PETER NOW FOCUSING ON SLIGO
Peter Wilcock told Gerry McLaughlin about his years photographing Royals and FA Cup finals – and how a family tragedy was part of his move to Sligo
THE SNAPPER! Peter Wilcock has been there and done that so many times that the very youthful top photographer is a walking, talking social history of Britain in a golden era of journalism.
For the past 20 years or so Peter has made his home in Sligo, seduced by the scenery, the magnificent changing light and the warm welcome of the people of the Yeats Country.
But in a period from the mid-1960s to the late 1990s, Peter was one of the leading snappers in the British Isles. He has been to all the big bunfights, covered countless tragedies, murders and miners’ strikes. He has photographed celebrities and soccer stars – including a memorable gig with the late, great George Best on a boat on the Thames.
Listening to him, you get the strong feeling that he always knew who was looking back at him in the mirror any time he looked.
Peter may have walked with popes, presidents, poseurs and politicians, but he stayed a grounded Lancashire lad who loved and loves what he does almost as much as life itself.
Peter has worked for a variety of publications since starting out as a 20-year-old working as a photographer for the Wiltshire Times, a weekly paper.
He then moved up a notch to the Bath Chronicle, an evening paper with loads of deadlines. Peter worked there for eight years from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s.
He moved back up north to work for the County Press News Agency in Manchester before going on to work for the Daily Mail for six years. He then joined the famous Daily Express as a staff man in the late 1970s. He covered the killing of the Earl Mountbatten of Burma in Sligo in
August 1979 for the Daily Express. In 1980 he won the North West News Photographer of the Year award for a memorable shot of an old lady who was one of Vietnam’s ‘boat people’. The awards did not end there as Peter scooped a special AIB award for a photograph he took while covering the Rossport Five story and the campaign to re-route the controversial Shell gas pipeline in Mayo.
He has also been a very well-known sports photographer and he was at his peak in covering Manchester United and Manchester City when they were both on a high in the late 1970s and well into the 1980s.
Liverpool, Everton, Bolton Wanderers and Preston North End were also on his radar and he has photographed all the greats – George Best, Bobby Charlton, Pat Crerand, Denis Law, Tony Book, Mike Summerbee, Rodney Marsh, Francis Lee and Colin Bell – for whom he admits having a soft spot – Joe Royle and Howard Kendall. He also remembers the autumn career of the great Stanley Matthews, among many other stars of the clothcapped era.
Peter has covered numerous FA Cup and Rugby League finals as well as Test Cricket and Formula 1 motor-racing.
His favourite gig of all was the Isle of Man TT races, when there were up to 40,000 bikers on the island.
Being in and around Manchester, it was also a great chance to take pictures of and to get to know many of Coronation Street’s stars.
Peter was on friendly terms with the actors behind Jack and Vera Duckworth, Curly Watts and Bet Lynch, to name a few.
He was always impressed at how down to earth they were, despite their huge popularity.
He photographed Princess Diana and several other members of the Royal Family over the years.
Peter said that Diana was a natural, a very beautiful woman who grew to be able to use the media to her own advantage as her domestic difficulties deepened.
Peter Wilcock was born in 1944 and grew up in the famous seaside resort of Morecambe.
Peter said: “Morecambe is a seaside place and very famous for its comedian Eric Morecambe. My mother knew his mother.
“It was a happy childhood with long summers, playing football with my mates, getting into scrapes, all the usual stuff.
“My parents’ names were Kenneth and Eve. I have one brother, David.” Peter went to primary school and later to grammar school and was a keen football and cricket man. His father Kenneth was an avid sportsman.
PETER SAID: “We followed Preston North End, Bolton Wanderers and Lancashire cricket. It was a house of sport, sometimes to my mum’s despair.” Bolton reached the FA Cup final in 1958 and beat Man United 2-0 before a crowd of almost 100,000. United had been experienced the tragedy of the air crash in Munich just months earlier.
