Career built on beer
A STAUNCH union member since 1959 when he joined the Huddersfield Examiner as a trainee, Michael Jackson has died of a heart attack aged 65.
Born in Wetherby, Michael remained a proud Yorkshireman of Lithuanian Jewish stock.
His grandfather, Chaim Jakowitz, had emigrated to Yorkshire but it was his father, Isaac, who anglicized the name to Jackson.
Michael made his name writing about beer. Early in his career on the Examiner he went to the editor with an idea to write a series called ”This is your Pub”. The editor liked the enterprise of a 16-year-old seeking to visit pubs on expenses.
Moving to London, Michael worked for the Daily Herald and then the trade weekly World Press News, which he helped transform into the Campaign, before becoming an investigative reporter with Granada’s World In Action.
It was here, he said, his career shift came about as a result of lunch in a pub with his editor, who said, “a good reporter can find a good story under his nose” and under Michael’s nose was a beer.
Working in Amsterdam in 1969 he became captivated by the Belgian beer culture which was to play a significant part in The World Guide to Beer (1977), his second book which made his name. His Channel 4 series The Beer Hunter was shown worldwide.
Last December he revealed he’d been suffering from Parkinson’s for more than a decade. He was planning to write a book about it called “I am not drunk”. Sadly it was not to be.
Guy Thornton