Reginald Shirley Brooks

[8] He wrote under the pen-name "Peter Blobbs"; the newspaper, known as the "Pink Un", covered sports in general but particularly horse-racing, and also dealt in society gossip.

"[10] It was while writing for The Sporting Times in 1882 that Brooks published a spoof obituary of English cricket, following the England side's defeat in a Test match against Australia.

A story retold in a book of 1898 by one of the other journalists of Brooks' time recounts an incident when the newspaper was three columns short at the time of going to press "and nobody was sober enough to attempt the task of writing them"; Brooks solved the problem by reprinting an entire article from the magazine Truth, merely adding the headline: "How on Earth Did this Story get into the Columns of Truth?

"[18] An obituary in the society magazine Vanity Fair (reprinted in the Sheffield Evening Telegraph) wrote that he had inherited "much of the literary ability of his father" and was "endowed with a keen and very original sense of humour that was entirely his own".

[19] Simon Briggs summed him up less charitably as "a stereotypical boozy hack who chased actresses, gambled recklessly and drank himself to an early grave".

[3] According to a colleague on the Sporting Times: "Shirley had a sweet and gentle disposition that caused him to be beloved by everybody, nor did any of the petty ironies of life disturb him in the least."

Ten years after his death, his former room when visiting the country residence that belonged to John Corlett, the paper's proprietor and editor, was still preserved as he had left it, with his photographs, pictures and sketches adorning the walls.