In 1958 my brother Peter left school and became a cub reporter with the Croydon Advertiser. The story, as I remember, was that when Peter, who had spent the last couple of years of his education at Pitmans College in Croydon, had set his mind on becoming a newspaper reporter, writing more than once to the Croydon Advertiser. He was regarded as being quite clever in that department, having won a school competition for essay writing, it was succinct piece about what improvements in life he wanted to see in the future world.
Peter blagged his way into an interview with the Croydon Advertiser and he believed that they were trying to put him off, because of his age. He was 15 years old. They offered to take him on as a cub reporter at a wage of 10 shillings per week, which by any standard that year, was a very low starting wage. Peter accepted and the rest was history. His career led him to become a senior reporter at the Beckenham and Penge Advertiser, which came under the Croydon Advertiser banner, and then to the House of Commons as a Lobby Correspondent for a press agency.
A cub reporter was working under supervision of sub editors and senior reporters and given the lower, less important, task of reporting on minor stories such as, council committee meetings, obituaries, local organisations activities. A cub reporter would have no by-line, the way in which a reporter was accredited for a story in print. Much of Peter’s copy, the draught of his story, would be sub edited to make it fill the space. He might have felt proud in his very early days to have had an inch or two of column space filled with his copy.
All the work written by Peter, in his own name, I have been discovering at the National Newspaper Archive at the British Library. The earliest piece written by him, with his byline, was written in 1960. He was only eighteen years old.
Headline from the Mitcham Advertiser, June 1960 via National Newspaper Archive
In the Mitcham Reporter and Advertiser, June 1960, was a page with over half the spread devoted to adverts. There were two articles, one written by someone who had migrated to Jamaica and went up the Blue Mountain on a mule. She was described in a boxed headline. The other was by Peter who described a trip to France that he made for the princely sum of ten guineas. Ten Pounds and 50p in today’s currency. As the heading said, he was very pleased with himself. Wouldn’t anyone at the age of 17, travelling abroad on a hitch-hiking holiday?
Peter wrote this article in a voice that I would recognise today. Some dry humour about not wanting to aspire to what was regarded as a typical hitch hiker, khaki shorts and a huge backpack, sun burned all over. He travelled light, one change of clothes and a small tent. He went with a friend and travelled all the way to Paris.
“I have never contained any admiration for the hiking fanatics who wander abroad with huge packs slung on their backs and take almost everything needed to afford the luxuries of normal everyday life. By dressing themselves in thin shirts and short trousers they toast their skins and earn pitying glances from all who witnessed their feeble attempts at heroism.
I never tan; I only burn. I don’t like wearing shorts because they rubbed the backs of my legs red. And my shoulders just weren’t designed to carry 20 lbs. of dead weight.”
Reaching Arras from Calais on their first night they pitched camp at a small campsite where they discovered the typical toilets of that time, a round hole with mouldings for the feet. The least said about this, the better, said Peter.
The cost of living in France was not high but given the budget that Peter was on he described several meals consisting mainly of bread and coffee. Their best meal was to come the next day when they left Arras and headed for Peronne which they really enjoyed, bathing their feet in the river and having another meal of bread and coffee. They were successful in hitching a life to Paris with a truck driver who dropped them in walking distance to the Bois de Boulogne where they knew of a campsite. There was a refreshment hut where they treated themselves to sausage and chips.
This campsite that they had arrived at was a bit more sophisticated with better facilities and more sophisticated campers who were more advanced in their equipment that Peter and his friend. He describes his embarrassment at having to drive eight butchers skewers into the ground with the heel of his shoe to tether the tent
The next day they found a cheap hotel not far from the Seine. Cheap by our standards but not by his. They were charged 15 shillings each a night for two rooms. From here they started their exploration of Paris.
“The next two days for me at any rate were the most boring of the whole holiday. They were spent touring the capital, visiting most of the places we were told not to miss by our friends who had studied all the travelogues.
Our first target was the Arc de Triomphe which seemed to have been made purposely the most inaccessible place in Paris. The circle around the Arc is about twice as wide as that around Eros. The traffic moves twice as fast.
The Arc and its precincts were crowded, people clambered over the top of the monument and gathered round the tomb of the unknown warrior.
Our hotel overlooked the Seine. This may give a romantic impression but there was nothing beautiful about this. We were situated right opposite a piece of waste ground where all the barges dump all the rubbish they have picked up on their travels.
We were aware of the very good luck we had had on our trip to Paris and realised that we might not be so fortunate on the return journey.”
They travelled back to Calais via Arras and Bethune and Peter ends his story in Calais by telling us that they had a pot of tea for 4 shillings.
As travelogues go, this would have interested me in doing the same or similar trip. In the late fifties though, I would never have believed that I could raise £1 let alone £10. But then I was only 12 years old. When I did start work in 1964, I was earning the princely sum of £5 and 5 shillings. Half the price of Peter’s budget.
There is something of the style of Bill Bryson and Paul Theroux in Peter’s short piece, but a newspaper reporter is not always given the chance to flex additional writing skills. Column inches are the challenge and controlled by the sub editor and their pen.
Was this Peter’s first article in print with a by-line? I cannot find any earlier ones. Most of his work for the Croydon Advertiser, and later the Beckenham and Penge Advertiser, would have been space fillers with court reports and reports of activities of local organisations and group. This article would have been a milestone in his career, one that if he were still alive, he might shrug off, but not without some more of that dry humour of his recalling other, unrecorded, stories of that trip to France.
Mitcham Advertiser 1960 via National Newspaper Archive
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