One of the Evening Standard’s most distinctive, witty and stylish writers from the 1990s to the 2010s, Pete Clark, has died aged 71. Initially a pop critic his brief expanded to cover TV, food, drink, travel, sport and cars, not to mention an infamous column in praise of smoking in ES magazine.
By his own, and some others’ estimation he was “the best f***ing writer on the paper” at a time when the Standard produced up to six editions a day. Deadlines were ferociously tight, lunches long and liquid and expense accounts generous. When I first started working for the paper in 1993 it was a massive, hectic, churning operation through which Pete sauntered like an amused lord of misrule.
