FAMILY members have recalled fond memories of Oxford freelance journalist and motorbike racer Colin McPherson Fenton, who has died aged 76.

Mr Fenton died at his home on the Isle of Man on August 2, after suffering from cancer since January.

He was born in Beech Road, Headington, and worked until his retirement as an Oxford journalist.

He raced Italian motorbikes for five years in the Manx amateur Grand Prix on the Isle of Man, coming fourth in 1965.

His daughter Alex, 40, who lives in Eynsham, said: “He was a wonderful man and an exciting dad.

“It was never dull or boring, but he was also very kind and calm.”

He was diagnosed with mouth and throat cancer in January, and Alex and her three-year-old daughter Ursula stayed with him.

She added: “All those years of hard drinking and whiskey and smoking cigarettes caught up with him.”

Born in Headington on April 13, 1937, he had three older brothers — Ian, now thought to be in Sierra Leone, Gordon, and Paton, who now lives in Yarnton.

He also had two sisters, Maxine and Linden.

His father, John McPherson Fenton, was chief sub-editor at the Oxford Mail between 1928 and 1952 and his mother, Elizabeth, also worked in the editorial team.

After going to school in Headington, Colin and Paton became freelance journalists.

Retired Oxford Police Inspector Roger Tucker used to see Mr Fenton every morning at St Aldate’s station when he and other journalists would come to get the latest news.

“Colin could be a little bit cynical or sarcastic,” said Mr Tucker, 73, “some people thought he was bitter and twisted, but that was just his sense of humour.”

John Fenton left the Oxford Mail in 1952 to form his own news agency, Fenton’s Oxford Press Service, and on his death in 1961 the two brothers took over with another Mail man, Gordon Kitchen.

One of their first jobs was a call from a contact in Forest Hill who said he had seen three vehicles with their lights off speeding through the village hours after £2.6m had been stolen from a train in Buckinghamshire in the Great Train Robbery.

The three news hounds jumped in a car in the middle of the night and sped after the vehicles.

The trio got as far as Brill, a matter of miles from where the robbers were hiding at Leatherslade Farm.

In August 1967, Colin married Ita Mary O’Donoghue at Corpus Christi church in Headington.

They had two daughters, Alex in 1973 and her sister Ellen-Kate in 1974.

Colin worked in Oxford until he retired in 1989 and then moved to Peel on the Isle of Man in 2002.

His funeral was held last Wednesday at Peel Cathedral, and Mr Fenton asked that his ashes be scattered on the island’s TT track.