Daily Express reporter turned globe-trotting showbiz freelance writer Garth Pearce has died aged 77.
Pearce was still writing articles for The Sun until his sudden death after being recently diagnosed with cancer.
He began his career as a journalist at 18, writing for a weekly title in Walsall, Staffordshire. He went on to work on other regional titles, including the Western Morning News, before joining the Daily Express aged 25 in 1973 as a reporter.
The paper then sold 3.3 million copies per day and he worked alongside future high-flyers including Paul Dacre and Kelvin MacKenzie.
He rose to the position of showbiz editor before taking redundancy in the 1990s.
Writing in Press Gazette in 2023 he said of his exit from the Express: “The Mickey Mouse world in which I operated was changing rapidly at the time. Film companies were losing interest in having journalists on their film sets, so how about just one who wrote for a whole range of different markets? That’s where I came in.
“I was able to syndicate widely in America through the New York Times and, at one point, supplied 50 newspapers and magazines around the world. In the UK, it was every glossy monthly and supplement ranging from my regular gig with The Sunday Times Culture to Sunday magazine in the News of the World.
“I was able to write books on James Bond film sets and trip around 35 countries, interviewing the famous, the egotistical and the certifiable. All inconsequential and lightweight nonsense in the scheme of things. But great fun. It was thanks in many ways to those contacts and knowledge – and mistakes – amid the victories and defeats at the once magnificent Daily Express.”
Pearce refused celebrity requests for copy approval and bids to put other controls on the way interviews appeared.
Writing in The Sun Mike Ridley said: “He knew all six James Bonds and was the only journalist Sean Connery ever trusted.”
Garth himself once said: “I’ve lived the life of a celebrity without having the misfortune of being one.”
According to The Sun, in 1976 he was the only journalist who could be bothered to visit the set of a film that was predicted to be a flop – Star Wars.
The following year he was the only British journalist to go on the first-ever tour with Eurovision winners ABBA.
He also wrote eight books.
Garth’s daughter Dulcie, The Sun’s film critic, said: “He remained the best storyteller and a hilarious raconteur until the very end.”
Jasper Carrott, his life-long friend after they met as teenagers, said: “Garth was such a dear, devoted, generous friend who lit up the room wherever he was.”
Another pal and fellow West Bromwich Albion fan Adrian Chiles added: “Garth always had the right words – written in a lovely fountain pen hand. A true gentleman.”
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