Charismatic Sir Tony, the man who Stevens banned from buying the Express

EXCLUSIVE By ALAN FRAME

Sir Tony O’Reilly, Irish and Lions rugby superstar, Heinz chairman, media magnate and later bankrupt, was by any standard an extraordinary man right up to his death at the age of 88 on Saturday. He could also have owned Express Newspapers. This is the story behind the deal that sadly never was.

 

I first met O’Reilly in the mid ‘80s at an Ireland Fund dinner in London and bumped into him a few times until in 1993 I had a call from our mutual friend, the banker Sir Victor Blank, who suggested a meeting with plain Dr AJF as he was then (he  was knighted for his work on the Northern Ireland peace process in 2001).

 

Victor and I arrived at the Berkeley Hotel the following evening only to learn that our host would be a no-show thanks to plane trouble. A breakfast meeting with just me was arranged for a few days later. It was memorable for so many reasons.

 

In no particular order they were: O’Reilly was the most charismatic person I had ever met; he had a photographic memory; he was, despite his vast wealth and success, very self-deprecating, and finally because his beautiful wife Chryss, the Goulandris shipping fortune heiress, ate nothing but chain-smoked throughout the two-hour meeting in their suite.

 

I was executive editor of the Express at the time and knew rather too much of the declining state of the group’s finances. I gave him as much information as I could and he said he would follow up with a call to Lord Stevens (whose charisma didn’t quite match his own.) We desperately needed new ownership and O’Reilly, then running Heinz worldwide from Pittsburgh and a serial entrepreneur, seemed an obvious candidate. He already owned the Irish and Sunday Independent in Dublin and through Independent News and Media 38 titles in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Would we be next?

 

The short and obvious answer is No and that is because Stevens refused to entertain even a discussion. The rest is a depressing history of unsuitable cost-cutting owners, hopeless editors (with Chris Williams the brave and honourable exception) and a migration of our best journalists to the Mail along with most of our readers. Instead O’Reilly bought The Indy in 1995, launched to great fanfare in 1986 but by then in trouble.

 

I mentioned his extraordinary power of recall. He was a fine cricketer and a fan of the Cambridge Varsity sides. Without a pause he reeled off the victorious 1957 Light Blues players, Dexter, Goonesena, Wheatley and so on. But it was at rugby that he excelled and how! He won his first Ireland cap in 1955 at 19 just a year after leaving his Dublin school Belvedere. Such was his impact he was picked for the Lions tour of South Africa few months later.

 

By 1970 he was the surprise recall for the Irish team to play England at Twickenham. ‘I was running Heinz UK by then but still turning out for London Irish,’ he told me. ‘It was a bit of a standing joke that Arthur Whelan, my long standing chauffeur, would drive me to the ground. When I scored a try in that 1970 match against England I crossed the line at walking pace and one wag cried out that I should have passed the ball to Arthur because he would have got there faster.

 

‘On another occasion I was carted off injured and I heard one of our lot shout Send on the feckin chauffeur, he’s bloody fitter.’   

 

And to think, our once great newspapers instead ended up with up in the tender embrace of owners who cared not a jot about journalism, only about slashing costs. Yet another What If story...

 

20 May 2024