Press sports scribe a champion bloke
Kevin Tutty Sports editor b November 24, 1949 d April 28, 2020.
Kevin Tutty was a born storyteller – both in the pages of The Press for 44 years – and in convivial, social settings.
The former Press sports editor, who died in Christchurch on Tuesday, aged 70, was revered throughout the sports journalism industry for his friendly nature, wide sporting knowledge, commitment to his craft, luxuriant moustache, a cricketing hat-trick, two golfing holes-in-one – and his dry, selfdeprecating wit.
Like any natural raconteur, ‘‘Tuts’’ was never too proud to tell a story against himself – hence his admission he got caught up in gold fever while covering Canterbury teen Jaynie Parkhouse’s epic title-winning swim at at the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch.
In that particular case, he was only too ready to set the record straight whenever longtime former Press colleague John (JK) Brooks regaled, in his usual jocund fashion, how he’d ‘‘saved Tuts’’ from a potentially perilous, if unscripted, dive.
‘‘We were in a gondola up behind the stand. You had to lean over to get a good view of the pool,’’ Tutty told The Press ina retirement interview in 2012.
‘‘Brooks reckoned I just about fell out of the thing because I was jumping up and down screaming when Mark Treffers and Jaynie Parkhouse won their gold medals. I think I was a wee bit more subdued than that, but I was cheering. The whole house was in an uproar.’’
Tutty became such a respected sportswriter he was selected to carry the Olympic Games baton in a relay leg in Christchurch before the 2000 Games in Sydney, alongside Canterbury sporting notables such as Erin Baker, Todd Blackadder, Steve Gurney and Neroli Fairhall, and ex-Olympic swimming gold medallist Danyon Loader. Murray Olds, a former Press reporter turned Sydney radio journalist, was in Christchurch for the relay and did a live broadcast of Tutty’s every tread.
The Commonwealth Games provided many cherished memories for Tutty, who covered five Games galas between 1974 and 1994, often in tandem with The Press’ track and field writer, Rod Dew.
Like the time Kiwi boxer Jimmy Peau (who died last February, aged 54) achieved the almost impossible feat of silencing a Scottish sporting crowd at the 1986 Edinburgh Games.
Tutty was ringside, covering the heavyweight gold medal bout between Peau, then just 20, and Scotland’s own Doug Young.
‘‘The crowd was screaming ‘Scotland, Scotland’, they had their [blue and white] scarves going left and right with Young well ahead on points in the third round,’’ Tutty recalled in 2012.
‘‘I had a look up at the clock above the ring. There were 30 seconds to go, I said to myself, ‘looks like you’ve had it, Jimmy’.
‘‘But Young, instead of just walking backward, kept going in after Jimmy. He got Jimmy on the ropes and went in a bit low and Jimmy just saw an opening. His punch travelled maybe nine inches, the guy was gone. I looked at the clock and I think it was 15 seconds to go. The place went dead silent.
‘‘I saw the Scottish guy in the foyer three-quarters of an hour later and he still looked groggy.’’
His deep well of anecdotes helped make Tuts great company for generations of sports journalists he worked alongside.
Colleagues remember him as a warm, engaging friend and dedicated journalist ‘‘well respected by the sports he covered’’. So do counterparts from rival New Zealand newspapers – tributes have arrived from all quarters this week.
‘‘Tuts was a likeable guy, a good friend and a good journalist,’’ said former Press sports writer Bob Schumacher, who worked with Tutty for close to 35 years.
‘‘We had a lot of fun, but Tuts was also very conscientious and very well respected by the sports he covered, primarily hockey, swimming, surf lifesaving, bowls and, later on, golf.’’
Tim Dunbar, another sports scribe who served alongside Tutty for over three decades, fondly recalled his friend as ‘‘conscientious, very laid-back with a uniquely dry sense of humour’’.
His work mates attest Tutty was a handy sportsman in his own right, away from the press box.
John Coffey, The Press’ rugby league writer for 43 years, saw Tutty, with his accurate, unerring medium pace deliveries, take a hat-trick for the MaristWestern Suburbs’ Rugby League Club’s Mercantile League cricket team.
