Norris McWhirter

I was e-mailing my friend yesterday and wanted to mention Norris McWhirter in the e-mail. (Norris was the co-founder of the Guinness Book Of World Records and an ever present back on Record Breakers as the official adjudicator right up until his death. If you are around 29 or older and British you will know who i mean.) Anyway, I was unsure of how to spell his surname so did a google search to find out. One of the pages that comes up is a link to an interesting and shocking BBC news story about the death of tv presenter Ross McWhirter. I had never heard of him, but he was Norris' twin brother who co-founded the book with him and presented Record Breakers before Roy Castle. Ross was particularly anti IRA. He was so anti IRA that he offered a reward of £50,000 for information leading to the arrest of IRA bombers. The IRA were not best pleased with this and the Balcombe gang sent two gunmen to his house and killed him by shooting him in the head twice.

Odd to think that sort of thing was happening in the UK only 30 years ago.