Bristol Evening Post No 2 Kevin Booth (pictured) has been named editor of the Peterborough Evening Telegraph.

Mr Booth (42) succeeds Mike Gilson, who has moved to The News, Portsmouth.

He will leave Bristol on June 2 and take up his new job 10 days later.

Peterborough MD Chris Pennock revealed that more than 20 people applied for the job and 11 were interviewed.

“The response that we had to the advertisement was phenomenal and I was delighted with the quality of the applicants. It restored some faith that there are some really good people out there.

“Mike Gilson had done a wonderful job here and the paper had gone from one success to another. We needed somebody of high calibre who could, at the very least, maintain the success and have the vision to take us to even greater success and Kevin convinced me he was the man.”

Deputy editor Nigel Thornton has been acting editor at Peterborough since Mr Gilson’s departure.

Mr Booth will head an editorial team of 52 at the two-edition Johnston Press title, which has a circulation of just under 29,000. The paper recorded five consecutive ABC increases and gained the supreme award at this year’s Newspaper Society circulation conference.

He told HoldTheFrontPage: “I’m delighted to be taking up the post. The Evening Telegraph is a solid, community-based newspaper with an enviable recent sales record. I hope to build on that platform.”

Mr Booth began his newspaper career in 1974, working on weekly papers in North Staffordshire until 1980, when he joined the Sentinel in his native Stoke-on-Trent as a reporter. He became crime reporter and was deputy news editor when he left in 1988 to join the Birmingham Evening Mail.

He rejoined the Sentinel as chief reporter a year later and was deputy sports editor when he left in 1992 to join the Derby Evening Telegraph as deputy news editor. He became news editor five months later and was appointed assistant editor, under Mike Lowe, in May, 1996. He left Derby in June, 1997, to join Mr Lowe at Bristol as assistant editor and was promoted to deputy eight months later.

There has been a series of major changes during the Lowe-Booth partnership. The paper has been redesigned; readers’ letters have been given a second page; two pages of business news have been introduced; an eight-page nostalgia supplement has been added; a full-colour 40-page sports Green ‘Un has been reintroduced after an absence of 17 years; and the number of daily editions has been increased from four to nine.

“I think one of the main achievements is that, after seven years of fairly hefty decline in circulation, we managed to stop the rot and record the paper’s first ABC increase for a number of years,” Mr Booth said.

The Northcliffe-owned Evening Post is currently BT West of England Daily Newspaper of the Year.

Mr Booth, a Stoke City supporter, played football to county standard in his younger days but his sporting activity is now confined to watching.

He is married to Trish – property manager with Newsquest Wiltshire – and has two children, Anna (16) and Alex (10), from a previous marriage.

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