Woodfield Publishing Limited

JACK CATER WAS A GENIUS. He had arrived at the Shrewsbury Chronicle via Fleet Street papers and the Manchester Evening News, the biggest evening paper outside London, of which he’d been News Editor. He had also been a Captain in the Army.

Jack was a curious, eccentric mix of strict military bearing, sensitivity, deep intellect, common touch, erudition, gutter language and wicked sense of humour. He looked and sounded fearsome as he bellowed and barked from his office, which was under a permanent smog of thick smoke from the foul-smelling pipe that never left his mouth save for lunch – invariably a cheese and pickle sandwich from the National Milk Bar across the road.

The senior reporters – all much older than me – were absolutely terrified of him. And with good reason. He could reduce them to quivering wrecks with withering critiques of their work. They would jump with fright when he summoned them to his smelly inner sanctum by simply bawling their surname…

"Turner… Ford… Wilson… Get in ’ere. NOW!"

That shout easily permeated the closed door of his office and could probably be heard in the street. He could never remember the name of his new junior (either that or it was a game to him) and whenever he yelled for me it was for "Boy" or "Marmaduke".

It was not for my journalistic contribution that I would be summoned to the smoke-filled torture chamber, but to bring him yet another mug of tea, or to go for a box of Swan Vestas matches, or to fetch his sandwich from the Milk Bar, or to run a piece of freshly edited copy to "the works".

On Thursdays – the day the Chronicle went to press – my job was to spend all day running back and forth to take copy and instructions to the printers. On Thursdays Jack was especially fierce, loud, irritable, foul-mouthed and unapproachable. It was also pay-day, so all the senior reporters would take refuge in the pub next door, leaving me alone with the fire-belching monster.

I would sit in a corner of his office while he edited the copy for the bulk of the paper, culminating in the biggest job of all – the front page. The pipe would be stoked and sucked even more violently, the smoke would be even more dense and acrid, and the air even more blue with filthy language than usual…

"Fuck me!" he would bawl at every bit of grammar, punctuation, spelling or writing style which offended him, which was most of it.

"Fuck me!" "Fuck my old boots!" "Fuckin’ ’ell!" "Fuckin’ Norah!"

Each expletive was accompanied by a vicious assault on the offending piece of paper with a violent thrust of his pencil and a puff of smoke from his pipe.

Every time his out-tray was full he’d shout: "Marmaduke! Get this off to the works and be quick about it. Go boy! Go, fuckin’ GO!"

Every so often I would be sent racing to the pub to fetch one of the reporters with a "Go and get me that silly bugger Turner" or "That bloody idiot Wilson" and every time I appeared at the door of the pub I was the most unpopular human being in Shropshire.

Out of this Bedlam every Thursday emerged a newspaper of real quality, massively superior to its contemporaries; bright, lively, packed with good stories and controversial, well-written articles, including Jack’s own column, which was every bit as irreverent and colourful as the man himself. It all stemmed from Jack. All the journalists were moulded and perfected in his image, and to his incredibly demanding specifications and standards.

On Thursdays I ran all day. In and out of Jack Cater’s office, along the corridors, up and down the stairs to "the works", where men in khaki smocks sat at giant typewriters with six feet tall machinery attached to them, out of which would drop sticks of hot metal type with the carefully crafted words on them. ‘Linotype Operators’, these men were called, and a mere boy like me had to treat them with the utmost respect.

Beyond the linotype machines was "the stone" – huge metal slabs onto which the metal type, the picture blocks (metal impressions on wood) and the leads (column rules) would be hammered in to create a page by men in leather aprons – the compositors – who could read upside down and were to be even more respected and revered. Then the pages would go to "processing", from which would emerge paper-mache "formes" of the pages to go onto the press, where they would be attached to rollers and smothered in ink.

Here the press hands would take over – men in dirty overalls who looked like miners because they were always covered in black ink – and with much rushing around, shouting and swearing, followed by ringing bells the monster press would grind into life, slowly at first, then ever faster and ever noisier until it was disgorging completed newspapers by the thousand.

Before any of those pages got onto the press they had to be "proofed up" for the Editor and on my return trips to Jack’s office I would be laden with armfuls of proofs, still wet with ink. When Jack had carefully read each page proof I had to return them to "the works" with his big tick and signature in red ink (a code because only the Editor was allowed to use red ink) to testify that the page was safe, approved, and ready to go. Simultaneously, "blacks" – carbon copies of the journalists’ stories – had to be taken to ‘the Readers’, stern-faced men and women who read every word to make sure that not even the Editor had missed a spelling, grammar, punctuation, factual or geographical error.

