Chris Foote Wood

Chris Foote Wood (born Christopher Wood, Prestbury, Cheshire, December 15, 1940) is a Liberal Democrat politician in County Durham, England.

Foote Wood is notable for having contested a large number of public elections at all levels. He has stood for Parliament seven times as a Liberal, later Liberal Democrat (Feb 1974 – Newcastle North; Oct 1974 – Middlesbrough; 1979 & 2010 – Durham City; 1983 & 1987 North West Durham; 2001 & 2005 Bishop Auckland) and the European Parliament ^[1] five times (1979 & 1984 County Durham and Blaydon; 1999 #1 on North East list; 2004 #2 on North East list, 2009 No. 2 on North East list). He also stood as Mayor of Middlesbrough, 2011. Foote Wood was a district councillor in Bishop Auckland for 40 years, from 1967 to 2007 and was Leader of Wear Valley District Council for six years. He was also a member of Durham County Council for 12 years, Vice-Chairman of the North East Regional Assembly and a member of the EU Committee of the Regions, one of the three elected councillors representing the North East on this body and the first LibDem to do so.

Foote Wood's first nationally-published book, Nellie’s Book, about the early life of his mother, Nellie Mape, was published by Sutton in 2006. Foote Wood has gone on to write several more books, including "When I'm Sixty-Four" (1,001 things to do at 60+), and a comprehensive guide to the 56 remaining seaside pleasure piers in Britain, "Walking Over the Waves", launched on Brighton Palace Pier in June 2008. He followed this up with a "blog book" of his journey around the coast of Britain, "My Great British Pier Trip", as well as organising The Great British Pier Crawl 2008. Foote Wood researched, wrote and published a major biography of T Dan Smith, the controversial and charismatic North East politician, former Leader of Newcastle City Council in the 1960s who was jailed for corruption in the 1970s along with business associates who included architect John Poulson and former Durham Couny Council Chairman Alderman Andy Cunningham.

Foote Wood went to well known independent Bury Grammar School and is thus an Old Clavian, winning the Senior Mathematics prize. He tenaciously took a four-year honours degree course in civil engineering at King's College, Newcastle upon Tyne, then part of the University of Durham. Foote Wood completed the course but was not awarded a degree. He worked as a civil engineer for several years before starting Durham Free Press in 1968, pioneering commercial free press newspapers in the North East, but gave it up after three years to work as a freelance journalist and broadcaster. He later set up his own press agency, North Press News & Sport, and ran it for 30 years up to 2004. Foote Wood now works as an author, editor and publisher with his latest business, Northern Writers, and is an accomplished "ghost writer".

References

1. ^ Chris Foote-Wood's profile on Micandidate.eu

External links

• Chris Foote-Wood official site
• Chris Foote Wood PPC profile at the site of Liberal Democrats
• Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Chris Foote Wood

Persondata
Name	Foote-Wood, Chris
Alternative names
Short description	Author, Journalist, Broadcaster
Date of birth	December 15, 1940
Place of birth	Prestbury, Cheshire
Date of death
Place of death