A FORMER Northern Echo district reporter who made his name as a specialist writer in Fleet Street has died aged 75.

John Grigsby worked in the paper’s Durham City office in the mid-1960s – the legendary Harold Evans was the editor - after a spell on the Bury Free Press in Suffolk.

A former reporter who worked in Durham for a rival local paper said “Griggers”, as he was known, was “very highly regarded by his peers”.

He left to join The Daily Telegraph where he covered the 1966 Aberfan disaster in which a Welsh school was engulfed by a pit heap.

The London publisher’s son went on to become the paper’s Local Government Correspondent for more than 20 years, establishing a reputation for the quality of his work.

Before going into journalism he went to public school, read law at Cambridge and did National Service in 15/19 Hussars in Malaya.

Mr Grigsby married Catherine Stott, who was women’s editor of the Sunday Telegraph, in 1994.

He is survived by her and two step-daughters, Mr Grigsby died on Tuesday October 9. His funeral took place near their home in Faversham, Kent, last Friday, October 19.