Peter said: “Preston North End also reached final against Wolves and Howard Kendall was the youngest man to appear in an FA Cup final.
“We were very aware of the great Bolton player Stanley Matthews, but my dad was a Tom Finney fan.” Where did Peter develop his great interest in photography?
He said: “I don’t know. M parents bought me a little plastic Kodak camera for passing my Eleven-plus exam and I sort of graduated from there. “Then I got a second-hand film- camera and I started doing stuff around the house and landscapes in and around Morecambe.
“My parents encouraged it. I could shut out the light in our bedroom and make it into a dark room.
“I could do prints there, and I photographed my brother and waves
crashing off the sea. Photography was a hobby that grew into a career. “I was at grammar school and my dad saw an ad for an art course in photography.
“So I went to the careers teacher. I think the school had designs on me being a teacher and when I told him that I was doing photography he looked at me as if I had two horns. “But my parents put me through college in Blackpool.
“I won a Kodak advanced scholarship from Blackpool to go to Regent Street in London for a year.”
What was the thing about photography that reeled Peter in?
He said: “I suppose it is the constant quest to capture that unique moment in time.
“I am student of light and I love observing it and how it works. Sligo is a fantastic place for all of that.
“It can change the appearance of landscapes or portraits and is endlessly fascinating.
“At that stage the world was full of picture magazines. Photographs were used big on the newsstands. TV had not yet taken over.
“If you wanted to look at good photography you bought magazines like Picture Post, Life, Time and National Geographic.
“This was around 1964 and I was 19. It got to about April on the course and I thought there would not be too many jobs. “I saw a job going in the Wiltshire Times, a weekly paper in the West Country in Marlborough. I applied and got the job.
“The Wiltshire Times was owned by former Labour MP and columnist Woodrow Wyatt. His claim to fame was that he was using colour in a newspaper for the first time. He was way ahead of his time.
“It was a secretive process, and we were not allowed to see how it was done, but we shot colour and it was quite exciting. “I used to drive the colour films to the printers’ place in Swindon.
“We handed them over and then a little man took them into
“I covered Aberfan. There was total silence and so much grief. People were looking at us and they did not want us to be there”
a room and that was that.”
Peter learned his craft at the Wiltshire Times and had a great buzz of seeing his first picture in the paper. “It was great. It was a small town and people would stop me in the street and say that it was a good photograph. That made you feel even better.
“You fed off that. Accolades are nice to get and it is always nice to be appreciated for the work that you are doing. “I did everything at the paper. It was an excellent grounding.
“There were two other photographers there. They were older than me and they taught me the ropes. I am very grateful to them.”
Peter’s move to the Bath Chronicle was even more exciting.
There he came under the wing of feisty chief photographer Ron Pearce, who was an ex-Royal Marine.
Peter said: “He was a hard man and knew the job and would not take any excuses. I learned a lot from him.” One of the young Peter’s big stories was the terrible tragedy in the mining village of Aberfan in Wales when, after a period of heavy rain, a mining tip fell on a village killing 116 children and 28 adults on October 21, 1966. Peter said: “We covered that, and it was heartbreaking. We were late in getting there but you could feel the overwhelming sense of grief.
“I can still remember that it was grey and black everywhere. There was total silence. You got the feeling that maybe you should not be there. “I remember there were three photographers from the paper and Ron had come with us. He looked at me and he said: ‘We are doing a job, we are doing a job, remember that.’
“I was young and that got me through it. There was so much grief. People were looking at us and they did not want us there.
“But later some people told us we were highlighting the tragedy and the ignorance and stupidity of what had led to the disaster, which was the responsibility of others.
“It was so devastating. It had effects for generations and shattered so many families. The old cliché was that you can’t take pictures in your eyes as you have to try to be professional. “But when you got back to your hotel it would hit you and you would get emotional.”
Peter’s next move was back up north to Manchester.
He said: “I did shifts for the Daily Mail and for other national newspapers. Then the Daily Express approached me. I got a staff job with them and I was there for the guts of 20 years.”
