A regional daily ran a special supplement today celebrating the life of a well-known sporting personality on its patch.

The Birmingham Mail paid tribute this morning to former Aston Villa Football Club chairman Sir Doug Ellis, who died yesterday aged 94.

The Mail splashed on news of Sir Doug’s death today, and also carried an eight-page pullout inside the newspaper.

Billed as Sir Doug’s ‘Last Interview’, the supplement featured quotes taken from interviews with him by Mail journalists Graham Young and Paul Suart in the past year.

Mail print editor Paul Cole told HTFP: “We didn’t just want to run a routine ‘history of’ supplement. Doug was a charismatic and much-loved man in the West Midlands.

“He could be charming, hilarious and was generous to a fault – but he could also be irascible, hard-headed and ruthless when required in football and business.

“We wanted to capture some of that, and turned to a remarkable, wide-ranging interview carried out by staffer Graham Young, one of the last to interview ‘Mr Aston Villa’.

“We ran pretty much every single word, with additional quotes gleaned from Doug by football writer Paul Suart, under the banner ‘The Last Interview.'”

Paul added: “Designed by Julian Seva, the end result was a tribute which captured the real Doug Ellis. I think Doug himself would have been chuffed.”