Peter Hepple

Published Monday 16 October 2006 at 14:55 by Charles Spencer

If ever a newspaper was blessed with a good and faithful servant, it was surely The Stage with Peter Hepple.

Peter, who died last week at the age of 79, wrote his first article for The Stage in 1950, a review of the long forgotten male impersonator Ella Shields topping the bill at the Queen’s Theatre, Poplar. His final piece, on stage psychics appears in this week’s issue, 56 years after the first.

For 20 years, from 1972-1992, he was the newspaper’s editor, a job that was surely the destiny of a man who loved every strand of live entertainment. Peter ranged from high opera to low down and dirty jazz, from the latest production at the National Theatre to the dodgiest talent show in Skegness, from Strindberg to striptease. If it moved, Peter would review it, in notices that combined discrimination with an exemplary absence of either ego or malice.

He also loved the mechanics and the wheeler-dealery of showbusiness - the bookers, the agents, the managers. Most of all he was fascinated by light entertainment, and was one of the few, indeed very possibly the only journalist in Britain, who really understood what goes on in British seaside towns, working men’s clubs, holiday centres, theme parks and cruise liners.

For a man like Peter, who lived and breathed showbiz, retirement was never going to be an option, though I suspect his beloved wife Josie sometimes wished it was. He officially stood down as editor at 65 but immediately became The Stage’s consulting editor and seemed busier than ever, with responsibility for the paper’s special supplements, book and record reviews, on-line A-Z guides as well as reviewing as prolifically as ever in all fields. He was the most anti-elitist and democratic of critics whose notices were devoid of the faintest trace of intellectual snobbery. Peter respected any performer who could please an audience.

Whenever I bumped into him outside a West End theatre in his later years, he was always just back from a showcase, or a cruise entertainment, or a new arts centre whose opening he was covering. His enthusiasm never flagged. This very week he was due to have been at The Stage’s own Showcall Showcase, where as ever he would have displayed his sharp eye for fresh talent. It is now hard to imagine such functions without his wise and benign presence.

I was lucky enough to work at The Stage for two exceptionally happy years between 1984-86. I arrived at the paper, at 29, as a burnt-out Fleet Street wreck, and under Peter’s benign eye and with the help of his encouragement and advice, finally discovered my own voice as a critic while also working as the paper’s chief sub editor.

Peter was the most self-effacing of editors. He would let the young Turks make a lot of noise as they unearthed arts and light entertainment news exclusives while he quietly got on with the job of meticulously reading the proofs, compiling the listings, writing leaders and commissioning reviews. He would always have his own notice of whatever he had seen the previous evening neatly typed before coming into work, and he was a walking encyclopaedia of the performing arts. You hardly ever needed to use a reference book at The Stage. Peter always had the answer to what you were looking for. And in a career lasting more than half a century, he never missed a deadline.

What I admired most about Peter though, even more than his knowledge, his curiosity and his wisdom, was his sense of proportion. Whenever anyone in the newsroom got over-excited or anxious about anything, he would usually calm them down with the reassuring words, “It’s only rock’n’roll”. And beneath the dry wit, the hack’s mac and his endless litany of complaints about the shortcomings of the Northern line, was a man of honour, with an exceptionally kind heart.

Peter was an only child, born on January 2, 1927. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was nine and as his father worked shifts at Cable and Wireless he was looked after by his maternal grandmother who had also lost her only son when he was 21.

Peter was largely left to his own devices, developing his passions for reading, music and the accumulation of facts that remained with him throughout his life. However, it was his father who introduced him to music hall and they went regularly to the Wood Green Empire together.

During the Second World War he was educated at the City of London School, which was evacuated to Marlborough College. He left school with higher certificates in four subjects, then served in the Royal Engineers during National Service. He was posted to Orkney, Egypt and Turkey and it was in Ankara, he said, that he discovered his taste “for drink and nightclubs”.

After being demobbed, he wanted to become a journalist but newsprint rationing meant it was a hard time to break into the inky trade, so he began training as a surveyor. He gave that up when he got a job at Burke’s Peerage, where he met Josie, and later became editor of the Institute of Petroleum’s publications.

Then, as throughout his life, he worked nights as well as days. He was an exceptionally busy freelance. As well as writing regularly for The Stage from 1950 he also contributed to Boxing News, Show Pictorial and Where to Go in London, among many others, and in 1962 launched The Stage’s punishing Nightbeat column.

He would finish work at the Petroleum Institute on Friday evening, catch a West End play and then take in up to half a dozen shows in London’s cabarets and clubs, ending a hard day’s night at dawn with chips in the kitchen of Danny La Rue’s club, for whom he worked as a PR in the early sixties.

In 1972 the editorship of The Stage became vacant with the retirement of Eric Johns and Peter took over the chair. Other activities have included sterling work for the Critics’ Circle, where he served as treasurer and secretary, as well as instigating the Circle’s annual award for service to the arts and helping to set up its theatre awards.

He leaves his wife, Josie, two daughters and six grandchildren and will be missed by all who knew him. Peter died in his sleep in the early hours of Thursday, October 12. The Stage, with which he was synonymous for so long, will never seem quite the same without him.