Sitting incongruously among the middle-aged and elderly readers, with their hunched shoulders and spectacles on ribbons around their necks, in the library-like silence and cathedral atmosphere of the Readers’ Room, was Shirley – a gorgeous, leggy girl in her late teens with a Helen Shapiro hair-do and skimpy, ribbed, pastel-coloured jumpers accentuating perky breasts.

I had a monumental teenage crush on Shirley. While waiting for the kettle to boil in the newsroom I would fix a love-struck gaze on her through the glass partition into the Readers’ Room, hoping that she would notice and respond.

Quite how she was supposed to react in these circumstances, I never really knew. Perhaps she would jump from the high stool around which she curled those sensational legs, come rushing into the newsroom, knock the giant teapot from my hands and cry, "Take me – I’m yours!"

That never happened. But on Valentine’s Day I received a card in the internal office mail. It read: "Though friends we two must be, I’m fond of you I will agree. Be My Valentine" It was Shirley’s handwriting. I knew it so well. Absolutely no mistake. Joy of joys!

"I’m in love…" I confided to one of the senior reporters, Tim Wilson, when I took him his tea "… with Shirley from Readers."

"You bloody fool!" said Tim, "She’s engaged to a bloody big farmer from Dorrington. He plays rugby for Shrewsbury. He’s built like a brick shithouse and can be a nasty bugger if he’s riled."

I never stared into the Readers’ Room again.

As the clock struck five on Thursday evenings, Jack Cater’s in-tray would suddenly be empty. He’d sit back in his enormous chair, twang his red braces, heave a huge sigh of relief, put his feet up on his desk, re-light his pipe for the umpteenth time, and hurl a silver coin in my direction. It was half a crown (two shillings and sixpence), always half a crown.

"Ere, boy. Take this and fuck off – and don’t go spending it on dirty women."

Dirty women? Some chance! Even if a 16-year-old had known where to find such a commodity in Shrewsbury, I was totally exhausted. I would drag my weary limbs on to the Midland Red bus, go back to my digs, have a bath to remove the printers’ ink that seemed to block every pore, have a cup of tea – and crash out.

Bobby Hawkins never told me there’d be days like these!

When he was in a good mood, Jack would sing Gilbert and Sullivan at an intolerable decibel level. He had a voice like a broken cement mixer but he was word perfect. His command of G & S lyrics was phenomenal. If the strains of "A wandering minstrel, I, a thing of rags and patches" or "To make the punishment fit the crime, the punishment fit the crime" or any one of dozens of others in his extraordinary repertoire were emanating from the fog-bound inner sanctum it was a signal to the senior reporters that it was reasonably safe to knock and enter and ask for a day off or even a pay rise.

Sometimes, without warning, he would burst from his office, leap like a 16-stone ballerina into the newsroom and deliver a virtuoso Gilbert and Sullivan performance for several minutes before looking straight at me with those twinkling eyes and demanding, "Your turn Marmaduke – Sing up boy!"

Gilbert and Sullivan aside, Jack’s other consuming interest, apart from his children, on whom he doted, was fine art. This big, boisterous, boorish man with a vocabulary like a sewer and the overbearing manner of a despotic military dictator, was also warm, caring, kind, articulate, musical, deeply artistic and clever.

I loved him. And I never met anyone who was anything even remotely like him.

At weekends I would go home to Oswestry and over illegal pints of bitter my pals – like me, all under 18 – would quiz me about being a reporter. They imagined it to be glamorous, exciting and romantic. I said nothing to correct the misconception… but if they could have seen me on Thursdays!

Over the rest of the week I was making decent progress. In the firm but kindly custody of Percy Kaye, the Chief Sub-Editor, I was learning well the basics of my chosen trade.

First thing on Monday mornings I had to call in person on all the undertakers of Shrewsbury – a suitably lugubrious bunch of Uriah Heap type characters – to find out who had died. Then I had to visit the homes of all the deceased to question widows or widowers. Career details, education, personal achievement, military service, sporting interests, hobbies, surviving relatives, ages of children… all had to be included in the obituaries. And God help you if you got anything wrong. A mistake in an obituary report brought the combined wrath of the deceased’s relatives, the undertakers and Percy Kaye down on your hapless young head and if it was a particularly serious error you suffered the ultimate sanction of being reported to Jack Cater – a fate worse than the deaths upon which you were reporting! If the deceased was of even moderate local importance you then had to attend the funeral at which your task was to collect the name and relevance of every mourner and to say who they were also representing when that was appropriate. Miss out a mourner from your report, or spell a name wrongly, or fail to mention who they were "also representing" and your head was on the block.

