Kevin Memery

Posted: August 29th, 2024

DAILY Mirror features sub KEVIN MEMERY died during the weekend of August 24/25 [2024] at a care facility near his Surrey home. His funeral is at Guildford Crematorium (New Pond Road, Godalming GU7 3DB) at 11.15am on Wednesday, October 2. (If using sat nav, use ‘New Pond Road’ not the postcode, as it will take you to the wrong entrance.) And afterwards at The Withies Inn, Compton, Guildford GU3 1JA (five minutes away).

FRIEND and colleague Mike Godfrey shares some very personal recollections: Kevin Memery was not only a very talented all-round journalist, but also one of the smartest and nicest human beings I have ever met. We were workmates and friends for nearly thirty years and I honestly cannot remember a bad word between us in all that time. How many “friends” can any of us say that about?

We first met when Kevin joined the features subs’ desk of the Evening News. He was wearing a tweed sports jacket and flannels, as befitted someone whom I always regarded as quintesentially English. Later, I learned he was born in India, which may account for his fondness for curries and his habit of turning up at parties dressed in a kaftan. It was actually at a party, during our time on the Evening News, that Kevin met his future wife of 49 years, the beautiful and bubbly Joan. We had both, I recall,  eyed her admiringly across a crowded room. But Kevin – in a rare display of the ruthlessness which he kept in reserve for special occasions – literally left me standing, and watching enviously as he turned on the charm that would win him a lovely, lifelong companion.

I didn’t drive in those days and Kevin was my lift to this party and numerous others. After his marathon chat-up, followed by some slightly grubby – if not exactly dirty – dancing with the object of his affections, he sidled somewhat shamefacedly up to me and said: “Mike, I’m sorry, but is there any chance you could get a lift home with somebody else? I’m a bit, er, tied up at the moment”, inclining his head in the direction of the Pride of Portsmouth, smiling devastatingly at us over her glass. The rest, as they say, is history.

Kevin was there for me, big time, when I had the misfortune to cross swords with the then Evening News editor, John Gold, who wanted me gone – to the extent that he told the Board of Associated Newspapers that either I walked or he did. Kevin persuaded a flabby Chapel to back my claim for unfair dismissal and, eventually, I walked out of the Bouverie Street offices for the last time in four years, clutching a cheque equivalent to a year’s tax-free salary. Nice one, Kev.

Kevin and I were reunited when he followed me to the Daily Mirror, as part of a features subs’ team I had joined – at the invitation of another much-valued former workmate and friend, Bill Hagerty – while freelancing after my abrupt departure form Bouverie Street.

These were our Halycon days. The Memeries and Godfreys lived not far apart in leafy Surrey. Kevin and Joan produced two beautiful and clever daughters.

But nothing last for ever. Following Robert Maxwell’s takeover of the Mirror,  Kevin and I hit the Holborn pavement in reasonably quick succession. Luckily, by the time Kevin followed me out of the door, I had ensconced myself at the Evening Standard, producing business features as a freelance editor. I was delighted when he agreed to join me in a venture which was growing like Topsy.

We formed Midas Media, for which Kevin designed a very impressive business card, embossed with a gold Greek helmet. By then, instead of spending hours toing and froing between the Evening Standard offices (which by then had moved from Fleet Street to Kensington) and having to beg, borrow or steal a staffer’s computer to input material for our supplements – which sometimes ran to eight pages – Associated Newspapers had agreed (against the wishes of the Evening Standard NUJ chapel) that we could produce them from home, using company-supplied computers.

Working either from my humble abode in Seale, Surrey, or Kevin and Joan’s far more salubrious country seat just down the road in Ash, we launched a ground-breaking operation which, I would argue, was a rare example of digital technology being exploited in a way that benefited employers and employees alike. Kevin and I were able to take our computers into the garden whenever the sun came out, and we had almost permanent tans. We commuted to the Kensington offices only to make last-minute tweaks to our supplements. Management was happy, we were happy.

After ten years of producing business and finance supplements which attracted record advertising revenue of close to £1million a year, a new broom arrived in the higher echelons of Associated. With the writing on wall, and I decided to enjoy early retirement to Thailand. Kevin hung on, hoping to soldier on in my shoes, but was ungraciously shown the door soon afterwards. The profitable enterprise we had created and so carefuilly nurtured vanished as if it had never existed.

Kevin and I stayed in contact, and in 2010 my partner Kratai and I were thrilled when he and Joan flew to Thailand in 2010 for a holiday, during which they kindly volunteered to witness our legal marriage at the local amhur (register office). I felt honoured when he asked me to chaperone his 18-year-old younger daughter Joanna on her visit to Bangkok. She didn’t seem keen on Buddhist temples, but clearly enjoyed our subsequent tour of the red light districts of Pat Pong.

When, subsequently, I was fighiting to  win some pension rights for my wife, Kevin gave me practical as well as moral support. In the end, we were unsuccessful, but I shall always be grateful for his unstinting efforts on our behalf. But that was the man: always prepared to go the extra yard for what he thought was a worthy case. And a friend I shall never stop missing.

And from Bryan Rimmer: THE unforgettable Kev first made an appearance in my London flat in 1970. I was heading off to help launch a newspaper in Singapore and threw a party. I invited Joan, a glamorous chumette from my days as a newspaper reporter in Durham, where she ran a nightclub owned by her dad. Joan asked if she could bring a new boyfriend – and so I met Kevin Memery.

When my Singapore adventure was ended by Lee Kuan Yew, I returned to Fleet Street… to find Kev at The Evening News where I began moonlighting between shifts at my new berth on The Sun. Ken and I became good mates.

When he embarked on a massive project to restore an old water mill in deepest Surrey, he persuaded me to get my Dad, a builder, to help him with the work. I’m not sure my Dad ever forgave me. Kev was a hard task master.

Later, on the same project, Kev persuaded me to go under cover and record a neighbour’s claim to have paid for an expensive drainage system in the mill grounds. When the neighbour was later presented with the transcript he was forced to pay Kev’s bills. As many found in Kev’s Fleet Street career, it didn’t pay to tangle with him. He and Joan eventually married and produced two fine daughters.