Ian Wooldridge has died, aged 75
Ian Wooldridge, probably the best known British sportswriter, and the first winner of the SJA’s Sports Writer of the Year award, has died. He was 75.
Wooldridge had been ill for some time with cancer, though he continued to write his much-admired columns, often in considerable discomfort, until the week before he died.
Wooldridge left Brockenhurst Grammar School in Hampshire with just two O levels and after National Service he worked on the New Milton Advertiser, the Bournemouth Times and the News Chronicle and Sunday Dispatch before the Chronicle’s merger with the Daily Mail in 1960.
It was as a cricket correspondent that he first made his name. He adored the sport and the people in it, from Denis Compton to Richie Benaud, the former Australian captain and television commentator, one of his greatest friends.
But he covered every major sporting event for the Daily Mail, including 10 Olympic Games, with an enthusiasm and lightness of touch that gained a worldwide following.
His long and distinguished career saw him fly upside-down with the Red Arrows air display team, hurtle down the Cresta Run at St Moritz and take part in the famous Pamplona Bull Run.
His work was so admired that by the early 1970s, he was given his own weekly television sports magazine programme on ITV. By 1986, the Mail was able to announce its delight in signing Wooldridge to a £1 million, four-year contract. Indeed, during his career, Wooldridge became so famous that, like the sports stars he reported upon, he hired the services of IMG, the agency founded by the American businessman, Mark McCormack, to manage his affairs.
A career-long member of the SJA and its predecessor organisation, the SWA, according to immediate past chairman, Peter Wilson, Wooldridge was always supportive of the Association and its activities. “He would write notes of support and encouragement, to me and previous chairmen,” Wilson said today.
“Even last Christmas, he wrote a letter because he was unable to be at our Sports Awards, but including a donation towards that year’s chosen charity. As well as a much-admired writer, he was an active member of the SJA. He will be much missed.”
Wooldridge’s enthusiasm and lightness of touch gained him a worldwide following and a string of awards, testament to both Wooldridge’s ability and his popularity. He was twice newspaper columnist of the year, and after winning the Sports Writer of the Year jointly with Hugh McIlvanney in 1976, the first year it was presented, he went on to win the accolade another four times and he was four times the sports feature writer of the year.
He also won awards for his lifetime contribution to sports journalism. Wooldridge, a committed royalist and a great friend of the Princess Royal, was awarded the OBE for his services to journalism.
Last summer, his contribution to journalism was recognised by the London Press Club at Claridge’s, where he was presented with the Edgar Wallace Award for fine writing, one of British journalism’s most prestigious prizes, which has previously been won by the likes of Keith Waterhouse, Simon Jenkins and Martin Bell.
Donald Trelford, the chairman of the Press Club, said Wooldridge was “more than just a sports writer, he is a journalist of the highest calibre and master of the written word”.
In his tribute to Wooldridge today, media commentator Roy Greenslade said that Wooldridge’s death “robs us of a giant of sports journalism, not to mention one of the industry’s true gents”.
Wooldridge, talking of his career while collecting another award, once said: “I started, aged 16, on the New Milton Advertiser with two O-levels in English and art. It has gone in a flash. At the Mail I was a dogsbody for quite a while, then cricket correspondent for eight years and then I took over the column. It’s just been such an enjoyable life.
“Journalism has changed a lot. I was brought up in an era when we worked on dry martinis and long lunches and the friendship of great mates. We had a wonderful time and we never broke a confidence.”
By the time of his death, Wooldridge’s fame was such that his passing was even announced on the BBC’s national news bulletins on Radio 4’s Today programme.
Ian Wooldridge leaves a widow, Sarah, and three sons.
Read Frank Keating’s obituary of Ian Wooldridge on Guardian Unlimited by clicking here (may require registration)
Click here to read Ron Atkin’s affectionate tribute to an old friend in The Independent
March 7th, 2007 at 9:41 am
Everyone who came in contact with Ian will have their own memories of him as a man and as a writer. As a man he was the same to everyone what ever their status in journalism, as a writer he was wonderful. Remember his description of Coe, Cram and McKean in the European championships at Stuttgart in 1986 – like spitfires coming out of the sun? Priceless. Ian will be much missed.
