Tabloid king Cudlipp dies at 84

Journalist sensation Lord Cudlipp was respected and well-liked

One of the century's most revered newspaper journalists, Lord Cudlipp of Aldingbourne, has died at the age of 84.

The former chairman of IPC, now Mirror Group, died at his home in Chichester, West Sussex, after battling lung cancer.

"You could call him the King of the Tabloids," said Geoffrey Goodman, former assistant editor of the Daily Mirror. "He helped build up the Mirror into what people thought was the most outstanding popular newspaper in the world."

Lord Cudlipp, who was married three times, became Fleet Street's youngest ever editor when, at the age of 24, he was appointed editor of the Sunday Pictorial, later renamed the Sunday Mirror.

'Entire career was his heyday'

Apart from a five-year spell with the Sunday Express in the 1950s, his career was spent with what is now the Mirror Group.

He helped turn the Daily Mirror into the country's largest selling tabloid before becoming chairman of IPC. He retired from the newspaper industry in 1973.

Mike Molloy, a former editor of the Daily Mirror, described Lord Cudlipp as the most exciting man you could meet in journalism.

"Hugh's entire career was his heyday," he said. "He worked as hard at enjoying himself as at his work and he saw working on popular papers as a huge gift from fate - to do something you enjoy so much as your job."

Kelvin MacKenzie, deputy chief executive of Mirror Group and former editor of The Sun, added: "Hugh Cudlipp was simply the greatest ever exponent of the tabloid art.

"He was attracted to journalism not for wealth or power but by the joy of capturing in a few words what he instinctively knew Mirror readers would agree with.