Simon Hoggart

Simon David Hoggart (26 May 1946 – 5 January 2014) was an English journalist and broadcaster. He wrote on politics for The Guardian, and on wine for The Spectator. Until 2006 he presented The News Quiz on Radio 4. His journalism sketches have been published in a series of books.

Simon Hoggart was born on 26 May 1946 in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, and educated at Hymers College in Hull, Wyggeston Boys' School in Leicester and then King's College, Cambridge, where he excelled at history and English. He was the son of the sociologist Richard Hoggart and Mary Holt Hoggart. His brother is the Times television critic Paul Hoggart. He lived in South London with his wife, Alyson, a clinical psychologist, and their two children, Amy and Richard. He was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer in mid-2010 and died of the disease on 5 January 2014.

Hoggart joined The Guardian in 1968, later becoming the American correspondent for The Observer, and occasional guest commentator on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Saturday. Having written on politics for some years in Punch magazine, Hoggart became the Parliamentary sketch writer for The Guardian in 1993. He also wrote a wine column for The Spectator. Hoggart's sketchwriting prowess was still admired into the 2010s – Total Politics note that in 2011 Hoggart had "been a regular tormenter of the prime minister, especially on the sensitive issue of the PM's bald patch, which Hoggart compared to "a goujon of plaice" from Marks and Spencer."

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