McIlvanney, doyen of sport writers, leaves almost £1m
LEGENDARY sports writer Hugh McIlvanney left a fortune of almost £1million in his will.
The journalist and author also set aside £10,000 to be used at his wake for the enjoyment of his friends.
McIlvanney, originally of Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, passed away aged 84 in January last year after suffering from cancer.
Over a 60-year career he worked for titles including his local newspaper, the Kilmarnock Standard, as well as the Scotsman, the Daily Express, the Observer and the Sunday Times
Revered for his football and boxing coverage, McIlvanney witnessed iconic sporting moments including the 1966 World Cup final and the Rumble in the Jungle between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in 1974.
His recently published will shows he had a gross estate of £891,150 and, after his outstanding affairs were settled to produce a net estate of £867,994.
His wealth included property and his ‘literary estate’ of published and unpublished works, manuscripts and letters.
An instruction in his will states: ‘I request that my trustees set aside the sum of £10,000 in the event of my death for a wake for all of my friends and, in particular, my journalist friends.’
McIlvanney instructed that the remainder of his estate should be split between his wife Caroline and his two children from a previous marriage.
The writer was close to former
Manchester United managers Sir Matt Busby and Sir Alex Ferguson, whose autobiography he was consulted on.
He was also friends with Bill Shankly, who managed Liverpool, and the former Celtic and Scotland manager Jock Stein.
The brother of the late crime novelist William McIlvanney, he
‘A wake for all my journalist friends’
wrote a number of books on football, boxing and horse racing and the Football Writers’ Association called him ‘one of the true greats of sports writing’.
McIlvanney – who started work on Fleet Street in 1962 – also reported on the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 and the 1972 Munich Olympics, when terrorists murdered 11 Israeli athletes.
He regularly won the UK Sports Writer of the Year award and was the only sports writer to be voted Journalist of the Year.
Reflecting on his career upon his retirement in 2016, he said his greatest scoop was when Ali invited him into his villa only hours after he regained the world heavyweight title in Zaire in 1974.
Following his death, McIlvanney was remembered by BBC Match of the Day host Gary Lineker as ‘truly one of the greatest sports writers of all time’. Lineker tweeted: ‘His gravelly Scottish voice will be missed almost as much as his wonderful copy.’
Fellow Scot and impressionist Rory Bremner also paid tribute to a man he described as ‘a wonderful, wonderful writer and great company’.