By Barry Newcombe
Fleet Street and Wimbledon combined on Friday to salute the life of Laurie Pignon, the Daily Mail‘s former tennis writer, who died last month at the age of 93.
A large contingent of newspaper and television colleagues attended the memorial service along with an equally large contingent from British tennis including Wimbledon chairman Philip Brook, former chairman Tim Phillips and three times semi-finalist Roger Taylor.
Pignon ended his time in sports journalism as the Mail‘s tennis correspondent and before that had had a widely based career as a football writer and also covered four Olympic Games. He was one of the few tennis writers to have been made a member at Wimbledon.
Father Paul Davies, who conducted the memorial service at St Mary’s Church, Sunbury on Thames, revealed that Pignon had planned the details of the service some time before his death.