A TRUE FRIEND: Kingsley Squire in his heyday
By JILL KING, former night news editor of the Daily Express
Kingsley Squire was a true Expressman – he had printer’s ink running through his veins and an insatiable appetite to get the story.
His big stories, including the Aberfan disaster, the Birmingham pub bombings and the Black Panther murder of Lesley Whittle, written in crisp, colourful pars, were usually tick-up jobs for the subs.
But when enticed to, first at the Star news desk then at the Daily Express news desk in London, his enormous enthusiasm to sniff out news and punch it into the paper became clear to everyone.
Kingsley’s standards were high, he didn’t suffer fools gladly, but he earned huge respect from all he worked with, including me.
As he battled pancreatic cancer at his home in Sidmouth, Devon, he made me promise to attend his funeral – “because you know what I did”.
Last Friday I kept that promise.
And I remembered Kingsley as not only my good mate from the rough-and-tumble Daily Express days, but the friend who did not forget me after Lloyd’s sudden death and phoned me – like a guardian angel – regularly for 19 years until two weeks before his death with the words: “How’s it going then?”
I am proud to call Kingsley my friend – in good times and bad. A good man and a great journalist in The Crusader tradition.
*Jill KIng’s husband Lloyd Turner, former editor of the Daily Star, died suddenly in 1996 at the age of 57.
