Obituary: Peter Hollinson

I would like to correct a minor factual error in your obituary of Peter Hollinson [by Tony Heath, 12 April 1996], writes John Hardman. His first employment was indeed Tillotsons, owners and publishers of the Bolton Evening News, but he began his newspaper career as a trainee on their weekly publication The Eccles Journal in the Lancashire town of his birth.

His entry into journalism may have been partly inspired by his father Harry Hollinson, a Second World War fighter pilot who did a nice line in cartoon space travel in the Lion Annual. I knew Peter well as a young man; we were choristers in the local parish church choir and members of various youth organisations in the town. Even then, he had a reputation for perceptive, and usually irreverent, observations about extra-curricular activities of our fellow parishioners. I recall that a notorious choir roue once threatened to take a horsewhip to him in the church vestry! In his youth Peter was a delightful, amusing and highly entertaining companion, with an impressive array of rock star impersonations and of wrecked showcases following `cultural' skirmishes with his younger brother. It is no surprise taht he was so successful in his chosen career and devastating that it was cut so short.