Gilbert Johnson: 'Actor, joker, romantic'

Gilbert Johnson, who has died at the age of 81, was one of the last men standing from the golden age of the British press.

Always with a twinkle in his eye, and often with a trick up his sleeve, he worked on most of the national tabloid newspapers in a career that began in the 1950s and never really ended.

Within the last few weeks, as Gilbert lay in a hospital bed, his family took calls from a friend who needed help writing an obituary about an old Hull boxing contact.

Gilbert was born on 25 May, 1930, in Mexborough, South Yorkshire. His education included five years at De La Salle College in Sheffield and on returning from National Service with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps in Kenya it was expected he would resume his studies for the priesthood.

“But he told the priest he had decided mortal sin was much better, so he became a newspaperman,” said Susan Last, one of Gilbert’s daughters.

He joined the South Yorkshire Times in his hometown and in 1955 moved to the Hull Daily Mail. Within two years he was working for the nationals, covering the Yorkshire area for the Daily Herald, then the Daily Sketch and then the Daily Express, where in 1964 he earned £32 per week.

He was a staff reporter when Rupert Murdoch changed the face of the industry by relaunching The Sun and he also worked on the News of the World . A book compiled by members of his family and presented to Gilbert in 2006 charted some of his career highlights.

There are bylines with his reports on the John Poulson scandal in 1972, an undated photograph of the reporter with Harold Macmillan, reports from three weeks Gilbert spent on board a Hull trawler during the Cod Wars and coverage of the mining disaster in 1973 that claimed seven lives at Lofthouse Colliery near Wakefield.

Yorkshire Ripper

He was the first reporter to knock on the door of Viv Nicholson, who in 1961 won more than £150,000 on the football pools and famously declared she would “spend, spend, spend.” He was at the heart of the newspaper coverage into the crimes of Peter Sutcliffe, and was one of the first to coin the chilling “Yorkshire Ripper” identity.

In 1973 Gilbert Johnson wrote a front page exclusive for The Sun in which he revealed Captain Mark Phillips’s love for Princess Anne. He died the day before the wedding of their daughter, Zara.

“Rupert Murdoch never increased his reporters’ pay by much but he did provide other benefits,” said Shirley, who married Gilbert in 1956. “He came up with the idea of paying wives to answer the phone.

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