John Gaskell

May 21 2008 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

ALTHOUGH, by today’s expectations, journalist John Gaskell’s life was cut short by his death, aged 57, it could have ended much sooner.

The renowned colour-writer was collecting material for a feature article about the day that tighter restrictions for toy guns were introduced. He approached this in a typically off-beat manner by carrying a realistic Uzi sub-machine gun (rrp £69.99) outside London’s famous Hamley’s toy store. A passing policeman warned him: “If you were to point that at me, I would have no hesitation in shooting you.”

A great line for a story, but even hardened hacks might question the risk-factor in creating such a rewarding quotation.

Gaskell, who was desc- ended from generations of Lancashire miners, atten- ded Upholland Grammar School, Wigan, where he also played guitar with a band called A Winter’s Tale. They reached the dizzy heights of appearing on the bill below The Who, at Liverpool’s Cavern Club.

After cutting his teeth on the Wigan Observer, he moved to the Cambridge Evening News. In 1976, Gaskell won the Young Journalist of the Year award for his feature on working as a busker. Indeed, folk music always remained a part of his life and, until his demise, he composed folk songs.

Not a hard news journalist, Gaskell instead deployed wit, honesty and charm that nailed stories so curious they were almost unbelievable in his career for The Daily and Sunday Telegraph titles. Such features included meeting children from St Paul’s, Bristol, who’d rather watch riots than television, and interviewing a group of patriotic strippers keen to raise the spirits of our US allies in the first Gulf War. Once the medium Doris Collins told him that contacting “the other side” was like a phone call to Australia – it could go suddenly dead. After she described colours swirling around him, indicating he would start oil painting, he wrote that it “sounds like a problem for British Telecom”.

Latterly plagued by ill-health, Gaskell went part-time and, like a subject in one of his stories, was told on arriving to renew his contract, that his reduced office appearances caused management to forget him. With immortal newspaper corporate words, he was told: “We meant to sack you.”

John Gaskell, journalist; born January 21, 1951, died, May 4, 2008