Derek Jameson

Derek Jameson (29 November 1929 – 12 September 2012) was an English tabloid journalist and broadcaster. He began his career in the media in 1944 as a messenger at Reuters and worked his way up to become the editor of several British tabloid newspapers in the 1970s and 1980s.

Later, he was a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio 2 for nearly a decade and a half, including an on-air partnership with his third wife Ellen. When his profile was at its highest, he was described by Auberon Waugh as "the second most famous man in Britain after Prince Charles."

Early life Born in Hackney, London, the son of laundry worker Elsie Elaine Ruth Jameson (whom, until the age of 8, he believed to be his elder sister) and an unidentified father, Jameson was illegitimate and grew up in a private children's home alongside his mother, where conditions were poor and five children shared the same bug-ridden bed. Although Jameson never learned his father's identity, visits — at the behest of his mother — to a kosher butcher shop where the "tall blond butcher would invariably shell out a few shillings" led Jameson to assume this man to be his father.

The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History (2011) states that Jameson had "one Jewish parent"; whether this refers to his mother or the man he assumed was his father is unspecified. The journalist Henry Porter, in Lies, Damned Lies and Some Exclusives (1984), states of Jameson: "Derek Jameson was born within the smell of Hackney marshes to an Irish mother and a Jewish father who disappeared shortly after he was conceived."

As a child, Jameson was evacuated from London to Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, during the Second World War. His formal education included a period at a borstal; his youthful activities had included shoplifting.

Career

Fleet Street His career began in Fleet Street, as a messenger boy at Reuters, and he became a trainee reporter in 1946. That year he became a member of the Communist Party, and acquired the nickname of the "red menace" as a result. This political involvement almost ended this employment at Reuters, but his call-up for national service intervened. By the time his period in the Army ended in 1951, during which he was stationed in Vienna, he had left the Party. Jameson returned to Reuters, where he remained until 1960, eventually becoming chief sub-editor. After a brief period as the editor of the London American, a London weekly with Arthur Christiansen as the publication's consultant,

After working in the features department there for two years, he then became a picture editor for the Sunday Mirror. The Daily Star had achieved sales of a million copies each day a year after it had begun publication. By now Jameson had gained a reputation of being able to increase the circulations of tabloid newspapers, Jameson sued the BBC for libel, but lost the action when it came to court in February 1984. While the jury found the broadcast defamatory, they also considered it fair comment and Jameson had to pay costs of £75,000.

This award against him affected his finances, and following the end of his time at the News of the World in the previous month, presenting it until 20 December 1991 and greeting listeners with the refrain "morning, morning, Jameson here".

He then hosted the Monday to Thursday late-night show between 22:30 and midnight along with his wife Ellen, which was called The Jamesons from January 1992 until April 1997. In 1988, he began presenting the BBC1 television show People. He was replaced in the second series by Chris Serle, Jeni Barnett and Frank Bruno.

In 1989 and 1990, he presented the nightly chat show Jameson Tonight on Sky One from the Windmill Theatre in London.

In 2010 he took part in BBC's The Young Ones, in which six celebrities in their 70s and 80s attempt to overcome some of the problems of ageing by harking back to the 1970s.

Following the end of his regular broadcasting career, Jameson wrote a weekly column in the Brighton Argus until October 2000, He had three sons and a daughter from his first two marriages.