Dunbar didn’t see Tutty’s first hole-inone on a golf course, during a media event at the Waitikiri Golf Club, but legend has it soon after completing his round Tutty left the 19th hole to play for a Press social cricket team at Hagley Park’s Hospital Corner.
Schumacher was captaining the cricket team, and recalled ‘‘Tuts was a late arrival after celebrating his ace at Waitikiri. But being the loyal team man he was, he turned up in time to take the field. I thought best place to put him was out on the boundary and one ball was lofted his way. Tuts was under it and he and the ball went to ground. He didn’t get up and we all became concerned with players rushing to him. Eventually he regained his feet and asked what happened. I yelled back: ‘The batsmen have run six and are turning for their seventh. Get the bloody ball back in!’.’’
Tutty sank his second hole-in-one, in the company of Dunbar at Burnham, during his well-earned retirement.
A promising hockey player and cricketer in his Mid Canterbury youth, Tutty joined The Press as a cadet news reporter in the Ashburton office in 1968.
While his Christchurch cadet contemporaries were ‘‘fetching fish and chips for the [sub-editors] dinner’’, Tutty was covering the Ashburton police beat, magistrates court, local body council meeting and a serious climbing accident ‘‘up the back of the Rakaia Gorge’’.
After cranking out his copy on a trusty typewriter, Tuts had to run five blocks to the Ashburton Railway Station to get his stories on the Christchurch railcar.
Always intent on becoming a sports journalist, he moved to Christchurch to join The Press sports department led by legendary sports editor RT (Dick) Brittenden, a cricket writer of world renown, and Brooks, the equally erudite rugby writer.
Tutty worked, and socialised, alongside Brooks, Schumacher, Dunbar, Coffey, Kevin McMenamin, Ray Cairns and David Leggat, and a cast of other characters.
As a knowledgeable hockey writer, Tutty’s career encompassed the triumphant return of the 1976 New Zealand men’s Olympic Games gold medal winning team, including his former Ashburton College teammate Paul Ackerley.
In 1981, he covered the Hockey World Cup tournament in Mumbai, sharing a hotel room with radio commentator Bryan Waddle.
‘‘I lost a few kilos there, mainly because I was too scared to eat,’’ Tutty said in 2012. ‘‘We pretty much lived on two-minute noodles for a week and a half.’’
Tutty was deputy sports editor at The Press for about 20 years and was sports editor between 2008 and 2011, returning to the reporting beat for the final year of his career.
He also put his excellent all-round sporting knowledge, and genuine affinity for most codes, to good use as a longstanding Halberg Awards judge.
Tutty was at his desk in the venerable Press building in Cathedral Square when the 2011 earthquake struck.
As Dunbar said, Tutty was ‘‘shaken but not stirred by masonry falling around him’’.
As the newspaper’s then longestserving journalist, Tutty was poignantly present six months later to see The Press site cleared. ‘‘It’s just sad that the whole thing is coming down because it’s such a magnificent old building,’’ he said at the time.
While Tutty was dedicated to his journalism craft, uncomplainingly working weekends for more than 40 years, he was equally admired as a committed family man, who eschewed potential promotion opportunities elsewhere to give his children a settled childhood in Christchurch. He and wife Sandra – herself a popular former Press employee – devoted themselves to raising three children, daughter Katrina and sons Nathan and Daniel. Family remained paramount for Tutty in retirement.
He found time to co-write the Taylor’s Mistake Surf Life Saving Club’s 100-year history with Paul Carpinter, and also play golf with newspaper cronies, until a short period of ill-health intervened.
His involvement with the PGA (Press Golfing Academy) is a Tutty tale in itself.
Back in 1993, Tutty was a prime pusher for a golf gathering at the Charteris Bay club on the shores of Lyttelton Harbour. Yet, when the appointed day dawned, a problematic petrol cap left Tutty high and dry at home in Christchurch.
A witty workmate later fashioned a trophy featuring a mounted petrol cap. The Charteris Bay tournament, named in Tutty’s honour, has continued to be contested, and will endure as a lasting tribute to an affable, accomplished journalist, and a champion bloke.