I had also to call on local churches, schools, clubs and organisations, talking to vicars, head teachers, secretaries and events organisers – all for the purpose of collating the pot pourri of parochial paragraphs which filled the pages of run of the mill "news" – all to be avidly consumed by readers of the Chronicle.

I learned very early the essential importance of getting everything right and I was tutored in that discipline by Percy Kaye, an elderly silver-haired Lancastrian – a gentleman and a gentle man – who was the custodian of this less dramatic but absolutely essential part of the newspaper. Percy would guide, nurture, cajole and sometimes chastise me. He was a stickler for 100 per cent accuracy, propriety and polite good conduct.

It was from Percy that I learned the hard way that most fundamental of journalistic disciplines… never to assume.

At the end of one exceptionally long, exhausting day’s work I dropped my last piece of copy – an obituary report – in Percy’s in-tray and waited for the obligatory clearance that it was OK and I could, at last, knock off and go home to my digs for supper. I was dog tired. And I was hungry.

"How are you spelling Davies?" asked Percy.

"D-A-V-I-E-S" I replied.

"Did you check that?"

"Well, no – but."

"No buts, lad. Supposing it’s D-A-V-I-S? Get back to them and check it properly."

The deceased’s family lived some three miles from the office. Juniors were not allowed to use telephones (indeed, seniors were strongly discouraged from doing so except in emergencies and on Thursdays) and even so, telephones were by no means to be found in every home. So all your calls had to be made using the buses, or on foot. You claimed your bus fares back on expenses, but that process took a week. This was a Wednesday evening, the day before pay-day. And I was skint. Penniless. Checking my spelling of "Davies" meant a six-mile trek – not to mention the acute embarrassment of having to knock on the door of the grieving family for a second time and admit that I had failed to check my spelling.

And it had been D-A-V-I-E-S all along!

But the lesson was well and truly learned – and never forgotten.

Percy’s son Peter was the Chronicle’s Sports Editor – dark, brooding, muscular and handsome, all the women in the office wanted Peter’s body and his babies. Mother Kaye would send Percy and Peter off to work every morning with a peck on the cheek and a tin box full of tasty Lancashire cheese sandwiches, made with crusty home-baked bread. Occasionally, Percy or Peter would offer me one of those sandwiches. I can taste them to this day. Delicious! I would strive to find some reason to visit Percy’s desk with a query about my work just as he’d opened up the tin box…

"Those butties look very nice, Mr Kaye."

"Would you like one, lad?"

"Ooh, yes please!"

No shame. No shame at all.

Percy Kaye – gradually and with contrived grudging – came to the conclusion that I was a good enough lad, that I was doing OK and that I might just make a journalist one day. It was the equivalent of high praise and when he told Jack Cater so in my presence one day I waited with immense pride for the great man’s agreement and confirmation. Jack said: "There’s bugger all of you, boy! Are you wearing those boxing gloves?"

With Percy’s sage advice on how best to handle the situation, I went to Sundorne Avenue in Harlescott to see a Mr and Mrs Morris in order to prepare an obituary report on a girl of 16 – the same age as me. God only knows what an ordeal it must have been for that poor dead girl’s mother and father to talk to just a slip of a lad about something so bloody tragic and life shattering as the death, from illness, of their only child. But talk they did.

I took even more care than usual over that obituary which, because it was the death of one so young, had been allocated more space than the others. I had been so moved by the whole experience and I was really anxious not to let that lovely family down. After it had been published in the paper the girl’s mother wrote to the Editor to say: "My sincere thanks to your young reporter Mr Barrie Williams for his nice concise way in which he wrote my daughter’s obituary report. It was indeed a tribute to her memory."

Percy was pleased.

"You’ll make a journalist, lad," he told me.

In next to no time after that I was "flying". Released from Percy’s custody and Jack’s Thursdays (there was a new "Marmaduke" now, poor little bugger) I came under the direction of the News Editor, Bryan Fogg. A striking, urbane, blond man in his early 30s, Bryan was impeccably well-dressed – the legacy of his time on Tailor & Cutter magazine in London – and seemed to me to be on another planet of knowledge, experience and maturity. He had a mind as neat and well ordered as his clothing and he ran a newsroom to match.

