[4] — and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he gained a philosophy, politics and economics degree,[6] His studies were outshone by his success on the athletics track as a long-distance runner.

At the Helsinki Olympic Games of 1952, in the 5000 metres final, after being passed on the last bend by the Czech long-distance runner, Emil Zátopek, France's Alain Mimoun, and West Germany's Herbert Schade, Chataway's foot brushed the curb and he crashed headlong to the ground.

When Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four-minute mile on 6 May 1954 at Oxford University's Iffley Road Track, Chataway and Chris Brasher were his pacemakers.

[citation needed] He refused offers in sports TV and with panel and quiz shows but secured a job in August 1955 with ITN.

After six months, when loss-making ITV cut back on its news output, Chataway switched to the BBC and was for three and a half years one of Panorama's team of reporters with a different assignment each week, sometimes at home but usually abroad.

He had been narrowly elected as a Conservative to the London County Council in 1958 in Lewisham North, and was then selected to stand for Parliament in the same seat.

His maiden speech expressed the hope that the England cricket team would refuse to play a tour in apartheid South Africa, a highly unusual opinion for a Conservative.

Eventually cajoling his colleagues into a more moderate line, he avoided a head-on collision with Edward Short (the Labour Education Secretary) and proceeded with those schemes for secondary reorganisation that he regarded as well founded.

When the Conservatives were defeated in the February 1974 election, Chataway announced his retirement from politics (at the age of 43) and did not seek re-election in October 1974.

When Chataway's son Adam decided to launch a water project in Ethiopia in memory of his fiancée killed in a road traffic accident he chose to do it in partnership with ActionAid.

He supported his friend Chris Brasher when he established the London Marathon, and was President of the Commonwealth Games Council for England from 1990 to 2009.