'The idea of Charlton Athletic playing and Scoop not being there is hard to process' - tributes paid to Peter Burrowes after his sad passing this week
Addicks mourn loss of their former club press officer - who also covered them in print and on radio
Peter ‘Scoop’ Burrowes passed away on Wednesday at the age of 87.
Football is nothing without the characters that you meet and the loss of Scoop, an unmistakable presence at Charlton Athletic home matches, will be felt by so many people.
He reported on the Addicks, in print and radio, and became Charlton’s press officer in the 1980s.
This piece contains tributes to Scoop, who had been a long-serving volunteer in the club’s media room on a match day following his retirement.
I’ll miss his regular phone calls, as well as his habit of walking off mid-conversation when he had spotted someone else in the near vicinity who he felt might have nuggets of information which would be of interest.
This is another notable loss for the Charlton Athletic family, who have had to process the passing of Kevin Nolan and Norman Barker in the last 18 months.
‘His distinctive nasal tones were a Saturday afternoon highlight’
Rick Everitt was the Charlton Athletic reporter and sports editor of the Mercury newspaper for nine years before becoming the club’s communications manager in 1998. He published 176 editions of Voice of The Valley fanzine between 1988 and 2002.
“Scoop was pretty unavoidable if you were following Charlton in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Until it suddenly closed in 1984, he was sports editor of the main local paper that covered the club - the Kentish Independent - and he was also the match day programme editor from the early 70s.
“After the paper shut, he became the presenter of Charlton ClubCall. But what had really made him famous among fans was his role reporting live from games on LBC radio, then a London commercial radio station which launched in 1974. His distinctive nasal tones were a Saturday afternoon highlight, all too often relaying bad news from away grounds to those of us who couldn’t get to those games.
“When we launched Voice of The Valley in 1988 he was a soft and obvious target to poke fun at, but to his credit he rolled with the punches and before long appeared to relish the attention.
“I really got to know him when I started reporting on the club for the Mercury in 1989. By then he was the part-time press officer, and we actually had quite a good relationship. The nickname Scoop, which probably originated within the club, was largely ironic but also affectionate, despite the fact that he could be abrupt to the point of rudeness, particularly on the phone.
Peter Burrowes in July 1978/Picture: Tom Morris
“He wasn’t one for small talk, but he loved to gossip about the club and its personalities and always enjoyed a drama as long as it didn’t involve him. He would keep his critical opinions well away from those in authority, even when he was a reporter, but he had no compunction about sharing them in private. He was a one-off.
“At the end of last season I returned to the press room for a couple of games where he was still giving out the media passes as a volunteer.
“Nothing had changed with him and you would never have thought he would be gone just two months later. His whole life was Charlton and along with others who covered the club like Colin Cameron, Tom Morris and Kevin Nolan, who have also passed away, he was very much part of its identity for thousands of supporters over many decades. More so, in fact, than many of the players who have worn the shirt in recent years.”
Peter Burrowes in The Valley press box/Picture: Paul Edwards
‘Charlton was his best friend’
Paul Elliott is a former Charlton Athletic player, who came through their academy, and is now vice-chairman.
“My first memory of Scoop is when I broke into the first-team at 16, after leaving school. I got an apprenticeship under Mike Bailey. Scoop wrote some lovely things about me and we became friends.
“He worked very closely with Lennie Lawrence, who sold me to Luton Town (in 1983) to help the club financially. The friendship just maintained.
“Even when we had, shall we say, the challenging ownerships in control of Charlton, we were always in touch. We’d meet in Bromley. I’d have a beer and he’d have a coffee, because he didn’t drink, and we’d talk about Charlton.
“He would always say: ‘Paul, can’t you get a consortium together to buy the club?’
“Everyone will say they love their football club but Scoop had that love in a different way - because he didn’t have family, Charlton was his best friend. He had encyclopedic knowledge, the only other person I would say is similar to that who I know is David Pleat.
“If there is one thing I want to steal from him it is his memory and instant recall.
“We also used to meet socially away from Charlton, at the cricket club in Bickley, over the summer.
“Scoop has been relentless in the last few years. We talked three or four times a week. The worst one was the first season when we had a really challenging time and some of the performances were, shall we say, inconsistent. He would come after me and go in two-footed, but in a very nice way…in Scoop’s way. Why did that happen? Why was that substitute made? I’m giving him tactical optics and he was challenging me on it in a way I haven’t been challenged. I learned so much from him, including the politics of the business. It was entrenched in his DNA, because he had nothing else to think about.
“The best thing about being a player was to get paid for something that you would do for nothing. I said to him that he did the equivalent.
“Once I stepped out of a UEFA meeting. He had told me: ‘It’s absolutely urgent’. I had to ask for the comfort break. I went: ‘Scoop, I’m in a UEFA meeting!’ He went: ‘Well, what I’m about to tell you is as important, if not more important, than your UEFA meeting’. He is the only man that I was going to be doing that for.