With Bryan’s meticulous guidance I was now trusted with reporting courts and council committee meetings and doing off-diary stories – good, mostly human interest stuff, which did not come from the daily round of institutionalised news gathering and particularly rewarding if you dug it out yourself.

I got to do the police calls… a vitally important process in which reporters from all the newspapers and agencies in and around Shrewsbury descended on Shropshire Police HQ every morning to be briefed by the genial Inspector Peter Minshall on all the crime, accidents, sudden deaths and mixed mayhem from the night before. This really meant that I had "arrived" – and I was only 17.

I was so proud. But something was wrong. I was being shunned by most of the other reporters. Ignored. Ostracised.

Why? What could make them treat a 17-year-old kid like that?

The answer was that in 1956 there had been a national strike over a NUJ (National Union of Journalists) pay claim. Journalists on some newspapers – and the Shrewsbury Chronicle had been one of them – had broken the strike call and carried on working. The newspaper and all of its journalists had been "blacked" by the NUJ and its supporters ever since.

Thus, a teenager who had been running around the school playground in short trousers at the time of the dispute and could not be expected to know, let alone understand anything about it, could be "sent to Coventry" for the "crime" of working for that paper.

The senior reporters on the Chronicle were a tough, thick-skinned bunch (they had to be, working for Jack Cater!) and they’d seen off the vicious victimisation by treating it with the utmost contempt, but anybody new on the scene got the full treatment. I had heard the senior blokes talking about it once or twice, but I’d given it no thought and I certainly wasn’t prepared for the intensity of it.

It was cruel and thoroughly unpleasant. And it hurt and upset me to the point that while I did my very best to hide it, I was often close to tears. One day, I left my notebook on the court reporters’ bench while I nipped out to take a break from a long, complicated case to find upon my return the words Black Bertie scrawled in huge capital letters all over my carefully taken notes, rendering them useless and my court report buggered. There was absolutely no chance of any of them allowing me to use their notes, even if I’d been daft enough to ask.

Childish. Nasty. And these were grown men.

It was my introduction to the trade unions that were to dominate the newspaper industry for the next two decades.

Gradually, like the rest of the Chronicle reporters, I saw it off by making it appear that I didn’t give a damn, toughing it out, giving as good as I got and laughing in the faces of the bullies. Although it was the very last thing they had sought to achieve, they actually did me a huge favour by thickening my very thin, young skin.

There were two very notable exceptions among those NUJ reporters – Doug Morris, who worked in the Shrewsbury office of the Wolverhampton Express & Star and Keith Parker from the Wellington Journal. Their refusal to be part of the callous blackballing of a 17-year-old boy meant so much to me, much more than either of them realised. Keith was always friendly and helpful and Doug, in particular, would go out of his way to make a point of his defiance, offering me a lift from police calls in his car.

My career path was to cross those of Doug and Keith many times in later years and we are pals to this day. Keith rose, through the editorship, to become Managing Director of the Wolverhampton Express & Star group – about as high as it gets in the regional newspaper industry. Doug retired as Assistant Editor of the Nottingham Evening Post.

The scrapbook of Barrie Williams’ by-lined stories that my mum was keeping was growing more impressive by the week. Soon I was producing regular front-page splashes and features – the non-hard-news content which only those who could write, as opposed to merely reporting, got to do.

Sent to cover the ‘topping out’ ceremony of Shrewsbury’s new General Market Hall, I chose not to produce a straight, boring account of the mayoral proceedings like everybody else but to describe instead the absurd mandatory ascent by ladder and scaffolding to the top of the 220-foot tower by a bunch of quaking, unfit, inappropriately-clad journalists, hanging on to each other for grim life and pretending not to be scared shitless. It was so funny that it cried out to be described in humorous and (only slightly!) exaggerated terms and it offered the irresistible added incentive of an opportunity for me to take the piss out of the NUJ blockheads.

My copy had been sent through to Jack Cater and I was enjoying a cigarette and that special feeling journalists get when they know they’ve written a bloody good piece when from inside the smoke-filled sanctum came a burst of raucous laughter.

"Williams – get in ’ere!"

"Yes, Mr Cater."

"This is only fuckin’ brilliant, boy! You can write! You can really fuckin’ write!"

I could not have felt more elated if I’d been told I had won a million pounds.