Friends and colleagues have said farewell to Eastern Daily Press sports journalist Keith Peel, who died earlier this month.

More than 100 people, including figures from the worlds of local cricket and football, celebrated the life of the 58-year-old sports writer/sub-editor at a humanist service at St Faiths crematorium in Norwich.

John Hemsley, from the British Humanist Association, who conducted the service, said the journalist – who worked at the EDP for 39 years including 13 years as sports editor – would have been both bemused and amused by the fact that he was regarded as an oracle when it came to sporting knowledge.

He said: “Keith himself would have been incredulous because he didn’t realise how popular and respected he was.”

EDP editor Peter Franzen said he was an old-style journalist, who could be acerbic at times, but held the respect of colleagues in the newsroom.

He said: “It wasn’t just his attention to detail and the passion to get it right. Like so many of those journalists of yesteryear he built up an enormous number of contacts and friends in the sporting world.

“His contacts book must have been bursting at the seams.

“To say Keith was devoted to his job is an understatement. The volume of work that he ploughed through was legendary.

“Keith’s passing was a terrible shock to us all in the newsroom.

“And it is still hard to believe that Mr Local Cricket and Mr Local Football is not around any more.”

Keith was born in Leicester and lived there until the early 1960s, when his family moved to Yarmouth.

He joined Eastern Daily Press publisher Archant, then known as Eastern Counties Newspapers, in 1967.

After working as a news reporter in Thetford, King’s Lynn and Yarmouth, he joined the EDP sports team in Norwich in 1973.

He was appointed assistant sports editor in 1977 and served as sports editor from 1980 to 1993.

He is survived by his wife, Rosalyn, father Harold, brothers Brian and Colin, and two children, Keith and Caroline. Do you have a story about the regional press?
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