John Curtis tribute: John Terry chat summed up affection for a true press box legend
In his four years at Villa, first as player and then assistant boss, John Terry only ever stopped for one man.
That man was John Curtis.
The precise occasion on which Terry, who otherwise kept himself to himself, did so has long been forgotten. The sight of the former England captain, doubling back on himself having first headed down the corridor from which players and staff typically leave Villa Park, having spotted Curtis through a doorway, then clambering over a rope to shake his hand, beaming smile, has not and never will be.
Neither will the stunned expression on the face of a junior colleague during the friendly, five-minute chat in which the pair reminisced about how Curtis, affectionately known as JC to pretty much all who knew him, used to “chase Terry around Europe” during the days when the latter was playing for England under-21s.
That was just one small chapter of JC’s vast career in journalism, which began on a weekly paper in his native Worcester and took him all round the world, covering a multitude of sports and collecting enough anecdotes, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, to fill an entire volume of books.
His death this week, aged 68, has hit many in our industry like a sledgehammer and prompted tributes deserving of a man who was brilliant at his craft but most importantly, a first-class human being.
Readers might not instantly recognise the name but believe me, if you like sport then you will have read JC’s words, whether they be cricket reports on his beloved Worcestershire, or football where for decades he covered some of the country’s biggest clubs and England. For a period in the 1990s, he was responsible for writing Villa’s programme.
As a former colleague remarked this week, to know JC was to love him. One meeting would be enough to ensure you never forgot him. It didn’t matter if you were a club cricketer, or as the chat with Terry attests, one of the biggest names in your sport. Any time you walked into a press room and saw him, you couldn’t help but smile. You just knew it was going to be a fun day.
The art of journalism, at its base level, is getting people to like you enough to tell you their stories. Good souls, therefore, make good journalists.
JC was more than good. He was truly great.
