Brian Leonard Wesley: Fleet Street journalist and TV figure

‘The Sun’ and ‘Daily Star’ journalist who also worked on such TV shows as ‘Kilroy and ‘Game for a Laugh’

Wesley: after a kidney transplant he devoted much time to one of his greatest loves, railways

Brian Leonard Wesley, or “Wes”, as he was known, began his career in journalism in 1963 at the Eccles and Patricroft Journal before moving to the Bolton Evening News and Wolverhampton Express and Star. By 1969 he was working for the Sheffield Morning Telegraph, during which time he was runner-up as the Young Journalist of the Year for a piece written while on assignment in Belfast.

This led to Fleet Street, where he joined The Sun in 1970 and then the Daily Star, before moving into television, where he worked on such London Weekend Television shows as Game for a Laugh, Child’s Play, Tell the Truth and Surprise, Surprise. In 1989 he became the editor of Kilroy for the BBC, following which he moved to India to work in television there.

In 1998 he was diagnosed with kidney problems and, after 12 months of dialysis received a transplant. From thereon he did a little freelance work, including producing the European Film Awards, but mainly devoted himself to the local community of Heronsgate and the wider area of Chorleywood and Rickmansworth, plus his love of railways (he was a member of the Railway and Canal Historical Society) and the countryside. This included running the Lock Centre at the Rickmansworth Waterways Trust, raising funds for the Heronsgate Community Hall and the creation of an acclaimed garden with his beloved wife Margaret, from which the produce consistently won prizes.

A lifelong Bolton Wanderers fan, he was also a cricket fan and an avid reader of non-fiction, from ancient railway timetables to construction manuals of seaside piers to tomes about the American Civil War.

Brian Leonard Wesley, journalist and television producer: born August 1947; married 1971 Margaret; died 23 October 2014.