My dear friend, the television presenter John Stapleton, was known to millions and admired in equal measure. He and I had many things in common, but I have never encountered anyone in my life who shared, or indeed eclipsed, my passion for punctuality. And by punctuality what I really mean is an interest, bordering on an obsession, in being early.
If John and I made an arrangement to meet at, say, 11am at Euston Station, neither of us would be there any later than 10.15. Was it the fact that we were both journalists, and so were terrified of missing a deadline? Were we catastrophists who factored in unexpected hazards? Either way, we once arrived at a football match before even the turnstiles were open, and were there to watch the pies being delivered.
So to describe John’s death on Sunday morning as untimely would be a cruel irony. But untimely it was. Exactly three weeks earlier, we’d been to see our beloved Manchester City play at Brighton, and John and I shared that range of feelings that committed football supporters will recognise: the excitement, the companionship, the bond of loyalty and, for City fans of long-standing, the familiar frustration of seeing your team go one goal up only to lose 2-1.
John was 79 years old when the final whistle blew for him on Sunday, but slim, with handsome, telegenic features and a full head of his own hair, he never looked his age. Even at that game at Brighton, with the injurious effects of Parkinson’s evident in his mobility and his speech, he was alert and engaged and passionate, taking something of a childish pleasure in beating the traffic to get to the ground on time (that is, an hour before kick-off).
John Stapleton was a true blue in everything but politics. Born in Oldham, the product of a grammar school, he was an old-fashioned, dyed-in-the-wool socialist, and his championing of the underdog defined his career. He was a consummate TV journalist, equally at home with the cosiness of the morning sofa or the perils of a war zone, as calm a presence in El Salvador as he was in White City, but it was the BBC consumer show Watchdog, which he presented with his wife Lynn Faulds Wood (who died in 2020) for which he will primarily be remembered, and rightly lauded.
From 1986 until 1993 this indomitable couple exposed rip-offs and scams by businesses large and small, notable among which was the discovery that travel companies were applying charging surcharges at a time when the price of fuel was actually going down (resulting in a total of £19m being returned to consumers) and the revelation that Hoover was reneging on an offer of free flights to New York for customers who spent more than £100 on its products. This became front-page news, and forced the company to make good on its promise, costing it £40m.
square NEWS Broadcaster John Stapleton dies aged 79 after battle with Parkinson's
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John was not a man given to pride, but he took immense satisfaction in the achievements of his son, Nick, who continues something of a family tradition in exposing scammers and fraudsters as part of the team on the BBC’s award-winning show Scam Interceptors. Nick was with his father at the end; the previous day, they had sat together and Nick played short videos that John’s friends had recorded for him. I told him how much we all loved him, but also that he couldn’t leave us in the middle of Manchester City’s rebuilding programme.
For as long as I knew John, we both complained about getting older, railing against the idiocies and idiosyncrasies of the modern world as much as we hated the general ravages of the ageing process. But of course the main disadvantage of advancing age is that you are all too regularly forced to confront the loss of friends and contemporaries.
It’s not so much the fact you see death’s shadow now stretching inexorably towards yourself; it’s more the inhabiting of a landscape in which another point of interest, amusement and connection is summarily removed. And for me, in this particular instance, it’s unbearable sadness and iniquity of now having to refer to my friend as the late John Stapleton.
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