It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Francis Ingham, DG of the PRCA, who passed away last week. As a beloved colleague and leader in the industry, Francis will be deeply missed by all who had the pleasure of knowing him.

Francis worked alongside many talented professionals during his career, including our CEO, Lis Lewis-Jones, who first served as Treasurer and then President-Elect of the CIPR while Francis was at the PRCA. Francis was instrumental in bringing Lis on board to chair the PRCA Council in 2011, where they spearheaded initiatives such as a client consultancy charter, new guidelines on evaluation, and the Dare Awards. Together, they also attempted to merge the PRCA and CIPR and set up a benevolent fund for the PRCA, although their efforts were ultimately unsuccessful.

Lis has been a board member of the PRCA since 2013 and had the privilege of knowing Francis for 20 years. Their time together was marked by Francis’s unwavering commitment to the PR industry and his passion for making a difference in the lives of those he worked with. Francis’s legacy will continue to inspire all those who knew him, and his impact on the industry will be felt for years to come.

Adrian Wheeler, a former Non-Executive Director of Liquid, has written a touching tribute to Francis which we are honoured to share on our website as a blog post. We extend our gratitude to Adrian and credit him for his contribution.

Francis Ingham

I knew Francis for twenty years. He was easily the cleverest man I have ever worked with, though he did his best to conceal it. He had the ability to think ahead and plan what he would do, how other people would react and what would happen. I was often astounded, but then I remembered that he’d been a schoolboy chess champion.

To call Francis ‘complicated’ would be an understatement. Whenever I thought I’d got the measure of him he’d surprise me. And not just me, of course. I sometimes thought this was deliberate; he seemed to enjoy rocking people back on their heels. Was he playing games? He was certainly a great performer and an accomplished actor. Perhaps he just enjoyed trying out new roles.

He’d been a fervent admirer of Napoleon since boyhood. Francis knew absolutely everything about him. I sometimes recommended an obscure book, but he’d read them all. Did he, in some way, model himself on his hero? He never said, but there were plenty of hints. If so, it made sense. Napoleon knew he was the intellectual superior of nearly everyone around him, and so did Francis.

He never owned a pair of jeans. He was the last person in Britain to stop wearing ties – but only occasionally. Even so, there was nothing formal about Francis. Quite the opposite. He just seemed entirely at home in his suit, so why have anything else in his wardrobe? I often wondered what he wore in his garden in Hampshire, rollicking with his four children. But I didn’t know him well enough to enquire.

He was always a host, never a guest. He was naturally generous and kind-hearted, particularly towards the young people he employed at the PRCA. If you went out for lunch or dinner with Francis, there was no point trying to pay your share. He wouldn’t allow it. He was born to be the host, the chairman, the central figure, and he lived up to it.

Over the years he acquired a reputation as a bon viveur. This was true, but it led some people to imagine that he did nothing but eat, drink and make merry. The reverse is the case. He was an exceptionally hard worker. His productivity was astonishing. What we saw was Francis in a restaurant – and he made sure we did. What we didn’t see was Francis spending long hours at his desk – writing, planning, drafting schemes for the PRCA and ICCO to be ever better, larger, more powerful.

Power mattered to Francis. He learnt this early in life during his days in local politics and as a trustee at various professional bodies and with the NHS. He was a natural politician, fascinated by the exercise of power and good at it. It was Francis who coined the motif: ‘The Power of PR’. To Francis, what mattered most was extending his ideas over larger and larger tracts of the world’s PR industry. He was one of the first to see that PR had surpassed advertising. Hence his new name for the PRCA: ‘Public Relations and Communications Association’.

His bluff, often hearty and sometimes mannered behaviour disguised an astute business brain. The facts are well-known. He tried to merge the CIPR, where he was Number Two, with the PRCA. This made complete sense, but not to a number of influential figures at the CIPR. Frustrated, he switched to the PRCA and in ten years made it ten times bigger. Not only that – he set out to make the PRCA a force and voice in the national economy, and succeeded.

He was naturally combative. He loved a fight. Unlike many in PR, he was happy to make enemies, though he also had a great gift for friendship. His friends were friends for life. He pursued his opponents like a dragoon, but if he thought of you as an ally his generosity was unbounded. You might not see him for a year, then bump into him by chance. Within a minute you’d be in a bar or restaurant, where he was invariably well-known, and the first bottle of Meursault would arrive unbidden.

His health was never good and he knew it. He chose to ignore his physical problems and behave as if he was indestructible. This was all part of his charm. Wherever Francis was you knew there would be good fun, good talk and plenty of good food and drink. He revelled in this way of life, at the cost – we now know – of his personal health. But Francis insisted on living the way he liked to live, whatever the price which might one day have to be paid.

He died far too young, obviously. It’s tragic to think about what he could have done in the next twenty years, let alone how much he will be missed as a friend and companion by the hundreds of people he helped, encouraged and entertained. What would he think of as his legacy?

I don’t know, of course, but I imagine it might be something like this: Francis was front and central in establishing PR and PA as serious and essential professional business services. Think of the difference in ‘status’ between 2000 and the present day. He was, of course, far from alone in this endeavour but I think it’s true that no single individual made more of a difference to our industry than Francis Ingham.

If this is indeed his legacy he would be pleased but not satisfied. To Francis, expanding the PRCA and ICCO was a work in progress. It would be wrong to say that his contribution was ‘unique’ or that he should be thought of as ‘irreplaceable’. But I wonder. It will be interesting to see who, if anyone, picks up his baton and carries it forward with a fraction of his energy, drive, ambition, single-mindedness and success.

Adrian Wheeler, Former Non-Executive Director of Liquid
18^th March 2023