Chris Foote Wood


Chris Foote Wood is an English politician and author. He is the brother of the late comedian and actress Victoria Wood.

Education and early career

Foote Wood was born in Prestbury, Cheshire, and is one of the four children of Stanley Wood and Nellie Mape; his three sisters were the late comedian Victoria, Penny and Rosalind.
Foote Wood went to Bury Grammar School, winning the Senior Mathematics prize. He completed a four-year honours degree course in Civil Engineering at Kings College, Newcastle 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.

Political career

Foote Wood has contested a large number of public elections at all levels. He has stood for Parliament eight times as a Liberal, later Liberal Democrat and the European Parliament six times. He also stood as Mayor of Middlesbrough in 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 Lib Dem to do so.
He was the Liberal Democrat PPC in Richmond for the 2015 General election before stepping aside in March 2015. He contested Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland at the 2017 general election, coming third with 2.8%. He joined the Labour party in 2018.

Author

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, 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 biography of T. Dan Smith, the 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 County Council Chairman Alderman Andy Cunningham.
Foote Wood now works as an author, editor and publisher with his latest business, Northern Writers, and is an accomplished "ghost writer".

Works