John Camkin

William John Camkin, MA (23 June 1922 – 19 June 1998) was an English journalist, football, business and sports administrator.

Camkin was born in Kings Norton, Worcestershire, the son of Bill Camkin and Helena Ethel Holder. His father was managing director of Birmingham City F.C., and also owned a number of billiard and snooker halls in Birmingham. He had introduced a snooker championship which became 'The Embassy Cup' between 1936 and 1956.

Educated at Warwick School and St Edmund Hall Oxford, where he captained the college football first XI, In 1942, he served with the University Air Squadron, and later the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve as a navigator with Bomber Command.

Demobbed in 1946, he resumed his journalistic career (he had worked on a local paper before going up to Oxford) as a sports writer on the Birmingham Gazette. He commentated for BBC Radio for seven years, covering the 1954, 1958, and 1962 World Cups. He wrote a book about the 1958 tournament. ITV had won the rights to cover the 1966 FIFA World Cup alongside the BBC; and John Camkin was part of the team including Hugh Johns, Gerry Loftus, and Barry Davies.

Camkin had travelled all over the world reporting football, and after leaving Fleet Street, in 1960 Camkin bought a travel agency in Leamington Spa and built a small group of travel shops known as John Camkin Travel Ltd, throughout the area. These were located in Coventry, Hinckley, Banbury, Nuneaton, Birmingham, London and Dunstable. He is quoted as saying 'I got the idea from my travels'...You know, you never see an old football correspondent-they merely fade away' He sold his business to the Thomson Holidays Travel Group in 1972 and his travel shops were re-branded Lunn Poly.

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