Tribute to Fleet Street legend

THE media world was shocked by the death of Chadderton-born Brian Hitchen and wife Nelli, who died in a road accident in Spain. Here Mr Hitchen, whose funeral is on Monday, is remembered by the Chronicle’s Ken Bennett, a friend and former workmate.

To everyone who knew him, he was simply Hitch. But in regular telephone calls between us from around the world, he would proudly introduce himself as: Brian Hitchen from Oldham, Lancashire, England.

And though his dynamic and diverse journalistic career spanned more than 60 colourful years, he stuck to that: he was from the North and proud of it.

Brian was awarded a CBE in 1990, edited the Daily Star from 1987-1994 and became editor in chief of the Sunday Express before setting up his own media company.

Born on July 8, 1936 in Chadderton, where his father Fred worked at the Avro factory, Brian got his first job in journalism in 1951 as a copy boy on the Daily Despatch. A year later he joined the Bury Times as a trainee reporter.

After two years in the Army, Hitch moved to the Manchester Evening News in 1957, and the following year joined the Daily Mirror, where he was promoted to foreign correspondent in 1963.

Hitch worked in the Paris bureau for a year before being sent to the United States, where for eight years he ran news operations first in New York then Washington. He covered the US, Canada, Central America, the Caribbean and the Pacific Rim.

After time on the Florida-based National Enquirer, he became assistant editor at Now! magazine from 1978-1980 before, in 1981, joining the Daily Star as London editor. In 1986 he moved to the Sunday Express as deputy editor, returning to the Star in 1987 as editor.

When he learned I was working in Saddleworth for the Chronicle he emailed: “My dear Kenny, you must be one of the very few journalists in Britain who is writing proper stories about real people.

“What a wonderful change from the celebrity cake-bakers and talentless nobodies whose only claim to fame is coming third in come prancing!”

Sadly, it was the last time I was to hear from him.