Peter was now at the heart of tabloid journalism in Manchester in the late 1960s.
He said: “Manchester was a very exciting place in those years. United had won the European Cup in 1968 and you had the big three of George Best, Bobby Charlton and Denis Law.
“It was a great place to be and was almost on a par with London.
“I did the football matches every weekend and got to know some of the United and City players – I always had a soft spot for City.”
That was a golden era and City were the Cinderella side. Peter already knew the great Tony Book as he had previously played with Bath City. Peter said: “I also knew Mike Summerbee, a great player who really knew how to enjoy himself.”
Peter also knew George Best quite
well. Peter was once sent to London to photograph George, who was on a boat in the Thames doing a promotional gig.
Peter said: “When we got to George’s flat in London he opened the door in his shorts and T-shirt and said ‘come in, lads’.
“Miss World was upstairs putting on her make-up for the gig.
“George made us a cup of tea and I would say it was 90 per cent Smirnoff and only 10 per cent Typhoo!
“We then took some pics of George on the Thames in a rowing boat with Miss World draped over his shoulders. “We were approaching a weir which was a bit hairy, and we just managed to pull over.
“George was great craic and I loved him to bits.”
“I also photographed Tony Book and Francis Lee. They were great characters, too.”
ON THE NEWS front, the Moors Murders occurred when Peter was at the Express. Ian Brady and his mistress Myra Hindley were found guilty of these horrific murders. Peter covered Myra Hindley’s court case in Chester. He knew Anne Downey, the mother of the little girl Lesley Anne Downey who was brutally murdered.
Anne worked in the Daily Express canteen, and she never got over her daughter’s brutal end.
Peter said: “She had a straw doll of Hindley and she used to stick pins in it every day.”
Peter was given Britain’s coveted North West News Photographer of the Year award in 1980.
He said: “The Express had sent me to cover the ‘Boat People’ from Vietnam when they came to Hong Kong fleeing their homeland.
“This little old lady got out of one of the boats. She was shattered and so thin and she was being dragged along the quay. I took a picture of her. She sadly died the following day. That was very traumatic”.
Peter also did quite an amount of work for the Sun and the Daily Star. He said: “I did not do much work for the Mirror but did meet Robert Maxwell at a marking once. He was a pretty awkward character.
“I also met John Pilger, a famous campaigning journalist who worked with the Mirror for many years. I also worked with James Cameron.” Peter’s first experience of Sligo was when he and many others were flown to Mullaghmore on the day Lord Mountbatten was killed in Mullaghmore in August 1979.
Peter said: “I was working for the Daily Express on August 27, 1979, when the news broke. I had gone in to the office and then had a pint in the Crown and Kettle. The pub had dedicated phones for journalists. The phones started to go off.
“We had to get a light airplane from Manchester. We landed on a grass strip in Sligo after took an hour and a half flying. There were taxis there to take us to Mullaghmore.
“I was so impressed when we got to Mullaghmore with the friendliness of the people and their kindness.
“They were so genuinely sad that this had happened. They were very open now that the world and his dog were there. They were so welcoming. “The scenery was fantastic. I could see Benbulben looming out like the bow of a ship. I was a magical landscape and it was so sad that horror had happened in this loveliest of places.” What was the scene that greeted Peter when he landed in Mullaghmore?
He said: “A lot of it had been cleaned up, but they were still taking debris out of the water.
“The bodies and the wounded had been taken to hospital and the place was crawling with gardaí and forensics people.
“At that stage, it was quite late, and I had to go looking for pictures. There were interviews with local people. “I still meet people today who say how sorry they were that it happened.”
How did Peter feel about it?
He said: “I have photographed the Royals. They have been a target and probably always will be.
“I think it was the death of the young lads which were especially tragic, not forgetting the others who died.
“It often struck me that this terrible tragedy could happen in such a beautiful place.
“Prince Charles went back there some years ago to maybe purge the memory of his uncle and all of those who died.”
