Tony Hoskins

Posted: June 28th, 2020

TONY HOSKINS, who spent most of his professional life working on the Daily Mirror’s Live Letters column, died on June 10 [2020] at the age of 84. His son Chris said: “My dad was always proud of his association with the Mirror and with the Mirror pensioners. It would mean an awful lot to him to be remembered here, as it will to his family.”

It seemed inevitable that Tony Hoskins would become a journalist – his father Joe was CEO of the Co-operative Press; his older brother Norman worked at Mirror Group for many years, latterly as circulation manager on the Sunday Mirror.

Born in south London, Tony was educated at the Trinity School of John Whitgift in Croydon before taking his first steps in Fleet Street at the Press Association. He went on to become an Old Codger alongside the late Peter Reed on the Daily Mirror’s popular and long-running Live Letters page, researching and answering readers’ queries. He also co-wrote four best-selling Little Black Books based on the daily feature.

In 1984, Tony left Mirror Group to pursue a life of leisure, indulging his passions of angling, and listening to jazz with his wife, Pam, with whom he had sons Chris and Andrew. He also enjoyed walking his dogs, bird-watching, listening to cricket and shouting at politicians on the radio.

Tony never lost his innate curiosity or his sense of humour, and although recent ill-health restricted his activities, just last summer he and Pam were delighted to celebrate their Diamond wedding anniversary surrounded by a host of family and friends.

Image: Thanks to Lew Stringer

Former friend and colleague STEPHANIE KERSTEIN writes: I’m sorry to hear about Tony. I worked with him when he was one of the Old Codgers with Peter Reed, and later, with George Thaw. Tony was quiet and very methodical, and a good foil for Peter who was more flamboyant and clubbable or Stabbable. I don’t remember Tony going to the Press Club, but he was always getting his head down and getting the page away. We had a mad scheme when the page disappeared from the Mirror somehow to produce something ourselves, and share all the information we had collected over the years, but it came to nothing. We had an all-day wake in the Stab on our last day, and everyone came over to say goodbye, so that would have been the last time I saw Tony.”