March 7th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
Ian was an inspiration as a man and as a craftsman.
March 7th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
I first met Ian Wooldridge through a mutual close friend, his former Daily Mail colleague and golf correspondent Michael McDonnell with Mitchell Platts of The Times, now head of public relations at the European Tour.
It was to be the start of an annual Saturday lunchtime reunion in the Open Golf Championship’s Bollinger tent. Indeed Woolers wrote famously one year on how the Bollinger marquee had been situated conveniently just a wedge away from the Press tent!
He like Michael McD and the equally late lamented Ronnie Wills, of the Mirror, could not have been kinder and more helpful to a then young regional hopeful trying to make his way in the sportswriting game.
I will never forget how, after we had both won categories in the 1989 SWA Awards, we repaired to the bar for a chat and he spent all the time asking me about what I had written rather than reflect on his own far more senior achievements. The Press tents of the world and the verandah of the Augusta clubhouse will be colder and lonelier places from now on.
March 8th, 2007 at 11:20 am
When I joined the Daily Mail ten years ago, the biggest thrill for me was becoming part of a sports team headed by my career-long idol Ian Wooldridge.
He turned out to be a hero who lived up to all expectations. The most generous of colleagues and a delight to deal with on a daily basis.
Quite simply, Woolers was a man apart in all respects. He only had to walk into the office or into a bar for the whole atmosphere to be immediately lifted.
Ian oozed quality both a as a writer and as a man. He was probably the last giant of old Fleet Street and, sadly, our 21st century industry is most unlikely to ever produce another like him.
March 8th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
You know someone is special when their leaving creates a vacuum. What I remember most fondly about Ian was the devil in his smile. He was always ‘up for it’ - another drink, another anecdote. Time stood still. We rarely agreed, but never argued. And, as several colleagues have remarked, he was unfailingly generous in every way. He was the nicest old reactionary bastard I ever met.
March 8th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
For two decades he was a hero to me as he was for so many aspiring sportswriters. For the 20 years after that he remained a hero but he also became a valued pal.
One story: our friendship really began in the early 1980s when Ian pitched up at Augusta. Four of us went out to dinner on the night he arrived. Halfway through the meal Ian, fortified by his favourite whisky as well as jet-lagged, fell sound asleep in his chair, snoring gently. For another hour Mike McDonnell, Ron Wills and I continued our conversation in hushed tones. Eventually Mike motioned to a waiter to bring the bill. As this was reached over the table, Ian, still apparently asleep, held out an arm and said, “I’ll deal with that.”
I’m not sure he opened more than one eye as he signed the credit slip before falling back asleep.
Anyone who doesn’t follow any of this adulation should get hold of the ‘autobiography’ he knocked out (his words) when he was a bit strapped for cash. Read Travelling Reserve and you’ll know why there is such a fuss. If you don’t already.
March 19th, 2007 at 2:06 am
I first met Ian, whose work I had admired from afar, over breakfast at an Edinburgh hotel when I came over from Australia to write a daily column on the 1986 Commonwealth Games for the Sydney Daily Telegraph. He was all I had expected.
Two days later he called me over and pointed out that Frank Bruno, who had just been battered senseless in a world heavyweight title fight, would be holding a press conference in a few hours time.
“I think you’ll get a column out of it,” he smiled.
Get a column? Almost a full page of glorious quotes.
He didn’t have to alert me. That he did put me in his debt forever.
A master of his trade. I’ll miss his musings.
December 13th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
about mark mccormack:
‘he was a pearl of genius in the oysters of our time’
about ian wooldridge:
‘he was an oyster of genius in the pearls of our time’
(me).
both leave this world with with a gap i doubt ever will be filled!
rip.
November 1st, 2008 at 4:55 pm
my grand dad was a very good man my daddy tells me what he does in life when he died i was very sad.