[1][5] He began his career as a journalist on local newspapers in 1951, after leaving school, initially working for The Luton News.
He was reporting for the newspaper in 1957 when he was the only journalist present when prime minister Harold Macmillan made his declaration that Britons had "never had it so good".
[2][7] His broadcasting career began in the following year, and he wrote for The Sunday Telegraph, The Spectator, The Guardian, The Observer and The Economist.
He wrote and presented programmes for BBC Radio 2 in the UK on his subjects, including Elvis Presley,[9] Bob Hope[10] and Judy Garland.
Helfgott, a weightlifter who competed for Britain in the Melbourne and Rome Olympics, was a survivor of the Buchenwald and Theresienstadt concentration camps.
[4][22] Their middle child, daughter Dani, worked as a successful charity fundraiser, while their son is the journalist and thriller writer Jonathan Freedland.
This had taken him to Aberdeen, South Dakota, where he experienced a fatal heart attack and died in his hotel room on 1 October 2018, aged 83.