Speaking of the Royals, Peter also photographed Princess Diana on many occasions.
Peter said: “Yes, she was a delight and I photographed her when she would come up north.
“She was a beautiful woman and a natural in front of the camera. You always came away with good shots. “She was a tragic person, but towards the end she became quite clever at manipulating the circumstances to suit herself.
“If there was a photocall she knew how to switch the spotlight from her husband Prince Charles to herself. “But the whole Royals thing to me has always been theatre.
“There are main players and bit players and sometimes they want you there and sometimes they don’t and it has always been like that. The older ones know that.
“The Queen was a dream and she knew exactly what was going on. There was nothing said but she knew.
“Some of the younger ones like the spotlight – and if it is not on them then they get angry sometimes.” And, of course, Royals sell papers. Peter said: “Some photographers made thousands and thousands of pounds from Royal photos. The papers on the Continent just could not get enough pics.
“The Daily Express used to frisk us to make sure we were not taking any negatives of Lady Di out.
“You could sell her pics for thousands of pounds, especially to the French magazines.”
Peter did not succumb to that temptation.
AT ANOTHER celebrity level Peter was familiar with some of the Coronation Street stars as the famous series was shot in Manchester.
He said: “A good friend of mine was a studio photographer and we used to have a relaxed lunch with some of the stars and set up a few pics.
“Of course, it is much harder today and you have all these hoops to go through.
“We were on first name terms with Jack and Vera Duckworth, Curly Watts, who is a City fan and Bet Lynch. They are all great characters.
“My uncle Charlie had a factory near where its originator Tony
Warren based Coronation Street. In the early days it was very authentic, but it has lost much of that now.” For Peter, Coronation Street was interesting work that was close at hand.
He said: “You had to build up trust and sometimes they did not want to do it. You respected that. It was the same with sports stars.
“It was a symbiotic relationship as we both needed each other, but not always at the same time. If you broke that trust you would quickly find that you were getting no photographs at all, so you played the game.”
When asked about his favourite person, Peter isn’t sure – he has met so many different types over the years. But he admits to having a soft spot for dynamic soccer striker the late Frank Worthington, who played for Bolton Wanderers and several other clubs as well as for England.
He has been described as “the working man’s George Best”. He played into his 40s, finishing up Galway United. Peter said: “Frank was a great player. I did some pictures of him. In his day, he was on a par with George Best in terms of sex appeal.
“He was a great character, an ordinary guy, who was always the same, and will never be forgotten.”
Peter also did a lot of photographs with Man United boss Alex Ferguson.
Peter said: “I know he had an at times crusty reputation, but I always found him to be fine.
“He was a hard man. But if you were straight with him and did not try and pull a fast one on him he was easy to work with.
“He liked photographers, it was the reporters that he was less keen on. “When United won the treble in Rotterdam, the morning after the match there was nobody down for breakfast in the hotel.
“There was nobody there – apart from Fergie. He was there with a long line of kids and dads with a line snaking away outside the hotel. Fergie was sitting there signing every shirt and every programme and posing for pictures. Fergie accommodated them all.”
IN LATER YEARS, Peter worked for Press Association on a freelance basis up until around the start of the 2000s. Then he came to Sligo and has been here ever since. He said: “The writing was on the wall for newspapers as TV was taking over. I was getting on a bit and thinking of winding down.
“Newspapers were on the decline and circulation was falling and they were rapidly losing the mass market.” So how did he end up living and working here in Sligo?
Peter said: “My ex-wife Pat was living in Mayo in Ballyhaunis and our daughter Siobhán got breast cancer. I said I would come over to help.
“I came to Mayo. She went through the horror of cancer for a year and sadly didn’t make it. She was 11 when she passed away. I did what I had to do. It was a desperate time.
“That was in the early 2000s.”
Peter met his current wife Ita, who lived in Sligo. He eventually settled here and they now live in Kellystown in Strandhill.
