Author, broadcaster and editor of the Catholic Times, Norman Cresswell, who died on August 13th aged 72, was a raconteur who told stories with such a twinkle in his eye that it's a wonder he managed a lifetime in journalism without provoking a libel case. For Norman Cresswell, the only stories worth reporting were those about ordinary people. It was this which, in the early 1960s, led him to found a string of weekly religious tabloids - the Catholic Pictorial in Birmingham, Liverpool and London - based on tales of record-breaking church cleaners, roller-skating charity workers and footballing nuns.
In the 1970s, his reports on famine in Ethiopia inspired readers to donate enough money to fund a fleet of ambulances for the country. And he led the expedition to deliver the vehicles. Two decades later, readers donated thousands of pounds for the orphans of Romania.
Born in the Wirral, his father was a family doctor in Liverpool who did much to ease the lot of his patients. It was an example the young Norman Cresswell would never forget.
He was always drawn back to Merseyside because of his love of the sea. His book of daily meditations, Through The Year With The Catholic Faith, was mostly written while sitting on the beach near his Blundellsands home.
After attending Belmont Abbey School in Herefordshire, at 17 he lied about his age and joined the Palestinian Police. He said he was lured by the promise of £20 a month "all found", but later discovered that "all found" included "a knife in the back and a bullet in the leg".
Over the next few years, he was a private detective, owner of a travelling theatre, a teacher and a welfare officer. By the early 1950s, he had discovered a talent for journalism and worked for BBC Midlands.
In 1965, he married journalist Mary Rooney and the couple had two sons. Two other children, Lucy and Simon, did not survive infancy, but he never forgot them, and wrote under the pseudonym of Lucy Simon.
At the Catholic Pictorial, Norman Cresswell assumed another female persona, that of Magda, the weekly columnist who distributed donations from readers all over Merseyside and Lancashire. "Magda" had actually been his mother, Anne (nΘe Walschmidt), but following her death he took over the column.
Having retired from the Catholic Pictorial in 1990, Norman Cresswell soon became bored with pottering around the garden and was delighted when, in 1993, he was invited to edit the new Catholic Times. The pundits claimed it was the wrong time to launch an orthodox newspaper. Norman Cresswell ignored them and based his editorial policy on his "feeling" for those ordinary Catholics.
His hunch paid off. Two editors later, the Catholic Times remains the best-selling religious broadsheet in England. Despite new technology, each week Norman Cresswell laid out the paper on old-fashioned composition sheets. And it was not unusual to see him in the non-smoking office with smoke billowing out of his pocket as he tried to hide his pipe.
Norman William Cresswell: born 1928; died, August 2001