Johnny Johnson’s greatest moment of fame in his long career as an Oxford Mail photographer came when he shot a wolf.

It was one of three that escaped from Oxford Zoo at Kidlington in 1937.

Two were quickly rounded up and killed, but the third roamed the countryside for days, causing panic in the community.

On the fourth day of the search, Johnny took his camera and a 12-bore shotgun with him.

He recalled in his memoirs: “I found 14 dead sheep in a field near Cutteslowe and saw the wolf on the back of another.

“The wolf went off, but later I saw it at the top end of a meadow.

“I ran to the Northern Bypass and brandished my gun at a passing cyclist who loaned me his bike.

“I rode to the Banbury Road roundabout, ran through the garden of a house, looked over a hedge and saw the wolf 30 yards away, coming towards me. I killed it first shot.

“I phoned the office to catch the Oxford Mail’s last edition.

“The story made front page headlines in the national papers next day. ‘Press photographer rids Oxford of killer wolf’, screamed the Daily Express.

“I did a broadcast on In Town Tonight to the background music of Who’s afraid of the big, bad wolf?”

In his spare time, Johnny excelled at bar billiards, snooker, golf and Aunt Sally and won many trophies.

His newspaper career began in 1922 as an inquiry office clerk with our sister paper, The Oxford Times, but the quality of his pictures – taken on a Brownie box camera – quickly earned him promotion to the newspaper’s photographic department.

During the Second World War, he worked for intelligence, on one occasion helping to produce thousands of photographs of military positions in the build-up to D-Day.

He retired in 1970 after photographing thousands of local events and died in 1996 aged 90.