Peter Bossley (a colleague of mine), who is credited by Deborah Curtis at the start of Touching From A Distance for helping her write the book, died earlier this month.
I enclose his obituary from The Sentinel Sunday, Stoke-on-Trent.
PETER BOSSLEY
10:00 - 19 September 2005
Newspaper comment is a notoriously difficult world to negotiate without having to tack some personal judgment to the news agenda of the hour.
Obituaries Peter Bossley, who has died suddenly at the age of 42, was a journalist who never strayed from his fundamental values and basic humanity.
Born in Billingham, Teesside, he flirted with several potential callings from photography to rock music, each of which proved a useful if unconventional foundation for a career in newspapers, at the South Manchester Reporter, the Burton Daily Mail and finally Staffordshire Sentinel Newspapers. It was, he said later, like a misfit rolling up at the funny farm and feeling instantly at home.
One early fling that was to impact heavily on his later professional life was with the infamous Macc Lads, a cult rock group of the 1980s which devoted itself less to storming the charts than to railing against the march of Thatcherism, primarily by attempting to demolish any remaining barriers against obscenity in contemporary music.
As band manager, his stage appearances as the self-styled Al O'Peesha were limited. Not so his anti-Maggie crusade, which was a lifelong obsession born out of experiences during the demise of mining communities in the North East. It was a ruling passion that was to translate from the crude lyrics of the group to the articulate and acerbic logic of newspaper columns that were to win him regional and national awards.
Thatcherism was only one of several themes he seized on and unashamedly returned to, often just when it seemed his outrage had run its course.
In column after column he would invent new ways to savage not just the legacy of Tory rule in the '80s, but the intellect of George Bush, the conduct of the BNP and his constant bete noire of British public life, the Daily Mail. Often a trifle inconvenient for his Editor, as the Mail is part of DMGT, ultimate owners of The Sentinel.
None of it diverted Peter. Not even the hefty mailbag he received every week bulging with fury and congratulation. He delighted in pushing the boundaries of acceptable behaviour both inside the column rule and outside the confines of newsprint. I never promise objectivity, he would say, only the basics of an argument delivered in an entertaining way. The rest is up to the reader. His strategy certainly suited followers of Sentinel Sunday and, so too, the judges who awarded him the title of regional newspaper columnist of the year soon after the newspaper's launch in 2000. One said in commentary that he started off appalled by what Peter was saying, but ended up, on the last paragraph, agreeing with him.
Away from the coal face of column writing, he was a talented newspaper designer, displaying a precision in typography, style and page layout that belied an otherwise totally disorganised nature, which often infuriated his colleagues. Ten minutes before deadline his comment could lay on a page, two paragraphs short of completion, while Peter was parading outside the office having a last cigarette, oblivious to print schedules.
It was an easily forgivable trait in someone who contributed so much, not just by his devastating pen and unswerving principle, but in total commitment to the birth and development of this newspaper and to the enjoyment and exasperation of thousands of readers of all Sentinel titles.
His writing will be greatly missed by friend and foe alike among all those who follow the column inches of our newspapers. His wider journalism, as Assistant Editor of Staffordshire Sentinel Newspapers, will be missed also by shocked and saddened colleagues, though less, it must be said, than for the personal warmth, gentle humour and penetrating knowledge that made him such a joy to know.
Peter is survived by his mother, Betty, and brother Nick. His funeral will be held in Middlesbrough on Tuesday, September 20.
Sean Dooley,
Editor-in-chief, Staffordshire
Sentinel Newspapers
