Jack Crossley, one of Britain’s most respected, accomplished and experienced journalists has died.
Jack spent more than 40 years in Fleet Street, first as a reporter on the Daily Mail and later as news editor/assistant editor on the Mail, the Observer, the Herald (Glasgow), the Daily Express, the Times and, in his own words, “two crazy months” at the National Enquirer in Florida.
He was also editor of the Sunday Standard, a short-lived but highly regarded quality broadsheet in Scotland and was briefly a reporter for the Quincy Patriot Ledger in Massachusetts.
He died on Monday May 22 at his home on the Thames at Shiplake. He was 94. He had been with his wife Kate (Owen) for 42 years. He is also survived by his three sons and five granddaughters.
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Along with members of his family, avid newspaper reader Jack also produced half a dozen books in the You Couldn’t Make it Up series, collections of humorous, bizarre but true stories as seen and reported in the British media and had readers all over the country sending in likely submissions.
A true Yorkshireman, Leeds-born Jack began his career on the Yorkshire Evening Post as a contemporary of Keith Waterhouse and Barbara Taylor Bradford who also both headed to Fleet Street careers while fellow junior reporter, Peter O’Toole, decided to try his luck at acting.
On a number of titles, Jack employed or was employed by the late Charlie Wilson who became editor of the Times and who died last September.
A funeral and wake will be held in June.
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