A toast to the great folks at Folkestone Herald back in 1966
HERALD CREW: Before they joined the Daily Express — Bob Smith, John Fox-Clinch and Nigel Lilburn, far right
CHRIS WILLIAMSON has finally got round to seeing a pic first posted on the Drone three years ago
Strewth! Memories and photo from the past.
The Folkestone Herald was my first job — junior reporter — found for me by my first wife's mother-in-law from an ad in the Herald. I was straight out of Ashford Grammar on the basis of my A level result (singular) — at least it was English!
So much to remember...
They taught me well, all morning searching for someone's initial or first name , you never forget to ask after that. All that wasted carbon paper.
Editor was Rob Wallace... I had clearly not done something I should have and told him I had meant to. He replied "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." In the newsroom in The Bayle one day, we were discussing the latest Ford Capri Rob had been test driving. Bob Smith, I am sure it was he, said it hadn't got much poke. The editor replied: ”Try reclining the front seat next time!”
The chief reporter was Ken Hamer. "Anyone in here doesn't like heights," he asked out loud? Muggins put his had up. "I have got just the job for you" ... parascending at Hawkinge airfield.
I had no idea what to write or how to write. Thanks to the chief sub Tony? who spent hours with me cobbling something together. I was always a reporter never a writer.
Ron Green, I read recently he had passed away. Always laughing, always with a joke. Apparently his wife rang to tell him that if he went to the pub after work (again) there would be no connubial bliss. "Another night of celibacy," he told us.
I remember Bob Smith and the jacket he is wearing in the 1966 photo. Always did, I think!
And Nigel Lilburn, he was at the Express when I was a sub at the PA on the opposite side of Fleet Street. I always envied him for his mastery of shorthand. Met him last outside 85.
There was Wiggy, can't remember why, but he was always associated in my mind with the bat cave. I was too junior to have ever used it and had no real idea about the great wide word of journalism.
The tall chap in the middle of the photo seems to me to have been one of the reporters, I think he was a Jehovah's Witness.
In my time there was only one female (reporter?) in the office — Avril. Why, oh why, did they nickname her porno? She was a nice girl.
My time was up when I told Rob Wallace I wouldn't sign my indentures as I wanted to emigrate to New Zealand where my then-wife's uncle lived. So it was off to the Kentish Express in Ashford (editor Max Quale — complete with handlebar moustache — and chief reporter Barbara Butcher (who bred Bedlington terriers). And I was given a van to cover the whole of Romney Marsh. Joy of joys as my parents still ran a pub in the middle of New Romney, so it was home for lunch.
Then New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation (radio and tv news reporting and subbing — should never have left), the PA night sub, foreign desk night sub, city desk sub, then Universal News Services as deputy city editor then news editor. Left the profession on my 40th birthday to run a pet food shop … ha-ha-ha — worst move I ever made. Since then I have been a firearms dealer, driving instructor, motorcycle courier, mortgage broker, letting agent, teacher of English for non-natives and now run a tutoring agency.
Memory still going strong at 75.
9 September 2024
