Hugh Jamieson, for many years tennis corresponent and Midlands football writer at The Sun, has died after a short illness.
Jamieson, 76, nicknamed the Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, started his career in the north-west of England before moving to the Morning Telegraph in Sheffield in 1962 where a certain John Motson was a colleague.
Six years later he moved on to the pre-Murdoch Sun and was based in the Midlands where he became a key member of the Birmingham press team as a more-than-useful striker.
Jamieson was very popular with his fellow journalists and was always quick to help out colleagues. John Wragg, former athletics and football reporter for The Express recalled: “I was abroad somewhere doing tennis and in the hotel restaurant was John McEnroe at a table opposite a group of us.
“This was just after McEnroe’s divorce from Tatum O’Neill so he was bigger news than ever. We were debating how to approach McEnroe when he recognised Hughie and said ‘ you guys want to speak to me don’t you. Bring them over Hugh’. Back pages, spread and news stories were churned out that night. ”
Former Morning Telegraph sports editor Keith Farnsworth remembered: “I was covering Wednesday’s League Cup defeat at Bournemouth for the Sheffield Telegraph in 1969, when they suffered a rather unexpected and even embarrassing defeat, and Hugh was doing it for The Sun.
“We were staying in the same hotel, and after the match when we went back for a drink. We were discussing what would make the best follow-up tale. He spotted something I had missed, and volunteered a great idea, simply based on what he had witnessed when the team arrived back at the hotel. I got all the credit back in Sheffield.”
Journalist and author Ian Ridley has a similar story: “I was a bit green and covering Wimbledon for The Guardian. It was raining heavily and the paper wanted a piece on something – anything. Hughie introduced me to a British umpire who told me her globe-trotting story for a space-filling feature. It was kind of him.”
Jamieson left The Sun in 1990 and worked as a freelance for the Daily Mail and Mirror Group before joining Today until it folded in 1995. He also had a spell as a football and sports agent and was chairman of the Midlands Football Writers’ Association.
He retired to Guernsey, where he did some radio work, surviving a heart attack in 2010.
More recently he had returned to Bosham, near Chichester, in West Sussex from where his family came from. He was diagnosed with cancer and died at St Wilfrid’s Hospice on September 2.
His funeral will be on September 15 at Our Lady of The Assumption Church, Bosham, at 11.30am and afterwards at the Berkeley Arms.
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