Sligo was a big change from the world he had known in England.
Peter said: “It was a change, but it was a welcome change. It was time to slow down and at some time you have to hang up your guns.
“But I freelanced here for about five years and I covered the Shell to Sea story in Mayo for that period.”
Peter also won an AIB award for one of his pictures.
He was not impressed by the some of the tactics used by Shell and the behaviour of some of the gardaí during that long and bitter dispute in and around Rossport.
He said: “The local people were just fantastic and made me welcome and were so friendly.
“I told them I was going to cover this straight down the middle, If you are out of order then it will be highlighted and if Shell or the gardaí side are out of order it will be treated exactly the same. And if worked”.
Peter got some very disturbing photos of gardaí beating the local protestors off the road with batons.
“I was there and that was one of the saddest sights I have ever seen as a photographer.
“Here you had Irish gardaí beating ordinary Irish people – farmers, fishermen, mothers, brothers and sisters – off the road. They were people who had done nothing but protest for what they believed were their rights. “They brought in gardaí from outside the area so they would not be known to the locals.
“They beat them into the ditches. It was a terrible sight.
“Shell won that battle in the end but the locals delayed the project for 10 years.
“The people were overwhelmed by powerful forces on Shell’s side who wanted this to go ahead no matter what. I am still of that opinion many years later.
“I saw reports where these ordinary people were being described as terrorists. They were just farmers, fishermen and housewives.
“All they wanted was for the pipeline to be diverted to other routes away from their own communities.”
Peter did some news stories but not too many as a new career opened up for him in teaching.
He did take some memorable pictures of a whale that was stranded in Strandhill.
Peter hired a boat from another photographer called Ian Parke to get a better shot of the huge mammal.
But when he billed the papers they were complaining about the expenses. Peter said: “I sent in a reasonable amount of expenses and one paper asked me if I needed to hire a boat. “I replied that I could do a lot of things but walking on water was not one of them.
“Today papers are taking pictures from phones. They don’t care where it comes from. It is very difficult for photographers.”
PETER HAS a fantastic collection of photographs but has not had the time to issue a collection. At his peak, he covered events in a golden era of journalism from the 1960s to the late 1980s, and he’s now a walking, talking social historian. In recent years, Peter has been successfully teaching photography. He said: “I teach for the ETB in various courses in photography and I enjoy it immensely.
“I do various courses and I have just finished with the Ballyshannon Active Age Group. I used to teach up at Ballytivnan for Fás courses.
“I love the teaching and it is a great social thing.
“There is a huge source of creative talent out there. I am so proud, amazed and happy at the quality of work they are producing.
“I am just so happy to be involved. They have the talent and I am just happy to be a facilitator and help with the technical stuff.”
Peter now teaches with the ETB in Sligo and Leitrim. He said: “I also do my own stuff online with various groups or one-to-one. I am a City and Guilds qualified teacher”.
“I have been doing this for around 20 years and more or less full-time for the past 10 years.
“It is a great way to get to know Sligo and its people. The people who come into the class end up as friends and they form groups of their own and it is just lovely.
“I run a Facebook page as well to keep in touch with all those who are into photography.
“I still do occasional private work, but I am very busy with teaching and marking papers.
“I enjoy doing landscapes and that is a labour of love.
“There is something about the light here and it changes by the second. It is the quality of the light and how it changes the landscape that is fascinating.
“I like being near the sea and being close to nature.
“Sligo is a great town, and it is set in some really spectacular scenery.
“It is a friendly and warm place, and it is sometimes undersold.
“It has the mysticism of Yeats, and it attracts creative people. There is a huge pool of creativity here with so many poets, artists and writers.
“You can almost feel that energy in the air – it is like a static charge.
“I am very inspired by it and I would like to thank the people of Sligo for taking me in and welcoming me to the community.
“I feel a part of this place, and this is my home now and I could not think of being anywhere else.”
l Peter can be contacted by email at wilco@redbackphotography.co.uk