Tea, Boy!
Looking for something to read? Then why not go in search of Go and Make the Tea, which chronicles John Phillpott’s memories of life as a young reporter in the 1960s.
John (pictured) started his life-long career in Midlands journalism as a teenager on the Rugby Advertiser.
It was the era when a young trainee reporter could be sent to a fatal road accident one moment and ordered to make the tea for the entire editorial staff the next. These were the days when a “cub” reporter might cover a budgerigar show on a Saturday afternoon and a few hours later interview Ray Davies of the chart-topping Kinks.
It’s all there in Go and Make the Tea, Boy! (Brewin Books, £9.95) – as the reprobates, drunks and various other paid-up members of life’s Awkward Squad splash across the pages of a narrative of life on a provincial newspaper back in the Swinging Sixties.
John, who has worked on regional newspapers as a reporter, feature writer, chief sub-editor, reviewer, columnist and letters editor, said: “Back in the summer of 1965 I managed to get a job as a 16-year-old trainee reporter on the Rugby Advertiser. What followed was more than four years of covering flower, budgie, coney and cavy shows, courts, councils, golden weddings, and the occasional horrific road crash. Blood everywhere, but no counselling available then.
“Those were the days of broadsheet local newspapers with astonishing story counts on each page, everything from one-par speeders, cattle market reports and auctions, to page leads that carried every cough and splutter from some local council bigwig who was in love with his own voice. Plus endless line-up pics... after all, names and faces sell papers sonny boy, and don't you forget it! No wonder newspapers used to go like hot cakes in those days.”
John, who lives in Worcester, has two previously published books to his name – The Shilling, the story of a soldier relative’s experiences during the opening battles of the First World War, and Beef Cubes and Burdock, a memoir about a 1950s childhood spent in a Warwickshire village.
