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George Andrews
24-11-20

Brian James
23-05-20

Robert Paul Ziff

06-04-20

D.O.D:
06-04-20
Profile:
Robert Paul Ziff was born in Leeds in 1935, the youngest child of Annie (née Gilston) and Max Ziff. He had an older sister, Sybil, who married a sports equipment executive, and two elder brothers, Arnold (obituary July 27, 2004) and Neville, who both worked in the family business. The Ziffs were among the many Jewish families that had landed in Yorkshire to escape pogroms in tsarist Russia in the early 20th century. Paul’s Aunt Fanny worked in a shoe factory in Leeds, and in 1917 she started a shoe shop in a working-class district there under the Stylo name, which she took from her fountain pen.

When Fanny’s brothers returned from the First World War, they set up their own Stylo shops around Leeds. These were brought together into a single business as The Stylo Boot Company and floated on the London stock market in 1936.

During the Second World War Ziff was evacuated for 18 months to Rhos-on-Sea, a village a couple of miles along the coast from Colwyn Bay in north Wales. He was brought back to Leeds to attend Ingledew College, a prep school that echoed to the thwack of slipper. At his next school, Giggleswick, in the Dales, Ziff excelled at football and maths. He was an apprentice in the shoemaking factory before joining the main Stylo head office. Poor eyesight barred him from National Service.

His parents had died about a year apart in his teens, so at the age of 16 he went to live with Arnold and his nephews, Michael and Edward.

“My father was very serious,” said Edward, “and he took the oldest brother role very seriously. While he went around the shops on a Saturday Uncle Paul took me and Michael to watch Leeds United, home and away.”

Through his work for the Variety Club of Great Britain (now Variety), the showbusiness charity, Ziff raised the money for the Mountbatten non- invasive children’s heart wing at Leeds General Infirmary.

At a charity lunch in 1986 the television presenter Richard Whiteley introduced Ziff to Lea Bambage, Yorkshire Television’s public relations director. They married the following year. They had no children and Lea survives him.

In 1999 Ziff was elected master of the Worshipful Company of Pattenmakers, the shoemakers’ City livery company, raising money there and buying a pair of 17th century pattens (clogs) for the guild. He was also a Bradford magistrate and a freeman of the City of London.

Ziff and Lea found their lives turned upside down in 2000 when he had a stroke that confined him to a wheelchair and deprived him of speech for the next 20 years.

“He never gave up,” said Edward. “Whenever I misunderstood him, he made a face, wagged his finger and I had to offer my hand for him to give me a gentle smack.”

Paul Ziff, shoemaker, was born on December 20, 1935. He died of pneumonia on June 4, 2020, aged 84