Local reporter
The Richmond and Twickenham Times (RTT) was a traditional broadsheet newspaper in the one of the most well-heeled constituencies in the UK, with an electorate that boasted more university graduates than any other.
The title was owned by the Dimbleby family and I would regularly see David Dimbleby on a Friday morning, after we had gone to press the night before, and I can still recall the astringent smell of newsprint that hung in the air.
I was the Teddington and Hampton Times local edition reporter at a time of upheaval in the Rich & Twickers newsroom and the UK newspaper industry in general. Hot metal was dying and the computers were coming in, which meant a loss of jobs for the printers. Richmond was not Wapping but we were affected just as dramatically.
The R&TT’s chief reporter was about to retire and I still remember that he warned of the perils of not meeting people face to face as he used to do as young scribe. His advice was this, do not rely on the telephone but get off your arse and meet your contacts. I wonder what he would have made of emails and mobile phones?
My tasks involved doing the police and fire calls, crowding into the briefing room of the local nick with the other hacks, being told about the latest crime wave to hit our patch. Compared with what was to come at the Bromley Advertiser, it was pretty tame stuff.
I wrote up the Kingston Coroner’s Court, which introduced me to the sad and often brutal ways that people commit suicide. There were also those unfortunates who had too many drinks in the summer sun and then dived into the icy cold Thames, only to die of cardiac arrest. Even now I remember some of those heart-rending suicide notes, such as the poor husband who left his wife a note saying he would be “hanging around the park’, a real example of gallows humour.
I covered the June 1983 General Election, which I believe as the last hot metal coverage of a UK national election by a local newspaper. I hope so, because soon after the RTT print unions and National Union of Journalists went on strike because of the plan to move the print production to Nottingham.
Hard to believe that we opposed such technology but those were the times and I had to give up a job I loved and started a long, pre-M25 drive from Hounslow to Bromley, a journey that took nearly two hours in my rusty Ford Escort.
Bromley Advertiser, reporter
The Bromley Advertiser office was in a converted house, with a newsroom the size of a matchbox. The typewriters were far older than the aspiring youngsters, many of whom wanted to work on the News of the World. I was not one of them.
My memory of Bromley is that it was a more ‘lively’ area than Richmond, including the time I got chased down the street by one unhappy person whose family was in the news for the wrong reason. You had to be fit and fast in Bromley.
So, it was a great relief to receive a call from a former colleague at Brenards about a job at something called Air Cargo News. A trade journalist! What a come down, but it was just a 20 minutes drive from home. It was the best decision of my career.
