The talented Phil Durrant, my good friend for 50 years

CHUMS: Phil, left, with Ken Parker and Peter Steward in 1989

PETER STEWARD remembers

Phil Durrant, who has died aged 73, was my friend for more than 50 years and our careers frequently collided.

Phil was born in Suffolk, Witnesham near Ipswich, I think. I first met him when I joined the East Anglian Daily Times in Ipswich as a junior reporter in August 1971. He had already been there a year. He went off to the district office in Leiston. I went to Woodbridge. 

We were reunited on the subs desk of the Ipswich Evening Star where one Rod Kiddell was chief sub in 1973. On Saturdays we often left work at lunchtime to cheer on Bobby Robson’s Ipswich Town at Portman Road. Phil was a loyal blue till the end.

In 1974 he moved to the Sheffield Star and I went to the Birmingham Post. I hated my new job and was lucky to join Phil at Sheffield a few months later. 

I moved on to the Evening Standard in London in 1976. Phil later went to the Express in Manchester, moving on to London. He joined me on the Sunday Express in London in about 1988 under the editorship of Robin Esser. Next was a few months with Henry Macrory as interim editor, then Eve Pollard, Brian Hitchen and Sue Douglas. 

I left him to cope with Richard Addis, Rosie Boycott and the rest on his own. They were exceptionally lucky to have such a talent to steer them through the choppy waters in which the Express always seemed to be floundering.

After leaving the Express, Phil moved to France with his wife Helen and they set up a gite, La Locherie, in St Mars Sur La Futaie in Mayenne department, north-western France. They also spent a few months in Paris where Phil covered the late shift on the News of the World remotely for a time. Next stop was Brighton and finally Margate.

Phil was part of a group of former Sunday Express colleagues who would meet up for the occasional boozy lunch at Joe Allen. Sometimes we would bump into a rowdy crew of pensioners known as the World’s Greatest Lunch Club and pleasantries would be exchanged over raised glasses.

When Phil first became ill the gathering was limited to Phil, me and David Billington. We had pencilled in our next lunch for Rules some time this year.

1st June 2024