Peek at diamond past

UNCORK the fizzing champagne. Drag out the party hats and hang up the multi-coloured bunting. For I’ve made it at last, right to my journalistic diamond jubilee celebrations.

Raise the flag high as I quickly reflect on the sixty years I’ve experienced as a newspaperman, beginning as a 15-year-old cub reporter back in 1948.

My career began with the long-gone St Helens Newspaper and Advertiser, then under the stern control of an archetypical gentleman farmer.

My dear old mum had fearlessly barged into the Newspaper office, bearded the stern-looking boss and successfully demanded that he gave me a junior reporting job, which had been the centre of my schoolboy dreams.

My first wage was a paltry £1 a week (any idea how cash-conscious an old-time farmer can be!).

“Never mind,” said mum, “I’ll happily subsidise it!.

And you can have a new bike to celebrate.”

That bike did countless miles, being pedalled around my teenage beat of St Helens, Haydock, Sutton, Thatto Heath,Moss Bank and Billinge.

It was a kid reporter’s job, back then, to build up contacts with the vicars, the shopkeepers, the district councillors, the post offices and local undertakers --in the vain hope of one day picking up on a ‘scoop.’

God bless my mum, she’s no longer with us, and I just hope I never let her down.

Things have certainly changed apace over the past 60 years of my reporting life.

The town, once well populated with small family shops, was virtually torn apart over the decades for the building of precincts for major traders.

Some of those proud old family stores still battle on bravely, down streets that are now heavily yellow-lined but where you could once blithely park your vehicle at any time.

No threat from the new-men in blue uniforms, ready to slap a parking fine on you.

The old dance venues vanished. The magnificent Co-op Ballroom, tragically cut down to make way for a bland supermarket, was one of the favourite places to meet your eventual life partner.

You could trace the passing of the succeeding decades, from the style of the girls skirts.

The long New Look, followed by the swirling dirndl and onward to the tight mini-skirt.

The St Helens Baths, Holy Cross, Peter Street Institute, St Phillips at Parr, were a few of the rivals for attracting the dancers.

There’s just one modern cinema in town now.

Gone are the Rivoli, Hippodrome, Parrvilion (‘Parr Dog’), The Palladium, the Oxford, the Scala and the Savoy, where queues once wrapped around the block to get a seat to see a top-rated film.

I moved on from the St Helens Newspaper in my late teens to work at the Warrington Guardian, operating as a sportswriter and district man at Newton-le- Willows.

Next stop, the Post and Chronicle evening paper at Wigan, advancing to features editor.

Then I joined the St Helens Reporter as assistant editor, before moving on as a sub-editor with the Daily Telegraph.

Over the years, I enthusiastically operated my Whalley’s World ‘page of the people.’ It served the Star, from when the paper was nervously launched in 1973.

Despite some misgivings the Star soon soared and I became editorial director at St Helens and at its then partner, the Southport Star.

By an amazing coincidence, I am seated right now in the same room in which I began my career.

The Star recently took over the old-time St Helens Newspaper office block after the building had, inbetween, served for many years as a bank in Hardshaw Street.

Yes, I’ve enjoyed a rich mixture of journalistic work.

I’ve reported from as far apart as Hong Kong and deep-freeze Narvik, in Norway, about troop morale and the lives of St Helens-born Servicemen out there.

I plodded through the sweltering jungles in the Far East; and took up snow-skiing and living in an icy shelter within the Arctic circle.

But, much closer to home, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reporting about our own local characters -- the geniuses, the talented and the brave, the historical and the oddballs.

I’ve taken extreme delight in all the humour, tall tales, yedscratters and the rest of all the nostalgic stuff that has had tongues wagging happily among our readers.

I’ve made countless friends over the decades and this old page quickly built up a world-wide fan club.

Messages poured in, over the years, from people living as far apart as Canada and Australia, America, New Zealand, Spain, South Africa and Thailand, among other places.

And other ex-Sintellliners from many parts of Britain have forwarded their memories of wartime bombing raids on the town, the GI girls who left for America and the natural floods and streams that once almost engulfed the district.

And here’s a bit of heartening news. I am planning to write a book, in my retirement years, taking in my journalistic adventures.

It will feature many unforgettable characters who have blessed my working life. The world-champion boozer, the athlete who could stand-jump on to the back of a horse, the great canal swimmers of St Helens, the amateur (and well scorched!) fire eater, the publican who yanked out his customers’ bad teeth with rusty pliers, and the man who volunteered to have his ear nailed to a pub door.

These and countless others will leap from the book -- to be dedicated to all my Whalley’s World followers.