John Blake (journalist)
| John Blake | |
|---|---|
| Born |
6 November 1948 Hitchin, Hertfordshire |
| Occupation | journalist and publisher |
John Blake (born 6 November 1948) is a British publisher and journalist.
Beginning as a pop columnist for the London Evening News in the early 1970s, his work developed into a column titled "Ad Lib", a gossip column and lifestyle guide. It survived the merger of the Evening News with the Evening Standard. In 1976 he co-wrote the book Up and Down with the Rolling Stones, the memoirs of 'Spanish Tony' Sanchez, friend of and assistant to Keith Richards.
Blake was the first editor of 'Bizarre', a column in The Sun launched in May 1982 concentrating on celebrity gossip. Blake moved to the Daily Mirror and launched a pop column called "White Hot Club". He was the newspaper's Assistant Editor between 1984 and 1988.
In 1988, Blake became editor of the Sunday People. He was president of the Mirror Group in the USA in the run-up to Robert Maxwell's anticipated purchase of the National Enquirer which lasted until the deal collapsed. Blake was a producer for Sky TV in 1990.
He founded Blake Publishing in 1991 with his brother, David Blake. After an acrimonious dissolution of the original partnership in March 2002, John Blake went solo as John Blake Publishing. Six months after the company started, he was joined by journalist Rosie Virgo, who went on to become the company's managing director. In 1998, the company published autobiographies by bareknuckle fighters Lenny McLean and Roy "Pretty Boy" Shaw. In 2004, Being Jordan by Katie Price was published by Blake after larger firms had rejected the book. While the advance to Price was £10,000, the book, ghost written by Rebecca Farnworth, sold a million copies.
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