Jeremy Stephen Bottle (1958-63) 08.06.1944 – 13.07.2009
James Noel Botham (1951-57) 23.01.1940 – 23.11.2012
Jeremy Bottle came to Dulwich fromCampbell College, Belfast, and particularly excelled at sport. He played cricket for the College 1st XI for all five years he was at Dulwich, also representing Surrey County
Noel Botham came to the College from Sydenham Junior School in Croydon and was in Sidney house. After leaving Dulwich he served an apprenticeship as a journalist at the Croydon Advertiser before joining
Cricket Club and other regional teams. In 1962, he played rugby for the 1st XV, and was also captain of the 1st XI hockey team and the squash team. He was a prefect and Captain of Sidney house. He particularly loved the camaraderie and leadership opportunities that sport provided at Dulwich. Academically, he also greatly enjoyed debating and literature and was a close friend of the writer Michael Ondaatje, who lived with Jeremy’s parents for a time while they were at Dulwich. They kept in contact long after leaving Dulwich. Jeremy was successful in his business career, rising to the board and becoming Company Secretary at Capital and Counties Property Company and Liberty Life. He had a deep understanding of the commercial property market and the financing of international- scale shopping centres, and he had a key role in the development of the Bluewater Centre in Kent. He met his future wife, Susan Waters, who went to JAGS, while he was in the Sixth Form and they married in 1967. They shared many interests including travel, golf and a love of France where they owned a house in the Dordogne. Jeremy was a larger than life character and a bon viveur, with a passion in life for politics, rugby union and fine wine. He said one of his proudest moments was watching the England rugby teamwinning the Rugby World Cup in 2003 in Sydney, Australia. He was also a great family man, and he and Sue had two sons who both went to Dulwich, and there are now five grandchildren with whom he loved to spend time. He greatly enjoyed seeing his grandson, Oliver, play in the OA mini rugby team. Of course, Jeremy didn’t give up sport when he left Dulwich. He was a senior member of Bromley Hockey Club, captain of Bromley Squash Club, an active golfer at Shortlands Golf Club, and a supporter of the OA sports clubs. In retirement, he and Sue travelled extensively to all parts of the world, renewing old friendships and spending summers in France with family. He passed away in 2009 after a short illness and arranged a bequest to the Princess Royal Hospital in Farnborough to help with that institution’s excellent palliative care. He is survived by his widow Sue, two sons and five grandchildren. His son, Duncan, has contributed significantly to this obituary.
the Daily Sketch. He became its foreign editor aged only 21 but was later sacked after brawling on the newsroom floor. He subsequently worked on numerous other tabloid newspapers including the Daily Herald, The People and the News of the World , where he was Chief Investigator at one stage. Some of his overseas assignments included troublespots like Aden and Northern Ireland. He was one of the hard-drinking journalists who made British newspapers the liveliest in the world, and he later became European Editor of the US magazine, the National Enquirer. He also wrote books, either biographies of prominent people including Rudolph Valentino, Grace Kelly, and Princess Margaret, or books feeding Britons’ love of obscure facts. These he published under the banner of the Useless Information Society , which he co-founded with the writer Keith Waterhouse. For someone who lived by writing, his cavalier attitude to facts was disconcerting. The Ultimate Book of Useless Information (2003) called Jeeves a butler (rather than a valet) and his OA creator, P G Wodehouse, a woman. But his skill with publicity bombshells was matchless. While speaking at the funeral of television presenter Hughie Green in 1997, he revealed that Green had fathered entertainer Paula Yates. He firmly believed that the Princess of Wales had been murdered, exemplified by books such as The Assassination of Princess Diana (2004). Latterly, he collaborated with actor and writer Bruce Montague on books, including additional Useless Information books. Montague eventually resorted to collaborating with Botham by email because he said that initial story meetings had not been productive as they involved drinking sessions of at least 12 hours. Noel died suddenly, AFTER lunch, with a glass of champagne in his hand, one week before he was due to have a heart bypass operation. His funeral was held in the journalists’ church, St Brides, off Fleet Street, in London, followed by a wake at The French House, a pub in Soho which he jointly owned. His second wife, Lesley, and a son and three daughters from his first marriage all survive him. Obituaries were published in many national newspapers and in journalism publications, on which this obituary is based.
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