“He had the highest levels of integrity. He was old school.”
Peter Burrowes with former Charlton chairman Roger Alwen in August 1989/Picture: Tom Morris
‘The last 12 months was a glorious swansong’
Olly Groome, senior content manager at Charlton Athletic.
“Where do you start with Scoop? You are introduced to him as Scoop, so you ask the obvious question and then you find out. He is generational, isn’t he?
“There are all these people that have come through the media press room at the club and they all know exactly who he is and what he was like. The amount of people I’ve seen come through in the last 15 years and go “f****** hell, Peter Burrowes….you’re still alive!”. I think it’s okay to say that because he used to laugh about it.
“He was a fiercely loyal bloke, especially about Charlton. He was pessimistic, but because he cared so much.
“You keep learning things about him that you didn’t know before - like the fact he covered boxing, Lennox Lewis at Madison Square Garden. I said to him the other day, when he was talking about the time getting less and less by the medical update, to try and reflect on the life he had. He did a lot more than most people ever would.
“If you look back at the last 12 months, through the eyes of Scoop, it was like his swansong. He had Wembley, in May 2025. He was on the pitch. You get a tap on the shoulder in the six-yard box and it’s Scoop. He wasn’t supposed to be out there but you embrace it, because it is a great moment where you’re all together and enjoying it.
“He said afterwards: ‘This might be the last time I can have anything like this’. Fast forward and the club is in safe hands, back in the Championship.
“The recent Lennie Lawrence Dinner was his swan song, really. It was just us much about him as it was Lennie, without anyone else knowing that. It was so important he was there. He was quite anxious about the ticket prices being £110 and we were going: ‘Don’t worry - it will get sorted’.
“Roger Alwen invited him, he was a guest at his table. It was the smartest he ever looked with his ‘ice-cream man’ suit on. He was in his element that night, and it was only five or six weeks ago. It’s nice he had all those things in the last 12 months.”
Scoop at the Lennie Lawrence Dinner at the end of April
Charlton’s former programme editors from left to right with ex-club photographer Tom Morris (second left): Rick Everitt, Matt Wright, Peter Burrowes and Steve Dixon
‘He showed incredible stamina but that was down to his love for the football club’
Steve Dixon is a lifelong Charlton fan who was involved in the Valley Party campaign. He was the club’s commercial manager between 1991-2000
“That press room in the sky is getting crowded now with Peter, Colin Cameron, Tom Morris and Kevin Nolan up there. All that knowledge.
“Paddy (Colin Powell) said Peter was at the club when he signed in 1973. For someone to maintain that contact from the late 1960s or early 1970s until now, he has been involved with Charlton for the best part of 60 years.
“He had to provide copy for the Kentish Independent and, at the same time, stay on the same page with Lennie when he did the match day programme. He had to be very careful because you can’t bite the hand that feeds you. He did that diplomatic area in a quirky but magnificent way.
“No-one has a bad word about him. You knew whatever he did was for the right reasons.
“When I first went to the football club we were producing the programme between us and he was faxing across his handwritten notes from his conversations with Steve Gritt and Alan Curbishley. I then had to decipher that….I’m not sure if you ever saw Peter’s handwriting! It had to be sent off to the typesetter to set it into the programme pages. It was like a spider had crawled across the page.
“I recall listening to him on LBC. When you are doing live radio you can’t afford to miss a beat or get it wrong - and he never did. His voice on LBC, it was legendary. He might have 30 seconds to provide you with a summary of the first half. He did it perfectly.
“I bumped into him reasonably regularly last season as a hospitality guest. I’d often see Peter and he’d come up and say: ‘I’m still here’. I used to say to Pete: ‘You’ll bury me - you’ll outlive us all!’
Peter Burrowes in the West Stand during Covid/Picture: Rick Everitt
“I’ve just dug out a couple of pictures from when we did a dinner at the Cafe Royal in 1997 and he looks the same as he did in the picture the club used on the tribute - despite a 30-year gap between the images.
“It won’t be the same without him. The idea of Charlton Athletic playing and Scoop not being there, that is hard to process. He has adapted to all the changes, when you think of all those people that have passed through that comms team. The first comms team was me, in 1991, and all we did then was a programme. After I came in we started doing magazines and videos.
“Then he had Matt Wright, Olly, Rick and Tom (Rubashow). He saw us all off and was there until the end. What stamina, for a man of that age to enjoy what he was doing.
“When the stuff was going on with The Valley in the early 80s, the only way to find out information was the local newspaper. Every Thursday morning, you’d run down the road to get a copy of the Kentish Independent or the Mercury. Because there was no internet, no digital TV, radio stations, bloggers or YouTubers. It was Peter Burrowes who you would read to find out what was going on and what was likely to happen in the next couple of days.
“I can’t imagine the number of press cuttings that I’ve got up in my loft, in various scrapbooks, that have got Peter’s byline on them.”