Much-admired journalist known for her honesty and wit
Deborah Orr 1962-2019
Deborah Orr, who has died aged 57, was a journalist whose trenchant, insightful writing became “necessary reading even for those who did not share the ideology of the papers in which it appeared”, said The Times. Formidable in person, and forthright in print, “she would ask questions others would rather not ask, or point out truths that they would rather not hear”. Writing for The Guardian and The Independent, she “shone a light into some of the bleakest corners of society”, and campaigned fiercely about the failures of the welfare system, the rising levels of homelessness, and the increased demand for food banks. But taking care to keep off any passing bandwagons, she was never preachy, said The Independent; and her views were as unpredictable as they were idiosyncratic.
Deborah Orr was born in Motherwell, near
Glasgow, and grew up in the shadow of the Ravenscraig steel works. Her father, John, was a factory worker; her mother, Win, came from Essex. As a couple, she wrote, they made “so many self-centred demands … during their lives that I have literally written a book about it. ( Motherwell, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, published January 2020.)” As a child, she did not hate their tenement home, said The Daily Telegraph, but she hated the play area strewn with broken glass, and “the constant threat of intimidation from older, tougher kids”. If there was one building she adored, it was Motherwell library: “For me, its very walls were suffused with all the grandest ideals that civilisation cherished.” At her comprehensive school, she was berated for the “unbearable pretension” of her English accent. She did well – though her mother, who resented her ambition, tried to undermine her, and was appalled when she won a place at the University of St Andrews to read English. Orr herself was slightly appalled when she got there, and found it largely populated by members of the English hunting, shooting and fishing set, who could not understand her Motherwell accent.
Moving to London in the 1980s, Orr found work on the listings magazine City Limits. It had been set up as a workers’ cooperative, and its office, she wrote, seethed with “victimhood, resentment, factionalism, incompetence and silliness”. She resigned in 1990 to take a job at The Guardian, and by the time she was 30 had became the first female editor of its Weekend supplement. She was devastated when that came to an end – “heartbroken in a spectacularly unprofessional weeping wailing way”, she wrote. After an unhappy stint as literary editor, she left in the wake of the sacking, by its sister paper The Observer, of her then husband, Will Self, after he had admitted taking heroin in the toilet of John Major’s plane during the 1997 election campaign. She then reinvented herself as a columnist, for The Independent, before returning to The Guardian in 2009.
With her scathing wit, long hair and penchant for high boots, Orr cut a glamorous, Dorothy Parker-like figure, said The Guardian. She could be ferocious, but had a kind heart, and was widely loved. Latterly, she had developed a loyal following on Twitter, where she wrote about her bitter disputes with Self as their marriage ended, and the re-emergence of the breast cancer that had first manifested itself in 2010. Her morning tweets were as bracing as a cold swim, said Rowan Pelling in The Daily Telegraph. She had no time for platitudes, or pity. Recently, she’d relayed how “a well-wisher” had direct-messaged her one morning to say, “I’m so sad. Are you alone? Will you have a carer as the cancer progresses?” Orr told her followers: “Think how gorgeously sad she’ll be if I’m able to confirm her sad details! Don’t be this well-wisher, kids!” Orr is survived by her two sons.