Bobby Charlton Friend Ted Macauley Dies Aged 91
Daily Mirror legend Ted Macauley has died aged 91, with bobby charlton among the Manchester United figures he counted as friends. Macauley spent more than 35 years at the paper and became one of its best-known sports and feature writers.
Paul Smith on Macauley
Paul Smith described him as “a great friend and a legendary sports reporter and feature writer.” He also said: “In a career at the Mirror spanning more than 35 years Ted was the paper’s Formula 1 correspondent and during the 70s and 80s was the face of the Mirror’s motorbike racing coverage and the Isle of Man TT.”
Smith added: “Based in Manchester he was the doyen of sports reporters and was close friends with Manchester United legends George Best, Bobby Charlton and Ray ‘Butch’ Wilkins.” That circle of friends helped define the reach of Macauley’s work, which moved between football and Grand Prix racing on two and four wheels.
George Best and Barry Sheene
Macauley also counted Barry Sheene among his friends, and his own words showed how closely his reporting overlapped with those relationships. In 2023 he said: “My coverage of global sport overlapped principally between football and Grand Prix racing on two and four wheels.”
He added: “That brought me into the closest of contexts with these two thoroughly rascally but likeable characters. They remained close friends and allies, right until their premature and personally heart-breaking deaths.”
He was even more direct about the life around them: “Booze aplenty, strings of glamorous women... And in Barry's case, too much drug-taking and chain-smoking. I lost count of the number of nights George spent sleeping on the front room sofa in my village farmhouse 10 miles from Old Trafford.”
Raring to Go and beyond
Macauley wrote memoirs called Raring to Go and said George Best regularly slept on his sofa. He interviewed Paul Newman, Lee Marvin, Michael Caine, Jayne Mansfield and Ringo Starr, and Richard Attenborough got him a role as an extra in A Bridge Too Far.
He also became close friends with Mike Hailwood and later went to manage him. Hailwood was later killed in a car crash that also claimed the life of his young daughter.
Macauley died on Wednesday with his beloved wife Dee at his side. He left a son, Iain, a daughter, Kerris, and four grandchildren, ending the life of a reporter who moved easily between motor racing paddocks, football dressing rooms and the friendships that tied them together.
