Former Daily Mail writer Shaun Usher, who later found success as a prolific writer of crime fiction, has died aged 88.
Usher was one of the Mail’s most versatile journalists. A brilliant and acerbic critic, both of the West End and of Hollywood movies, he was also a distinguished foreign correspondent with a string of highly readable despatches to his name.
In 1980 he secured an exclusive interview with the dying Shah of Iran, then living in exile in Panama.
The following year he was on the Tarmac at Wiesbaden, in what was then West Germany, for the dramatic moment America’s 52 hostages held by Tehran’s Ayatollah Khomeini for 444 days finally stepped into freedom.
He was in New York when John Lennon was gunned down outside his home in the Dakota building opposite Central Park and his powerful account of the December 1980 shooting was entwined with the ex-Beatle’s position as a cultural icon, which leant heavily on Usher’s earlier role as a showbusiness writer.
Pipe-smoking Usher was always destined for a career in newspapers. His father Gray worked on local papers (father and son later collaborated on an anthology of ghost stories) and Shaun’s son Peter was to follow him to Fleet Street.
When, years later, Peter was appointed an executive, Shaun liked to complain: ‘Can life get any worse – my son is now my boss.’ In fact, he was immensely proud.
After National Service in the Ordnance Corps, he began his career on the Western Daily Press before moving to London in the early 1960s and joining the Daily Sketch.
Former Daily Mail writer Shaun Usher, who later found success as a prolific writer of crime fiction, has died aged 88
When the Sketch merged with the Daily Mail he moved across to the Mail where he soon became television correspondent.
His interviews were highly regarded: chat show host Michael Parkinson once quoted at length from an Usher profile before introducing a guest.
In 1978 he was sent to New York, living in a small apartment on East 79th Street, while his wife Sylvia and son remained at the family home in Ewell,
Surrey. He was one of the first to report from the horrific scene in Jonestown, Guyana – having travelled there by bus – where deranged ‘Bishop’ Jimmy Jones persuaded 800 of his followers, many of them children, to kill themselves.
Back in London he continued as a foreign correspondent before returning to his showbiz roots and was appointed film critic, later adding the theatre to his portfolio. Even after retirement he continued to write the Mail’s book serialisations and reviews.
In retirement Usher joined a charity helping juvenile offenders and was a custody visitor for Surrey Police.
He also took up crime writing and his stories regularly appeared in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. And he wrote books under the pen name Jeffry (correct) Scott.
After the death of his wife, he married for a second time to American Pat Wenzel, dividing his time between the UK and her home in the US. She predeceased him in 2019.
