The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
Chewbacca, front pages and bollards
The editor surprised me one day last week. Sadly, it wasn’t with a pay rise. He informed me that Thursday, January 13 marked my 25 years of working at the Peterborough Telegraph.
Despite this momentous occasion we decided against having a party to celebrate as WE WERE WORKING.
I had no idea it was my silver jubilee but the news naturally sparked some personal reflection.
The first of which is that when I arrived my career plan was to stay at the paper for two years tops. That went well!
Here I am 25 years later married to a Peterborough lass and with two Peterborough-born children. And without trying to be unnecessarily morbid, I’m pretty likely to die here.
So in newspaper family announcement terms Peterborough beats Leeds 2-1. Born Leeds, married Peterborough, died Peterborough.
I had a nice e-mail from a lady in the company’s internal coms who wanted to do a piece on me.
Inevitably, there was the ‘career highlight’ question which I found really difficult as let’s face it I’m not exactly Woodward and Bernstein. But here goes...
I have designed more than 5,000 front pages for the Telegraph (most of them racked up when it was a daily, obviously), so that’s something.
And I was a three-time runner-up in East Of England columnist of the year.
I gave up entering after being beaten by someone the judges referred to as being like “the elderly aunt of Bridget Jones’’.
I performed a comedy sketch at the Broadway Theatre with Chewbacca - yes the real Star Wars one - at the Peterborough Children’s Film Awards. It was via video link (Chewbacca was in LA, of course he was)... and it was a disaster.
A timelag, a total lack of rehearsal and my ineptitude saw to that.. oh and he only spoke in Shyriiwook.
I was partly responsible for the installation of bollards in Long Causeway to stop the heart of the city being a free car and van park - I don’t know why I bothered!
And then of course there’s this column. It hasn’t been going for the full 25 years but even so I reckon I’ve probably churned out more than a million words – some of which have even been combined into coherent sentences. And I’ve never repeated myself once!
I’ve never been sued – although every week I’m acutely aware that could change at any moment.
I’m sure I’ve annoyed lots of people along the way but never one as much as the fuming Liverpool fan who took exception to me jokingly comparing myself to former striker Fernando Torres when one week I pointed out we were both suffering from the same knee injury. Amongst the abuse he had a point – Torres was a better player than me.
Not surprisingly, I’ve not always been popular with local politicians . Fair dos to them, most have taken it in good part of the natural rough and tumble. But I still treasure a message from one lambasting me for being a third rate journalist. That stopped me in my tracks – after all they know all there is to know about being third rate (if I was on social media I would have put a winking emoji here).
Here’s to the next 25 years. (I do hope that’s a joke - Long Suffering Ed.).