21 July 2023

By Chris Dodd

Chris Dodd on the movie man who steered his boat ashore.

Derek Malcolm, the Guardian’s film critic for more than 25 years who has died aged 91, joined the newspaper in Manchester in the mid-1960s as a sub editor after brief careers as a steeplechase jockey and an actor. He soon transferred to the London office where his slight form harboured brilliant humour, conviviality and intelligent criticism. After retiring from the Guardian, he contributed to the London Evening Standard and Sky Arts.

Incidentally, I am pretty sure that he panned the Oxford mutiny movie True Blue; it’s a pity that he will miss The Boys in the Boat. He used his talents in the office as a tipster as well as a film critic, once basing the character of the runners in the Grand National on his horror scope of senior editorial staff. His amenable talents stood him in good stead in cinemas and film festivals round the world and in the colourful life he led as a cox at school, a tragic home life and scrapes with gangsters associated with the notorious Krays.

In 2003 Derek published Family Secrets, a book that told the story of his father’s crime of passion. When he was 16 Derek discovered that his father, Lt Douglas Malcolm, returned on leave from France in 1917 to find that his society-beauty wife was having an affair with a ‘Russian-Polish adventurer’ named Anton Baumberg. Douglas went round to Baumberg’s flat and shot him dead. The jury accepted his argument that his action was in self-defence. After his father died, an aunt revealed to Derek that his biological father was not Douglas, but a senior staffer at the Italian consulate in London.

Derek was schooled at Eton, which he absolutely hated. His small frame destined him to be a Wet Bob, an episode that he shared with readers of Regatta magazine. His view of coxing was dogged by having to get up earlier than usual, being thrown in the river frequently both for losing and winning, in the latter case due to the efforts of the oarsmen, not the cox, and feeling as if he was labelled with weakness and inability to grow up.

Malcolm eventually became a Dry Bob and played squash, but not before he and his stroke took revenge on their coach for writing their crew off. The coach issued instructions to Derek: ‘Just keep them together,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry if I fall off my bicycle. They go so slowly I’ll catch up in no time.’ Cox and stroke devised a gin trap using a toilet seat, and succeeded in de-seating the coach. The crew stormed away in their best ever row. Derek, of course, received the blame, and was kicked out of the Wet Bobs. Result.

Derek Elliston Michael Malcolm, film critic, born 12 May 1932, died 15 July 2023.