Cub Reporter: The Accrington Observer

A huddle of journalists was busily hammering at their typewriters the morning Irvine Hunt joined the Accrington Observer as a cub reporter in the heart of industrial Lancashire. A crumpled wire waste paper basket awaited on one side of his desk and a potted lanky geranium on the other. Two exciting years followed. Its half-a-dozen reporters covered everything from gruesome inquests to numbing blizzards, from Ladies’ Bright Hours to a store ablaze in the heart of the little Lancashire town. And there were the happy surprises. The contacts, the musician friends, two of whom became world famous. And the 30-shilling-a-week girl reporter who applied for an Observer job when still in her gymslip, who couldn’t spell, but who went on to become a successful publisher. Cub Reporter embraces a much-liked family newspaper, in which every name in print was expected to sell a copy, an era familiar to every reporter who ever compiled funeral lists of floral tributes in the days of hot type.