My friend and colleague Roy Collins, who has died aged 73, was one of the most gifted, and probably the most underrated, of the happy band of Fleet Street sports journalists who travelled the world in the last decades of the 20th century.
Roy was chief sports writer of the start-up mid-market tabloid Today throughout its near-decade of existence (1986 to 1995). Today was a pioneer of new production methods but struggled for profile in a crowded market, so too few people appreciated his sharp eye, fluent and witty style and wide sporting knowledge.
Among his peers, though, Roy was considered very special: even in a profession full of characters he stood out as an instinctive contrarian and glorious madcap. In looks, build and character he had more than a touch of Basil Fawlty and his bar-room anecdotes of the latest outrage he had suffered tended to be detailed but always riveting.
He was born in London, son of Charles, a typesetter, and Lilian, who died when he was 14. Roy’s schooldays were short but he gravitated into journalism and proved a natural. He trained on the Southend Evening Echo and left for a job that never materialised. Since Roy’s old post had been filled, the editor contacted a mate on the People, a Sunday paper with a massive sale in 1975, and recommended him.
Starting with a downpage report on “a dreadful game” between Fulham and Blackpool, he moved rapidly up the pecking order before landing the starring role on Today. And though football was always his No 1 sport, he was a good judge of them all. Matthew Engel, as the Guardian man, sat next to Roy at the Mike Tyson-Buster Douglas fight in Tokyo in 1990, boxing’s biggest shock. Matthew recalled: “It was about round two and Roy said, ‘I reckon Douglas is winning.’ He picked that up much quicker than me and I suspect quicker than almost anyone.”
When Today folded he went back to freelancing, which included seven years as the Guardian’s football feature writer. He brought with him the best skills of popular journalism including a well-filled contacts book (he ghosted George Best’s autobiography) and an unwillingness to take no for an answer. But he fitted perfectly into this paper’s more detached and stylish approach and might have made a fine successor to David Lacey as the No 1 correspondent. Instead he left in 2003 just as PR men became ubiquitous, making candid interviews with footballers near-impossible.
Roy married Sheila Love in 1987 and she survives him, along with their daughter Lucy and granddaughter Eva. In 2010 Roy and Sheila moved to Spain. By then he had been diagnosed with leukaemia, which bedevilled his last years, but he remained on good form and still very much himself: surrounded by expats who were overwhelmingly Remainers, Roy voted Leave. Typical.
