Chris Boffey arrived at the Observer in 2007 with a reputation as one of Fleet Street’s most experienced reporters and news executives, a journalist who had worked on papers as diverse as the Sun, News of the World and the Sunday Telegraph. Chris, who has died aged 74 of cancer, also brought along his own set of rules, which he deemed essential to the conduct of his reporters, of whom I was one. His mandates brought a subversive edge to the newsroom.
First there was his 10-minute rule. A reporter, returning from a war zone or some other grim assignment, was given this strict time limit for their pub recollections of their experiences. After that, watches were stared at and interruptions began. As a colleague put it: “Chris had no time for ‘show ponies’.”
Then there was his initially baffling decree: “Never go somewhere without going somewhere else first.” This strange edict turned out to involve dragging colleagues to pubs before they were able to attend posh functions or awards dinners. “And never have less than two,” he would assert on reaching the bar.
Chris was, in short, an Old School hack, a newsman who had worked his way from local newspapers to tabloids and then to the Sunday Telegraph before joining the Observer and later the Guardian. Along the road, he slipped from being a reporter to a news editor and was adept in every role. “He was as comfortable working for red-top tabloids as he was on quality newspapers, and every bit as good as an executive as he was a news reporter on the road,” recalls Andrew Alderson, a former colleague at the Sunday Telegraph and close friend.
In the process of his varied career, Chris assembled an eye-wateringly impressive CV. He was at Milltown cemetery in Belfast when Michael Stone started shooting at an IRA funeral in 1988; was forced to the ground with a police gun at his head after being mistaken for an Irish terrorist in Cyprus in 1983; and, while covering the Gulf war in 1990, was awoken in his cramped, below-deck quarters on HMS Cardiff by a 3am alarm of an imminent chemical attack. He had time only to put on his gas mask and appeared on deck naked but with his face encased in rubber. “It broke the ice,” he recalled.
Chris was born in Wythenshawe, Manchester, the youngest of the three children of William Boffey, a print worker in Salford, and Nora (nee Daley), a waitress at a hotel at Manchester airport. After taking his A-levels at Xaverian college, Manchester, he took a group of children from disadvantaged backgrounds on holiday to Bray in Ireland as part of a scheme known as Colony Holidays and there he met another volunteer, Shirley Edwards. They married in 1972.
Chris later joined the Newcastle Journal and from there worked his way through national newspapers, ending up in the Daily Star’s Fleet Street offices in 1982. Stints on Eddy Shah’s Today and the Sunday Times ensued before he joined the Sunday Telegraph in 1997 as chief reporter, becoming its news editor in 1999. He later joined the Observer, where he eventually became news editor in 2008.
He was a keen cricketer, had a loud infectious laugh and developed a penchant for risque jokes that startled the slightly restrained Observer newsroom when he joined. At the same time, he worked hard to encourage young talent on the paper.
“He taught me a lot,” recalled Anushka Asthana, who worked as his deputy news editor for six months at the Observer, and is now Channel Four’s US editor. “At the start, he told me that on the desk, directing journalists, you will make dozens of decisions and many will be mistakes. You have to accept risk and face up to your errors but don’t be downed by them.”
His only experience of work outside journalism in his later years was as a media adviser to Estelle Morris, Labour’s education secretary from 2001 to 2002, a job he took at the behest of his friend Alastair Campbell, the former press secretary to Tony Blair. “After 30 years as a reporter and news editor on various titles I had an itch to do something else,” he recalled.
Morris remembers him fondly. “Chris was utterly unflappable, his advice was first class, and when I think of him, it is his cheery, chuckling face that first comes to mind.” However, Morris resigned in October 2002, consigning Chris to “political suttee on the funeral pyre of her career,” as he put it later. Morris was aghast. “I did not realise Chris would lose his job as a result of my decision,” she admits. “Yet he never blamed me and we remained good friends.”
In fact, Chris was immensely proud of his time working for the then Labour government, insists his former Observer colleague Julian Coman. “He was working class and proud to have achieved a key role in a Labour administration.”
He remained active throughout his 60s, chairing the Journalists’ Charity for several years, while his speech, in 2018, to the University of the Third Age ended with a closing sentence that perfectly encapsulated the business of news reporting. “During my 40 years as a journalist I have been threatened, shot at, fire-bombed, sued, asked to spy, investigated by MI5 and taken the occasional drink,” Chris revealed. “It is a serious job that is best undertaken by serious people who preferably don’t take themselves seriously.”
Shirley, a retired headteacher, survives him, along with their sons, Daniel and Martin, their grandchildren, George, Charlotte, Tom, Theo and Emma, and his sister, Linda.
• Christopher John Boffey, journalist, born 23 November 1951; died 13 February 2026
