Colourful, charismatic ... there will never be another like Pignon
LAURIE PIGNON’S life in journalism, and his life in general, appeared to be guided by one simple principle: having survived a gruesome experience in the Second World War he was going to make sure he enjoyed every day of it thereafter.
He did that with immeasurable style and press boxes, mainly in the stadiums of tennis and football, were never quite the same once he vacated them to enjoy what turned out to be a long and happy retirement.
Quieter, definitely, without the projecting, Wodehousian tones of someone who belonged to a generation that needed no reminder of how trivial a missed penalty or wasted match point are in the grander scheme of things. While always a fine professional journalist, he plied his trade in an altogether less serious and less sober era than that of today.
As his friend Ian Wooldridge wrote upon Pignon’s retirement as tennis correspondent of this newspaper in late 1983, ‘his enthusiasm and loyalty and occasional outra-
“During the
war he was
forced to dig his own grave”
geousness are the daily celebration of a life that nearly never was’.
Pignon, who died on Sunday, was born in 1918 — his father Fred was a golf writer and columnist for the
Daily Mail — and after getting an initial job with Horse and Hound covered his first Wimbledon in 1938 for an agency. When war broke out he was dispatched to France, where he was captured in the retreat to Dunkirk in 1940. First robbed of his gold watch, he and five others were forced to dig their own graves and then face a machine gun.
The bullets never came but he was transported to Poland as a prisoner, spending much of his time close to Auschwitz doing hard labour, a lot of it down the mines in appalling conditions.
Many did not survive and there was a further test in January 1945 when he and fellow captives were forced to set off from Katowice on a route march in the fierce winter. The journey took two months to Austria, where finally their guards deserted and they stumbled across an American platoon.
All his life Pignon found the cruelty he and friends had suffered at the hands of the Germans difficult to forgive.
A volume could be filled with anecdotes about his subsequent career with the Daily Sketch, which he joined in 1946 as a sportswriter covering tennis, football and other sports.
Katowice happened to be the scene of one of them, as recounted recently by the respected veteran journalist Norman Giller. During an England football match there Pignon and his equally colourful
The Times colleague Geoffrey Green, in the days before Solidarity, were arrested in the city centre for making an impromptu public speech extolling the virtues of a free society.
They were marched away by two guards, to the horror of their companions. ‘ A few hours later, with their worried colleagues on the point of calling the British Embassy, the pair reappeared wearing broad drunken grins and, would you believe, a fur-lined, ankle-length guardsman’s coat each,’ recalled Giller.
Pignon, who joined the Mail in 1971 when it was merged with the
Sketch, reported the transition of tennis from genteel amateur circuit to a fiercely competitive international tour. Up until the late Sixties press and players were essentially part of the same corps, eating and drinking together with friendships easily formed.
Ann Jones, the 1969 Wimbledon champion, tells how he helped her get over a painful loss at the French Open. ‘I’d lost to Australia’s Lesley Bowrey in the semi-finals and that night we went out in a group. Laurie had his car there and at around 2am he thought it would be fun to drive the wrong way around the Arc de Triomphe, as if we were in Britain.
‘A furious policeman stopped us but Laurie talked his way out of it, saying that nobody in the car could possibly understand French. The policeman eventually walked away shrugging his shoulders, muttering something about “Les Anglais”.’
Jones was joined by other champions he covered in paying tribute. ‘ I liked him instantly, everyone did,’ said French Open winner Sue Barker. ‘He was a larger-than-life character, a great personality, a great journalist, but above all a great friend.’
Virginia Wade, Britain’s last singles champion at Wimbledon, added: ‘Laurie was a mainstay of the British tennis fraternity and his long life left us all the better for having known him.
‘I can still hear his robust voice, “Hello young Wade!”. His moustache, bow tie, gold signet ring missing a stone, his pipe, his velvet smoking jackets and his jocularity always there as his signature. He will never be replaced.’ Twice Wimbledon semi-finalist Roger Taylor described him as a ‘one-off’, adding: ‘ He was great fun to be around. Laurie had some amazing experiences during the war and I actually found his stories quite inspiring, they made you want to fight harder in matches.’
Pignon’s status in tennis eventually was such that he became one of the few journalists to be offered membership of the All England Club, and he was the long-serving president of the Lawn Tennis Writers’ Association.
In retirement spent with his wife Melvyn he grew award-winning roses, and was often around Wimbledon, always happy to offer any help to his successors but never interfering. Another original has gone and, truly, we will not see his like again.