Paul Mackintosh Foot (8 November 1937 – 18 July 2004) was a British investigative journalist, political campaigner, author, and long-time member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). In 1964, in London he began to work for The Sun, as the trade union newspaper, the Daily Herald, had become, in a department called Probe. The intention was to investigate and publish stories behind the news but the Probe team resigned after six months. Foot left to work, part-time, on the Mandrake column on The Sunday Telegraph. He had contributed articles to Private Eye since 1964 but decided, in February 1967, to take a cut in salary and join the staff of the magazine on a full-time basis, working with its editor, Richard Ingrams and Peter Cook Foot's first stint at Private Eye lasted until 1972 when, according to Patrick Marnham, Foot was sacked by Ingrams who had come to the conclusion that Foot's copy was being unduly influenced by his contacts in the International Socialists. Ingrams has denied this, writing, "It was said at the time that he and I had fallen out over political issues Six years later he returned to Private Eye but was poached in 1979 by the editor of the Daily Mirror, Mike Molloy, who offered him a weekly investigative page of his own with one condition, that he was not to make propaganda for the SWP. In 1980, Foot began to look into the case of the "Bridgewater Four", who had been convicted the previous year of killing Stourbridge newspaper boy Carl Bridgewater. He repeatedly returned to this case, to the occasional consternation of his editor but believed this practice would lead to new witnesses coming forward. Foot and his colleagues looked through many thousands of pages of evidence and statements Paul Foot died of a heart attack at the age of 66. A tribute issue of the Socialist Review, on whose editorial board Foot sat for 19 years, collected together many of his articles, while issue 1116 of Private Eye included a tribute to Foot
