For decades Les Barlow was a legend of local journalism.
If you read the sports pages of the Rochdale Observer at any time from the late seventies to the mid noughties, you've read Les.
Famously dedicated to the cause he travelled the length and breadth of the country reporting on Rochdale FC at a time when highlights, let alone successes, were few and far between.
But his commitment, skill and humour meant he was able to document those lean years with verve and colour.
Last week Les died aged 75.
Here, Richard Partington remembers his friend and colleague and pays tribute to a man who embodied local journalism.
After a successful interview for the role of sports editor at the Rochdale Observer in 2005, the group’s editorial chief, Stewart Rigby, took me to one side for a brief pep talk.
“Look, the job might call on you to be ...diplomatic,” he half whispered.
“You’re going to be working with a couple of old boys. One of them has been here forever.”
He was referring, of course, to Les Barlow, a legend around these parts, who sadly passed away last Friday at the age of 75.
True, Les and the other ‘old boy’, Mike Floyd, might have given Waldorf and Statler, the cantankerous Muppet duo, a run for their money at times,
‘Scoop’, as he was affectionately known at his beloved Norden Cricket Club, had been there and done it as sports editor and his help, knowledge and experience proved invaluable.
In my first few years reporting on Rochdale, back when covering the club meant reporting from games – home and away – I quickly came to realise the lofty esteem in which my colleague was held stretched beyond the realms of Rochdale. He was revered right across the country.
From Bristol to Boston, journalists and club officials would regularly ask after him, share their encounters with the great man and marvel when I verified legendary tales of his spell residing at Spotland Stadium.
His commitment to the cause – both Dale’s and the Ob’s – was famous in itself and spoke volumes for his professionalism and dedicated nature.
He cut his teeth as a freelance reporter at the Heywood Advertiser before switching to Rochdale where Les became the Observer’s Dale man across four decades, travelling the length and breadth of the country, more often than not alongside supporters.
He did so during a long period in the club’s history where highlights, let alone successes, were few and far between.
Having missed the promotion years of the late sixties and relegation in the mid-seventies, Les picked up the baton in 1978, carried it through the eighties and much of the nineties and was still filling in come the early noughties up to the brink of Dale’s golden era under Keith Hill.
It was a source of some discomfort to me that this Johnny-come-lately, non-Rochdalian stumbled into the role just as Dale were entering their glory years – Wembley appearances, promotions, talented young players going on to make big impressions at the very top of the English game.
Geoff Thomas aside, all of this had eluded Les during the decades when his steady hand was on the tiller.
That said, it’s testament to his penmanship, his quirky turn of phrase, that he was able to document those lean years with such verve and colour.
An inventive, brave writer, he once left several column inches of a match report empty to signify the fact fog had completely marred his view of onfield proceedings!
He may not have covered a great Dale side, but the sports pages of the Rochdale Observer were in fine shape throughout his time on the paper and he was a driving force in that.
For some time as sports editor and later as the senior sub and writer on the desk, Les encapsulated the value of local knowledge, his finger on the pulse of the town’s sporting scene. From grassroots football to crown green bowls, Les was yer man.
A statistician long before stats became trendy, his attention to detail was honed during his time as a railway booking clerk, though he’d be the first to laugh at the suggestion he was a man ahead of his time.
And he could laugh at himself, Les could.
However, he took his responsibility to the reader seriously and had great pride in the Ob’s standing in Rochdale.
If anyone on the sportsdesk made a mistake, Les ran the risk of a good-natured ribbing from his mates at Norden Cricket Club, and woe betide whoever had slipped up (Mike Floyd usually copped for it by virtue of the fact he was our Rochdale Hornets man!).
Les will rightly be remembered primarily for his coverage of Dale, but he banged the drum for all sports in the town.
He’d happily volunteer to attend sports’ clubs awards nights, be it football or cricket or gymnastics, snapping away with his little camera and ensuring as many names and faces as possible made it onto the pages of the Ob.
His work in producing regular nostalgic pieces in the paper – always among the most popular – was invaluable.
He’d work late into the evening, long after the rest of the office had left for home, savouring the silence as he pored over a hundred years and more of historic sporting news in the leather-bound files of old copies, safely stored away in one of the Drake Street office’s many nooks.
It was a true labour of love for him and allowed him to produce a stunning piece of work in the paper’s 150th year, detailing the town’s sporting landscape across a century and a half.
Just two years before the sale of the Drake Street office prompted him to take redundancy and retire, that body of work was a fitting swansong to his journalistic career.
He was central to our reviving the Observer Bowls Trophy in 2007 after a six-year hiatus and the competition ran successfully for a few years, remaining involved even after his retirement.
