Beryl Bryan

Posted: November 1st, 2024

BERYL BRYAN, former Sunday People newsdesk secretary, died on September 2, [2024] at Avon Cliff Care Home in Bournemouth, aged 94, after a long illness.

Her daughter Leigh Chapman sent these words of tribute: Beryl worked on the Sunday People newsdesk throughout most of the 1970s. She left the paper in 1986. She loved working there and kept up with the fast pace of newspaper journalism with little effort and a good sense of humour. She kept the unruly journalists in check, sometimes leaving her desk in Orbit House and going downstairs to The Stab, (the White Hart, one of Mrror Group’s well-frequented pubs) to encourage them back to their desks when they were needed. She fielded phone calls, typed copy, collected expenses and advances.

Beryl unwittingly helped Joyce McKinney to flee the UK (avoiding prosecution), when she handed her the cash for the “Sex in Chains” Mormon story, written by Dan Wooding. She rubbed shoulders with celebrities, and worked with journalists and reporters such as Laurie Manifold, Shan Davies, Len Adams, Bill Dorran, Alan Aldaya, Mervyn Pamment. She worked with news editors David Farr and Colin Myler, and editors Ernie Burrington and Geoff Pinnington.

Beryl was unflappable and good humoured, taking every crisis in her stride. Everyone who worked with her valuedf her experience, and her enviable ability to organise order out of what appeared to be chaos. She had kept in touch with many friends from The People, but sadly outlived most of her peers. She will be very much missed by her family and surviving friends.

Former Man of the People Plainjohn Smith writes:  Beryl looked a little out of place in The People newsroom. In the paper’s campaigning heyday she was was surrounded by a hard-bitten crew of fearless Fleet Street reporters who dealt daily with villains, conmen, wayward clergymen and other assorted riff raff whose dodgy dealings deserved exposure. It was an era when too much drink was frequently taken and language bore a distinct barrack room tinge.

And amid this mayhem sat Beryl, well spoken, ladylike and dressed in the manner of a punctilious girls school headmistress. But beneath that calm countenance lurked a firm and fearsome efficiency that enabled her to deal effortlessly and diplomatically with even the most outrageous daily foibles of this journalistic Wild Bunch. Inebriated reporters intent on confronting the editor to complain about the treatment their stories received would be gently steered away from his office by Beryl whose advice to them was that maybe this wasn’t the best time for confrontation and perhaps they should leave it for another day. Phone calls from angry aggrieved victims whose wrong doings had been exposed by the paper were reassuringly told that their outrage would certainly be transmitted to the editor. Then she would replace the receiver with a sigh and the beautifully spoken comment: “Ignorant sod.”