My friend Tony Linforth-Hall, who has died aged 77 of Hodgkin lymphoma, used his advertising skills to promote two very different causes: the Social Democratic party; and walking football, the increasingly popular sport for the over-50s, which he credited with prolonging his life.
Tony started playing walking football at Millwall FC, south-east London, on retiring from his advertising career. After his cancer diagnosis in 2016, he was among the original “Undefeatables”, whose stories were told by a coalition of charities to encourage people with chronic conditions to remain active.
When the pandemic curtailed walking football at Millwall, Tony set up a team named Pride of Lions to play at Marlborough Sports Garden near London Bridge, and designed their logo and kit. Finally he launched Kicking Cancer, aimed at getting cancer patients around England to form walking football teams. His ambition was to form regional sides, and eventually a national team.
Endorsed by the Walking Football Association, Kicking Cancer has gained support beyond London in the Midlands and the north-east. Again Tony designed the campaign’s logo and kit, but by the time he was photographed wearing it, he was too ill to play. Just days before his death, however, he watched Kicking Cancer players from Gloucester, Birmingham and the Black Country take part in matches at Arsenal’s sports hub.
Tony was born in Wimbledon, south-west London. His father, Iden Hall, a ship’s commander in the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, was often away for months or even years at a time, leaving his wife, Harriet (nee Chambers), at home with Tony and his older brother, Hugh.
After leaving King’s College school in Wimbledon, Tony found his way into advertising, his graphic design talents taking him from agency to agency. In 1976 he formed his own company, Ad-Venture, with the copywriter Ian Waters, and dashed around London in a yellow open-topped Morgan sports car, accumulating sheaves of parking tickets while pushing products such as Martell cognac, Nintendo and Worth perfumes.
Tony was drawn into politics after the Gang of Four broke away from the Labour party in 1981 to form the SDP, becoming a member and helping with the party’s campaign literature. His partner Maria Adderley worked at SDP headquarters and later became a Liberal Democrat councillor, but Tony stuck with David Owen, the only original member to resist the merger with the Liberal party. The Owen-led SDP was dissolved in 1988.
Ad-Venture continued until 2001, and Tony and Maria were married the following year. He became a director of her events business and other joint enterprises, including an art gallery and a wine-tasting business. A consummate photographer, he had panoramic portraits of Gallipoli battle sites exhibited at the Imperial War Museum North, Manchester, in 2005. He remained engaged with public affairs, working with Southwark Defend Council Housing, a pressure group, and Su Mano Amiga, a charity Maria set up to tackle domestic violence in the Latin American community.
Tony is survived by Maria, and by Eliot, his son from his first marriage, to Diana Linforth, which ended in divorce in 1976, and two granddaughters. His daughter, Harriet, died in a car accident in 1989.
