Jeremy Wilson

Jeremy Wilson exclusively revealed in 2020 that Sir Bobby Charlton, England’s greatest ever footballer, had been diagnosed with dementia. It was a crucial tipping point in The Telegraph’s ‘Tackle Football’s Dementia Scandal’ campaign which Jeremy has led since 2016, and means that more than half of England’s 1966 World Cup winners have suffered devastating neurodegenerative disease, including both Charlton brothers.

Tom Charlton, the younger brother to Sir Bobby and Jack, has also been campaigning on the issue and, prior to Sir Bobby's death, he personally invited Jeremy to see a statue being unveiled to Jack Charlton in the park where the brothers grew up in the mining town of Ashington. He then took Jeremy on a tour of the area - including the old terraced street in which Sir Bobby learnt to play - and revealed previously untold stories about their childhood. The result was a unique and evocative feature about one of the world’s most revered football families. An exclusive investigation into the “scandal” of how the Premier League treats disabled fans revealed that a third of clubs are still not meeting minimum standards, breaking a promise that they had made in 2015 under the threat of both legislation and legal action. Despite the £15 billion that the clubs have received in broadcast payments since making their collective pledge, personal testimony and photographs also highlighted the still appalling experience for many disabled fans of watching the richest league in the world. Leaked excerpts from a police report revealed that extra officers even had to be routinely deployed to protect disabled fans at Villa Park after people in wheelchairs were placed among the able-bodied supporters of the opposite club. Horrific experiences that were detailed across the league included disabled fans having coins and drinks thrown at them, being threatened and verbally abused, positioned where they could not view the pitch behind standing fans, and left unable even to access toilets.

After Manchester City striker Erling Haaland scored the most ever Premier League goals in a single season, Jeremy revealed the incredible true story behind English football’s “true” goalscoring record. During the 1927-28 season - some 65 years before the national game’s top division was rebranded as the Premier League - Dixie Dean scored 60 times as Everton clinched the First Division title. It was some 24 goals more than Haaland even during Manchester City’s historic treble-winning campaign and represented almost two thirds of Everton’s league goals that season. Jeremy traced Dean’s daughter and granddaughter to disclose what the no-nonsense Everton legend would have thought of Haaland and also revealed items from the Dean family’s original archive, including photographs, letters and tapes. Showing his versatility, Jeremy’s beautifully written cover story for the Saturday sports section was the largely unknown but definitive account of Britain’s most prolific striker.