DAVID EMERY: A true gent and the best in the business

By Chris Dunlavy

HONOURED: David, left, presents legendary referee Ray Lewis with his NGA Lifetime Achievement Award

PICTURE: Stuart Tree

NLP says…

DAVID Emery was a brilliant writer and unflappable editor who brought a sense of serenity to the most chaotic of professions.

Problem? What problem? When David was around, there was no deadline too tight.

No story that couldn’t be salvaged. No issue that couldn’t be resolved over a long lunch and a friendly chat.

He’d field the calls from irate managers, angry readers and litigious lawyers. Make them disappear with a succinct email or jovial phone call. And if any errant journalist tried to apologise, he’d dismissively wave them away.

To David, mistakes were an occupational hazard, not a cause for recrimination. Just don’t do it again, he’d laugh. And you didn’t. He had your back, and you didn’t want to let him down.

It is one of the many rea-sons his staff respected him, but far from the only one. His years on Fleet Street predated many of us, but we knew where he’d been and what he’d done.

David’s knowledge of sport was peerless, and on the rare occasions he brought his hands clattering down on a keyboard, his skill as a writer effortlessly blew all of his staff out of the water.

As an editor, he was no less sharp. You might be grappling to construct a story and he’d ask what it was about. A brief synopsis and, quick as a flash, it was ‘Here’s your intro, this is your second paragraph’.

Whether it was an innate understanding of what the story really was, or something he’d learned over decades in the newspaper business, he would cut his way to the heart of the matter in an instant.

And when you got a compli- ment from him about something you’d written, it was like being praised for your positional play by Ronnie O’Sullivan. It really meant something.

Sol Bamba, the former Cardiff defender, once said that Neil Warnock’s great skill was to treat everybody in the dressing room as an individual, whether that was indulging mavericks or encouraging introverts.

Presence

David was like that. He could ascertain what made people tick from the briefest of conversations, and you often felt like he knew you better than you knew yourself.

He didn’t care if you turned up late, spent too long in the pub or worked until the early hours – if the words were good and he knew that you cared, that was all that mattered.

Partly, that understanding came from experience and a compassionate personality. But it was also because he was there, on the shop floor.

David didn’t have an office. He sat with his staff and mucked in, as happy subbing a 200-word match report from Carshalton as he was reporting from the World Cup in Mexico in 1986.

Because above all else, he was a newspaperman. He loved the words, the craft, the feel of the newsprint, and the satisfaction of reading a well-written piece.

He loved giving young journalists a chance and seeing them flourish. He loved helping old friends who’d been cut adrift by an ever-changing industry.

He loved the awards ceremonies and the socials, none more so than the annual trip to his local pub during the Cheltenham Festival, where he’d pay for every drink and give every member of staff £50 – on the condition that it was spent at the bookies. Even in his seventies, he’d be there with us, go-karting or playing crazy golf, a sportsman to the end.

We’ll miss his smile. His reassuring presence. We’ll miss seeing him clumping into the office on those knackered runner’s knees, two or three rumpled newspapers tucked under one arm.

Mainly though, we’ll miss a man who gave us all an opportunity, and who made working a pleasure, never a chore.

SUITS YOU, SIR! We’ll miss his smile and presence