Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Bob Worcester, who died on 5 September 2025, aged 91 years, will be best remembered as the Founder—in 1969—and long-term Chairman of MORI, Market & Opinion Research International, the household name for UK polling organisations for many years. Following the acquisition of MORI by French market research group Ipsos in 2005, he became International Director of Ipsos up to 2008 and subsequently Senior Adviser to Ipsos MORI. An American by birth, often describing himself as ‘just a country boy from Kansas’, he adopted dual UK/US citizenship in 2004 and was knighted in 2005 for ‘outstanding services rendered to political, social, and economic research, and for contribution to government policy and programmes’. While not a statistician by training and laying no claim to being a practitioner, he had an uncanny knack of understanding the potential value of various techniques and procedures which could demonstrate and illustrate his psephological work. He was an early adopter of perceptual maps to show the relative image strengths and weaknesses of various politicians, frequently invoked regression analysis to show associations between variables and published an article on political triangulation. He presented a paper to an Ordinary Discussion Meeting of the Royal Statistical Society in April 1995, on Political Polling: 95% Expertise and 5% Luck. He hired me back in the early 70s, amongst other things to optimise the use of statistics in various aspects of MORI’s work. Bob graduated with a BSc from the University of Kansas, had a spell serving in Korea with the US army, and worked at McKinsey & Co from 1962–1965, before joining Opinion Research Corporation (ORC) as CFO, until 1968. In 1969, he founded MORI (although it was known as Market & Opinion Research International for many years), as a joint venture between ORC, then owned by McGraw Hill in the US, and NOP, owned by Associated Newspapers in the UK, to specialise in four research fields which were in a more developed state in the US than in the UK—corporate image, employee attitude, financial services, and international research. Over the next few years, he and some of his colleagues bought out the original shareholders, so that MORI became an independent business. He was always a great anglophile, explaining that was why he had volunteered to set up and develop MORI, based in London, all those years ago. Over that period he served as President of the World Association for Public Opinion Research 1983/4, Senior Vice-President International of the Social Science Research Council, UNESCO 1989–1994, is or was Visiting or Honorary Professor of numerous universities, including City, LSE, Warwick, Strathclyde and Kent. He served as Chancellor of the University of Kent and a Member of Council from 2006–2013. He was appointed Fellow of the Market Research Society in 1997, Freeman of the City of London in 2001 and Deputy Lieutenant of Kent in 2004. A prolific writer, Bob was author or co-author, editor or co-editor of more than a dozen books and hundreds of articles in newspapers, magazines, and in peer-reviewed professional journals. He was Editor of The Consumer Market Research Handbook, first published in 1971, and of Political Opinion Polling—An International Review, in 1983. He was author of many books on politics and political opinion polling, including (with mischievous irony) We British—Britain under the MORIscope (1990) and Typically British (1991), both with Eric Jacobs, Explaining Labour’s Landslide (1999) and Explaining Labour’s Second Landslide (2001), both with Roger Mortimore, and Private Opinions, Public Polls in 1986, with Leslie Watkins. His list of papers in academic journals includes Political Triangulation: Measuring and Reporting the Key Aspects of Party and Leader Standing Before and During Elections, with Roger Mortimore in ‘Journal of Political Marketing’ in 2005 and A Statistical Examination of the Relative Precision of Verbal Scales, with Timothy Burns, in ‘Journal of the Market Research Society’ in 1975. He was passionate supporter of wildlife charities and held the post of Vice-President of the Royal Society for Nature Conservation/Wildlife Trusts from 1995, and of the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust 2002–2008, and Trustee of WWF UK. His interest in business and trade matters was manifested in his roles as a Governor of the Ditchley Foundation, Chairman of the Pilgrim’s Society of GB, Member of the UK–US Fulbright Commission, and Chairman of The Institute of Business Ethics. He was also Chairman of The Magna Carta 2015 800th Anniversary Committee. He was one of those rare people who could see the big picture, yet had incredible attention to detail, reeling off statistic after statistic in presentations, which he had taken on board from the full report or even the original computer tabs. He also had an uncanny—and sometimes infuriating—knack of opening a draft report at random and instantly spotting the only typo in the entire document! Like many great men, Bob was a complex character, very demanding on his people—and particularly on himself—yet capable of acts of surprising generosity. One evening in a local restaurant, I heard his unmistakable voice as my wife and I entered, and we spoke briefly to him and his guests; when I came to pay later that evening I was told that the bill had already been settled. He inspired great loyalty, with many of his lieutenants whom he had recruited personally choosing to work with him for several decades, a trait he attributed to being a sadist who employed masochists! In reality it had much to do with his vision, determination, absolute insistence on always putting clients’ needs first, and being uncompromising in acting with integrity in all things. It was a privilege to have worked with him for so many years. A man of prodigious energy, he regularly worked 16 hours a day, as well as having many ‘leisure’ interests, not least restoring and chronicling the history of his castle in Kent. He obtained his pilot’s licence at the age of 77 years. He was the best networker I ever saw. He knew everybody who was anybody, from politicians (he was adviser to Harold Wilson for many years, and chaired Democrats Abroad for a period), businessmen, journalists, academics and celebrities of all types. It was rare to walk along a London street with him, and not encounter several of the ‘Great and Good’ who stopped to talk with him. Indeed, there were clients who would set up a book, prior to meetings with him, as to how many famous names he would ‘drop’. The outcome was generally in double figures. Sir Robert Worcester was unique. Margaret, his wife of many years, predeceased him in 2020, and he leaves two sons, Kenton and Lawrence, and several grandchildren. They and all his colleagues and friends will miss him greatly.
Author: Roger Stubbs
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Funder: US-UK Fulbright Commission
OpenAlex ID: W4416057367
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