PERILS OF A YOUNG REPORTER
District editor nicked my exclusive and scooped up
linage (first lesson learnt)
King Street, Gravesend in the late 1950s
By IAN BAIN
Sixty-five years ago this month I sat on a bus taking me to the Gravesend office of the Kent Messenger and my first day in journalism.
How incredibly smart, how bloody brilliant of me, I thought to myself, to have taken a secretarial course at night school where I learned shorthand, touch typing and a lot more about girls than I had previously imagined.
The shortlist for the job of junior reporter had come down to a grammar schoolboy and myself. Henry Cohn, the district editor, told me later that my arrival in the interview room with the vital tools of the trade already in my pocket had overcome his understandable misgivings about the Gordon School for Boys, a secondary-modern with a terrible reputation and the last of nine schools I attended thanks to the meanderings of an alcoholic father.
I could not have been happier. In my mind I was the defender of Press freedom, the exposer of crime and corruption, the protector of public rights, the conscience of the local authorities. I was Clark Kent looking for a phone box. I was still 15 years old.
The first job Henry gave me was rolling up the subscription copies of the newspaper and licking the address labels. But it got better. I was assigned to cover the magistrates’ court three mornings a week and given my own districts, two 15-mile circuits that each encompassed two or three villages. Twice a week, I would borrow my sister’s bicycle and claim the bus fares, my first lessons in the great tradition of fiddling expenses.
In each village I would call on the vicar, the women’s institute, the local nosey parkers in the hope of a news gem, the pub, the police station – if there was one – and the teashop in hope of a free cream bun. The landlord of the pub in Longfield, where I got a free half-pint, said to me one day:
“Hey, Ian, I might have a story for you. I’m building a 40-ft motor cruiser. Taken me five years and it’s nearly finished. Come and have a look out the back.”
Obviously, it was a great story.
“Well done, boy,” said Henry, who always called me boy. “Just put the facts together and I’ll knock it into shape.”
I had sleepless nights before the paper appeared with a big picture and story and my first ever by-line. But on that same day, I also saw the story and picture in all three of the London evening newspapers. I knew how they’d got it. Henry and chief reporter Roy were their local correspondents and probably made more money from their freelance work than from their regular jobs.
“Once a story is published,” said Henry,” it’s in the public domain and there’s no copyright,” indicating that I wouldn’t see a penny of the proceeds.
“That’s theft,” I said.
“No, boy,” said Henry. “That’s life.”
I did learn one important lesson on the perils that lie within a lack of perseverance. The Southfleet village council met on a Wednesday evening once a month and the eight miles along dark country lanes with a dim and faltering front light made it a fraught bike ride. Once, in a bitterly cold wind and unrelenting rain, I’d given up pretty quickly and turned back, phoning the clerk of the council the next morning for the usual uninteresting bits and pieces.
On the Friday I was called in to see Henry who said nothing but passed a copy of the rival Gravesend and Dartford Reporter across the desk. “VILLAGE COUNCILLORS IN MASS BRAWL” screamed the main headline.
“I got a puncture half way there and had to wheel it back,” I lied. “Honestly.”
Henry looked at me. “Have you ever considered another career?” he asked. “You might want to give it some thought.” I was probably quite lucky to keep my job.
We had, briefly, the services of a third reporter. Dennis was gay and a drunk so life for him was difficult in the unenlightened era of the late 50s and early 60s. I once had to cover a case at the magistrates’ court where it was Dennis in the dock and where a policeman was reading from his notes:
“Observing the accused engage in an illegal activity with a sailor, I fell from the roof of the public convenience and broke my ankle. The two gentlemen were very concerned for my welfare and stayed with me until assistance arrived, whereupon I told the accused: You’re nicked.”
The chairman of the magistrates was impressed by Dennis’s selflessness and he gave him a conditional discharge, thereby saving his job. It proved, however, to be only a stay of execution. Called in on his day off to cover the annual Girl Guides fete, Dennis had spent all morning in the pub and by the time he got to this major event he was desperate to pee. With no toilet in sight and being totally blitzed, he urinated in the middle of the lawn, exposing himself to parents, Guides and the chief inspector’s wife.
Court reporting was pleasant and fairly easy, although I was consumed by embarrassment when sex cases were presented meticulously. I would blush fiercely or sit head down, carving my initials on the Press desk.
The Kent Messenger was an enjoyable launch pad for my career and even if Henry was never much of a teacher, he will always have my gratitude for the guidance he did give me. Some years after I left I was in Gravesend again and invited him out for a drink.
He hadn’t changed much, maybe a little rounder. “What are you up to these days, boy?” he asked, sipping his half-pint of bitter.
“I’m a sub-editor with the Daily Express in Fleet Street,” I replied with unrestrained glee.
“Well, there you go,” said Henry. “Didn’t I always say you’d make it to the top?”
Adapted from Ian's memoirs Singing in the Lifeboat.
Available on Amazon in ebook or paperback
12 November 2024
