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THE LATEST PROGRAMME |
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John Cole's experience as an apprentice
It was 1945 when I went for my interview as an apprentice journalist, with school-cap crammed into hip pocket.
When I told my father that the Belfast Telegraph were proposing to start me at £2 a week, he looked thoughtful and finally said: "I think you'll find, son, that it's £2 a month".
My father, an electrician, had stayed in work throughout the Depression, but he had earned only £2.10.00. Now he ran a small contracting firm, and had apprentices of his own, so he probably thought £2 a week sounded a lot for his school-leaver son.
In 1945 you were still a boy at 17, and expected to take orders from your elders and, supposedly, betters. When I cam home complaining that the assistant editor had bawled me out for not jumping to answer a telephone, though I already had pages of shorthand notes, and the senior reporters were lounging around gossiping, my father's advice was simple: "If they tell you to sweep the floors, you do it". My equivalent of floor-brushing was reporting flower shows.
But the Belfast Telegraph was reasonably short of staff, so I quickly graduated to more important work, such as reporting the Belfast Corporation. This was a tough assignment, as copy-boys from the office arrived frequently to carry back my reports for the next edition of an evening paper. So I had to write one story while taking notes on another.
Joe, a senior reporter and my mentor at the magistrataes' court, was a drinking acquaintance of the senior stipendiary magistrate. When he felt the need of his first drink - usually at noon - he would pass a note up to the bench, via the clerk (who was also a thirsty fellow). This read: "Outburst, please!" The magistrate would address some minor miscreant in the dock, warning him that such outrageious behaviour in future would attract a prison sentence, but that on this occasion he would let him off on probation. The story was written, and then they adjourned to the pub, leaving me to cover boring motoring cases in another court.
It was a liberal education in journalism.
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