Former Daily Express reporter in Manchester, Frank Welsby died on 21st February 2025 aged 82. A colleague writes:

He was the reporter who brought the world one of its greatest stories — the Louise Brown miracle.

Baby of the Century, Frank Welsby's newspaper, the Daily Express, headlined it. Trumpeting it an Express world exclusive on July 11, 1978, the paper revealed that a woman aged 32 was soon to make medical history. Two weeks later, at midnight on July 25, 1978, the world’s first test-tube baby was born. Louise Brown, weighing 5Ib 12oz, was perfectly formed.

The triumph at Oldham General Hospital in Greater Manchester brought instant world acclaim for Britain's two IVF pioneers, gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe and scientist Robert Edwards, after 12 years of research. But the Express did not name the mother-to-be or her family for ethical reasons when they broke the exclusive, protecting their identities until the successful birth.

Welsby's scoop triggered the biggest Fleet Street cheque-book frenzy of the era, ending in an auction, with the Daily Mail, linking with America's National Enquirer, the winners.

Welsby had to be content with a “spoil”, relying heavily on a hospital contact. A week before the imminent birth, he wrote two splash versions: lt's a boy, then: lt's a girl,  leaving in each just three blanks, the sex, time of birth and weight. 

On the night of the birth, the Express had both versions printed up, ready to run. After receiving their contact's instant confirmation call, they beat the Mail by three editions, an old-fashioned newspaper revenge drubbing which left the Mail seething.  

Frank Keith Welsby was born at Rainhill, Lancashire. He was 21 when he joined the Daily Express as a news reporter in Manchester in August, 1963. After 25 years of front line reporting and sensing the Express's golden days were over, he reluctantly resigned, in 1988, to freelance. 

But he continued working as a commissioned writer and reporter for both the Daily Express and the Sunday Express for another 16 years as well as most of Fleet Street's dailies and Sundays, specialising in exclusives.

He was also a long-standing contributor to Bella magazine and a UK correspondent for the National Enquirer.

But the world's first test-tube baby remained his biggest-ever story.

 

At the Express, a Beaverbrook Boy at 21, his childhood dream came true. It was the newspaper he had yearned to join. He was soon thrown in at the deep end, sent to Dublin on relief to cover the Irish Republic.

His first exclusive was a Photo-News, the paper's famous picture special, of

playwright Brendan Behan cuddling his new-born daughter    in hospital. Welsby had been ordered: "Find Behan, tell him he's a father."

For three days and nights, he scoured the bars of Dublin for the errant Behan, dusted him down, and taxied him to the city's Mater Hospital, still the worse for wear, for the bedside interview and pictures with his wife Beatrice and first child.

As he relaxed in the bath one night at his hotel, Welsby's London office rang him: “President Kennedy has been shot dead in Dallas. Do the Irish end — all the reaction... now!”

That first trip was the beginning of a long association with Ireland. In 1969, he was the first Express “visiting fireman” to be flown into Ulster for what became the start of the New Troubles.

He did regular tours of duty for nearly 20 of the most violent years in the Province. On one, in 1972, he was among 33 victims of an IRA bomb attack in Belfast, suffering a spinal injury which kept him out of action for three months, but, after recovering, he returned to cover the atrocities on both sides of the Border.

He reported from outside the Maze Prison on the night it was confirmed that IRA death-fast martyr Bobby Sands had died.

In the Republic, he covered the IRA kidnapping of Limerick industrialist Tiede Herrema. The Express used a swear word for the first time ever in a splash headline, from Welsby's verbatim quote from the Mayor of Limerick that one of the kidnap gang's sympathisers, heiress Dr. Rose Dugdale, was a “bloody bitch” for failing to intervene.  

He reported on President Ronald Reagan's historic visit to the Irish Republic and Pope John Paul’s equally historic visit, defying a feared assassination attempt on the first Papal visit to Ireland. 

At home, Welsby covered most of the biggest stories in the North from 1963 to 1988: the Stockport Air Disaster, the Moors Murders, the Black Panther and the Yorkshire Ripper Killings, the Prince of Wales's investiture, Royal Tours including Charles and Diana's first in Wales, Arthur Scargill's miners' strike and many more.  

Freelancing later, he coined the phrase “the power of the Pink Pound” in an article on city centre property investment for the Sunday Times. 

Of course, after 41 years in national journalism, Welsby had a hatful of anecdotes. His favourite: How Lord Mountbatten, the most charismatic man he ever met, got him “rather tipsy” on his ship. Welsby, briefly there on a special assignment, was introduced to the Admiral of the Fleet in the officers' mess.

 

“You must have a drink while you are on board my ship,” the great man ordered. “May I have a rum, Sir?' asked the young reporter, surrounded by pink gin-drinking officers.

“Grog! You want grog, man?” Mountbatten queried.

A ration was ordered. “Of course, you must down it in one,” said Mountbatten. “Tradition.”

He did as he was bid. “Another, of course,” said Mountbatten. Welsby nodded, soon regretting that extra ration, as he staggered down the gangplank, but he still filed his story.

He was a proud Lancastrian, a frank and fearless man who did not suffer fools, particularly news editors he considered to be incompetent.

Welsby leaves Ingrid, his beloved wife for 60 years, and their sons, Julian and Jocelyn.

Frank Welsby, news reporter and writer, was born on June 2, 1942. He died on 21st February 2025 aged 82.

1 May 2025