Similarly, he was at the forefront of organising the annual Observer Golf competition and I recall a couple of finals days in the sun, watching and admiring as he took charge of proceedings and saw to it everything ran smoothly.
Les had always lived among the community he wrote about – for him, reporting on the town’s sporting events was a service to the paper’s readership, to his neighbours and friends, to the people he’d see in passing every day.
He’d be in his early sixties by the time he retired, and as he’d say: “I’ve done my bit.”
His beloved leather-bound tomes of yesteryear’s Observers were packed up.
Hopefully one day that treasure trove of historic Rochdale news will resurface and Les’ pieces can be enjoyed again.
We stayed in touch down the years.
He’d tell me how he was spending more time in the great outdoors, helping his partner Sue with the horses and savouring the action at Woodhouse Lane, where his statistician skills were put to good use and he was a valued committee member and secretary, a role he’d first carried out in the early sixties as a young man at Bamford Old Boys FC.
He liked to play up to the role of ‘grumpy old bugger’, but you could see through the act and he always sounded happy in his retirement, content to be busy and surrounded by the people he loved.
We’d speak regularly during the cricket season and early December would bring what became a tradition as reliable as an advent calendar.
“Merry humbug,” was his seasonal greeting – one year we’d superimposed his face onto an image of Ebenezer Scrooge, so tight was he with his annual sports quiz.
He’d mildly objected, but the grin on his face told you he’d loved every minute of it.
Every year he’d ring to inform me his latest mind-blowing brainteaser was ready to be unleashed on the readers, lovingly compiled throughout the year and always the toughest of tests for the most knowledgeable sports fan.
Late last year, having endured a tough few months, he contacted me to say he was going to struggle to put one together for 2021.
I popped to see him just before Christmas, describing to him – through the social distancing of a window pane – Dale’s fine home win against Newport County earlier that afternoon.
I took him a matchday programme and asked if there was anything else he wanted – I’d drop it in after the next home game.
He asked me for a copy of The Overcoat Men, Mark Hodkinson’s excellent account of how David Kilpatrick and Graham Morris saved Dale back in the early eighties when Les was in his writing prime.
“I wouldn’t mind a read of that, see what they say about me!” he laughed.
I’d packed the book in my laptop bag on Friday evening, ready to drop it off after the Bradford match.
I was out walking the dog beside a tranquil reservoir when I took the sad call on Saturday morning that Les had passed.
I’d have loved him to have read Mark’s description of “The ever-diligent Les Barlow,” a key player in his book, as a “gnarled, chain-smoking (back then), Spotland-embedded sports reporter. Unwilling to sugar-coat the truth: ‘They were crap.’”
He’d have chuckled at that, and of the retelling of his great tales running and indeed living in the social club at Spotland where, I recall, he insisted strange paranormal activity ceased whenever he left half a glass of bitter at the end of the bar before he turned in for the night.
He and Mark went back a good few years.
“I worked with Les for a year or so when we were both at the Middleton Guardian,” he told me.
“One quiet afternoon, we started doing some daft spoof stories and his were by far the funniest.
“We were all crying with laughter.
“I remember thinking then how much he kept hidden, how sharp and talented he was under that lugubrious, easy-going demeanour.
“Another time, he roped me in to work behind the bar at Dale to cover a wedding. Hundreds turned up and there was only three of us pulling pints.
“It was total bedlam but, through it all, he remained calm and considerate.
“He was lovely to be around, always kind and encouraging but also a bit out of reach and secretive.’’
A great raconteur, he loved regaling listeners with such yarns, a devilish twinkle in his eye.
We spent many an hour discussing boxing – but not for him the typical debate around the rightful pecking order of Hagler/Hearns/Leonard/Duran.
No, Les preferred to recall the rise of Olympian Kevin Taylor, the Connellan boys or Derek Wormald, or the wonderful work of Terry Hernon.
Les’ legacy is long established in the fact he made the sporting scene in Rochdale a better place, reporting on and arranging events for the people of the town.
Dale fans will doubtless recall his commitment to their club’s cause,
Norden supporters his loyalty and devotion to the Stags and a host of other clubs – from gymnastics to equestrian to boxing and all sports in between – his fair handedness in opening up the paper’s sports pages to one and all.
Personally, I’ll cherish the memory of those long, rewarding days when he, myself and Floydy made the most of the time and resources at our disposal, regularly producing 25 pages of sport across two editions every week.
Those story-packed, Rochdale-specific editions represented everything Les Barlow stood for.
Rest well, my friend.
