obituary


Bob Corfiled


Bob Corfield, one of Manchester’s most respected press photographers, has died aged 96. He worked at the Manchester Evening News (MEN) all his career. He knew all the photographers working on the paper in the early days, including Walter Doughty, the first ever photographer who began in 1908 at the Manchester Guardian and later at the MEN. Bob completed 50 years at MEN, retiring in 1984. His employment history was very different from now, in that he lived and worked during a time when employees often stayed with the same company all their lives. Bob started at the newspaper aged 14 as a messenger but quickly transferred to the darkroom. His camera expertise was legendary. His photographs were always correctly exposed and pin sharp, long before autofocus lenses. His negatives were so crisp that he became


known among his colleagues as Crispy Corfield – a nickname that followed him throughout his career.


His jobs included photographing evacuees


at the start of the Second World War and the last Manchester tram in 1949 before Metrolink reintroduced trams to the streets of Manchester. In 1950, he toured England to see how it had changed after the war, and he photographed the first man in space Yuri Gargarin at Trafford Park in 1961. To mark the centenary of MEN, he made a film, which gives us a glimpse of an era now long gone – one that had barely changed since newspapers began.


Bill Batchelor


Chris Simpson


I worked with one of the BBC’s finest veteran freelance journalists and media and NGO consultant, Chris Simpson. This was at West Africa magazine, a pan-African weekly based in London, in the 1980s and early 1990s. Chris was a staff correspondent and an


exceptional journalist and colleague. He was reporting for the magazine when the going was good, leaving before it ran into financial difficulties; the NUJ was on hand to support. He had jumped a sinking ship to further his career at the BBC in the field he was passionate about. There, he worked for the Focus on Africa and Network Africa radio programmes as a reporter/editor. As a BBC African correspondent and for nearly 20 years, Chris travelled extensively, working in Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Angola, Rwanda and Central African Republic. Many listeners will remember his pieces from Angola during the Rwandan civil war in the 1990s in the aftermath of the genocide. I last saw Chris at Kaye Whiteman’s memorial


at Chatham House in London. Kaye was our editor at West Africa magazine. The last time he contacted me was to see if I could help him with contacts in Abuja as he planned to travel there. I warned him to be careful because of the Boko Haram problem. Until his death, he was the station manager at West African Democracy Radio in Senegal. The continent he loved so much is where he passed on, in Dakar, Senegal late last year.


Tayo Fatunla Seamus Dooley


Paul McGill


Last November Laurence White of the Belfast Telegraph interviewed Paul McGill Paul, a former Education Correspondent at the Telegraph, said: “If my life can be seen as a piece of string, then I am trying to make it as elastic as possible.” He died on January 27th at his home, An Teach Bán (The White House) in Bunbeg, Co Donegal, aged 67.


A law graduate of Queen’s University Belfast Paul (pictured in the white suit) became active within the student union movement. Through his USI career he was offered a job at the Education Times, Dublin. He went on to spend 10 years in the Belfast Telegraph, developing his passionate interest in social policy and education while also serving as chapel FoC and becoming immersed in the NUJ, culminating in election as president in 1989. Not long after serving as president he took


up a post in York with the National Curriculum Council. Later he worked with the Equality Commission in Northern Ireland, Making Belfast Work and various anti-racism initiatives. He also worked for the World Bank and the Council of Europe and later still with NICVA and the Centre for Ageing Research and Development. In between he and wife had managed to buy a guest house and it was there that family and friends gathered for a secular farewell to Paul. His ‘elastic life’ was celebrated in poetry, music and song, including a recording of Paul singing in Gaelic


He is survived by his wife Linda, six children and 12 grandchildren, and his first wife, Bronagh.


24 | theJournalist


KEVIN COOPER PHOTOLINE NUJ


TAYO FATUNLA


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