One phone call and John Roberts had the full story – there was an air of amazement in the room

In my mind’s eye I remember it all. John Roberts, the Guardian’s northern-based football writer, had come down on a rare visit to the sports desk in London. I was a new boy on the subeditors’ desk. Everyone was pleased to see John: he was that kind of bloke.

While he was there, the chief sub wondered, could he perhaps look at a news agency story from his beat that had just come in. It could have been anything: the latest signing by Bob Paisley or Malcolm Allison or the latest misadventure of George Best. Instead of giving it the once-over or adding a sentence or two, he walked over to a quiet corner, picked up an office phone and started a long call. By the end he had the full story. There was an air of amazement in the room.

It was nearly 50 years ago and the details are hazy; maybe I wasn’t there, but had just heard the story time and again. Either way, John, who died last Thursday aged 84, was not a normal recruit to the Guardian; he had already spent nearly two decades on the mighty Daily Express, which then still measured its circulation in millions not dozens.

He proved himself a fine phrasemaker in the best Guardian tradition, but he also brought with him the rigorous news-gathering that characterised the best popular newspapers of that era. And thus he was a major force in changing Guardian sport, his thirst for hot news sitting alongside the paper’s traditional virtues.

This does not mean others on the staff were short of good connections – our boxing and athletics expert, John Rodda, had a hot line to Lord Killanin, president of the International Olympic Committee. But last week Roberts’s son Chris came across his father’s old contacts book: as well as the numbers for friends, colleagues and his dentist it was a Who’s Who of generations of sporting legends.

John Anthony Roberts was born in Stockport in 1941. He was never built to be a sportsman, but he was a natural newspaperman. He started on the Stockport Express at 15, became sports editor aged 19, then at 21 began commuting into Manchester to join the Daily Express, a paper then so-well-heeled that they had a resident sports writer in Belfast, a job Roberts fell into four years later.

This was a double slice of luck; he met and married Phyllis, his wife for the next 58 years; and the most exciting sportsman around happened to be an Ulsterman, George Best.

They became friendly and thus later Roberts was the obvious choice to be Best’s ghost writer. But by then the footballing meteor was heading towards his tragic downfall. It was a mixed blessing. As he told his friend Nick Harris, he was “always wondering whether George was yet home from his latest night out, or whether he was in bed, and if so, who with”.

John might have been an Express man for life or, after his move, a Guardian man. But there were signs that he was falling out of love with football and he switched to the Daily Mail, which would have paid more and also offered him a more varied diet.

When Boris Becker won Wimbledon aged 17, John covered much of the tournament, was sent to Becker’s home town after the final and wrote a jolly piece getting the local reaction. When the Independent started in 1986 he snapped at an offer to become tennis correspondent and stayed until retirement 20 years later.

He loved the tennis circuit and the circuit loved him. “He was full of stories,” said his Guardian counterpart Steve Bierley. “And I never heard him say a bad word about anyone.”

His meticulous prose was widely admired except sometimes by subeditors on busy nights when they wanted Roberts to forget perfection and just file something before deadline. He was, however, a fine representative of a vanishing journalistic breed, who never sniffed a university, but could communicate better than a dozen dons.

He travelled the world, but never acquired a taste for fancy food and always lived close to Stockport. He leaves behind his family: Phyllis, their children Chris, Leanne and Gerard and four grandchildren.

Plus several books, all from his football years and including the definitive account of Manchester United after the Munich air crash (The Team That Wouldn’t Die). And several splendid bon mots, the classic one being the description of Kevin Keegan as “not fit to lace George Best’s drinks”.

Forty-five years after he left this paper, I still believe John made his mark on it, making the Guardian a better, sharper and more professional product.