Peter, pride of the Mirror OF A MUCH-LOVED COLLEAGUE
Supreme journalist, Pride of Britain founder, husband and dad dies at 54
IN so many ways Peter Willis was the beating heart of the Daily Mirror.
He was the consummate journalist – relentless in pursuit of a story and glittering company on a night out.
As well as a beloved friend and colleague, he was an editor who led by experience, having done it all.
He played drums with Prince inside the star’s home, and rode on Michael Jackson’s tour bus as the King of Pop blew kisses to fans out of the window.
Peter, who has died aged 54, knew all the showbiz royalty from Elton John to Cilla Black, met every modern-day PM and was a regular visitor to Highgrove after years of supporting The Prince’s Trust.
Most of all, he was the founder of the Pride of Britain Awards, an extraordinary annual miracle, where inspirational “ordinary” people are celebrated by royalty,
Cabinet ministers and global superstars. It was an office joke that he would one day be knighted, as he seemed to have a hotline to the Palace.
His story-gathering skills were brilliant, and even if celebrity or political egos were sometimes bruised, they forgave him because of his enormous charm.
He also threw the best office parties, bringing in celebrity DJs. He was so competitive he once gave the features department the afternoon off to get the best fancy-dress outfits for the Christmas party to outdo the newsdesk.
And he was happy to wear a Santa suit, inset, to entertain the Mirror staff’s kids while their parents worked over Christmas.
Born in London, Peter was the son of teachers Ruth and Stan Willis, spending some of his early life in French Guiana where they taught at a mission school. The family moved to Manchester and then Buxton in Derbyshire, where he attended Buxton College and was a regular on hospital radio at the Devonshire Royal in the town. He left school at 18 to work on the Manchester Evening News. As his school friend Jonathan Brown remembers: “Newspapers were in Peter’s blood. When we were stacking shelves as teenagers, Peter was already getting centrespreads in newspapers.” He added: “Peter was a lovely man who got on with everybody and everybody got on with him. The world is a poorer place without him, and he will be sorely missed. A wonderful man.” Peter worked at the Sun, the Express and the Star before joining the Mirror in 1997 after being hired by the then editor Piers Morgan as launch editor of the Saturday magazine The Look. It was the start of a 23-year career on the paper, where he found a natural home.
After a long and legendary stint as features editor, he became editor from 2012 to 2018. Later, he was editor of the Sunday Mirror and Sunday People, and most recently was Mirror executive editor.
His wife Nicky Dawson, with whom he had two beloved sons, had been the rival features editor on sister paper the Sunday Mirror when Peter had the same role on the Daily Mirror.
He believed being a journalist was the best job in the world.
He loved editing but also missed being in the field. “But what is it like?,” he would ask down the line when we rang from a royal wedding or Nelson Mandela’s funeral.
Peter’s trip to Prince’s home, Paisley Park, in 2010 was the stuff of legend. He liked to say he was the only person the music star hired and fired within three minutes.
Prince treated him to a private party where he was forced to dance to the singer’s favourite songs.
Rather than being served cocktails and canapes, Peter was disappointed to get a glass of water and some sliced raw vegetables as it dawned on him that this was a Jehovah’s Witness party.
He was invited to jam on the drums before his lack of rhythm caused Prince to yell “stop… stop!”.
In 1988, Peter travelled on Michael Jackson’s Bad Tour through Rome and 14 other cities as the Sun’s official
Jacko Correspondent, staying with the star’s entourage and travelling with him on his tour bus.
MJ, he told us, had been giggling behind a surgical mask long before 2020 made them de rigueur.
Piers Morgan always claimed about one of Peter’s front page stories “Jacko hit by cheeseburger”, the burger had been thrown by the reporter himself.
Peter was never quite on holiday. A trip to Cuba would end up with him crashing a Fidel Castro rally. He would ring in from trips abroad just to see “what was happening”. Even at 3am at Glastonbury, he would have an idea for a story.
Mirror editor Alison Phillips said: “No one loved stories which touched people on a deep level as much as Peter. He had a passion for journalism which shone so bright.
“His enthusiasm was endless and his attention to detail unmatched. “But more than that he had the most extraordinary warmth, compassion and sense of fun.” Peter had an astonishing grasp of emotional detail.
He called this the “toothbrush” moment, after a reporter interviewing Tony Benn noticed the legendary politician’s late wife’s toothbrush still in the mug in the bathroom.
It was this grasp of the human side of journalism that led to his founding the Pride of Britain Awards, where no celebrity in the audience avoided weeping buckets of tears.
Pride of Britain celebrates everyday heroes, people like Peter’s own parents who did great things for the community and never asked for praise.
It flipped the journalism Peter had done as a showbiz reporter.
Carol Vorderman, who has hosted the awards since the start, remembered the first one in 1999, which was “casual to the point of chaos”.
But Peter had assembled Paul McCartney, Tony Blair, Jack Charlton, the Spice Girls, Cilla Black and Queen Noor of Jordan. Also there was Heather Mills, who got chatting to Macca,
leading to the first Pride of Britain wedding, and divorce.
The sky was the limit of Peter’s ambitions. At a Pride of Britain meeting in 2006, people laughed when he said: “We should get a message from space.” A few weeks later an astronaut beamed in live from the International Space Station. Of course, Peter thought of an added twist – getting astronomer Sir Patrick Moore involved too.
Peter was involved in every aspect of the awards, before letting his hair down in the bar afterwards with Nicky at his side, the life and soul of the party.
But he enjoyed the green room most of all, where he was once heard belting out Diamonds are Forever with Shirley Bassey and Paul O’Grady.
There has been an outpouring of love for a man who never understood how loved he was. He was, as a former colleague said, “the nicest of men”. We will all miss him to the moon and back.