiration, a whirlwind who managed to run a multi-million pound ethical business that actually helped women in the developing world.

She and her husband Gordon founded the Big Issue. They weren't just well-meaning people, they were activists in the truest sense, the kind of people who made things happen.

Like most of my friends in the 1980s, I spent my early teens smelling of fruit-flavoured ointments and veggie shampoos.

By the time I met Anita she was already moving away from the Body Shop. The day-to-day running of the business kept her from all her other campaigns. She declared war on sweatshops and multinationals growing rich on the backs of the poor.

She would call from time to time with a new idea to solve homelessness or to tell how the women in the rainforest needed help against logging companies.

The last time I met Anita, fresh from her travels, she had lots of new plans and books to write.

Interviews never went according to plan. Once she made me lunch at her home, banging pots and pans around with the same passion she spoke with.

I was in Norway when I heard Anita was gone. It seemed a fitting place to mourn her, among the organic strawberries set against the fjord-blue sky.