A long-standing weekly reporter has hung up his notepad after serving the same newspaper for 40 years.

John Bingham has bid the Lurgan Mail a fond farewell four decades after starting his career there as a cub reporter in 1973.

He started at the paper under editor Louis Malcolm and went on to work under several different editors including Eric Villiers, Lindsay Kilpatrick and current incumbent Alistair Bushe.

After spending the early part of his career as a news reporter, John was the Lurgan Mail’s sports editor for many years as well as the deputy editor of the title.

John started with the Lurgan Mail in 1973

Having joined the newspaper when it was changing from hot metal printing, John remained a constant as the company continued to undergo change and is likely to be one of the few journalists to embrace both typewriters and Twitter.

“John has been an outstanding servant to the Lurgan Mail over the course of four decades,” Alistair told the Lurgan Mail.

“He was an old-fashioned journalist, with a razor-sharp knowledge of so many of the personalities and characters who have dominated life in Lurgan over the last 50 years.

“John will still be on the end of the telephone line for any help that we need over names and places and I’m hoping he will still have an association with the Lurgan Mail in the years to come.

“The staff at the Lurgan Mail and Portadown Times wish John all the best for the future.”

Often covering the council chambers and the law courts, John would have stories on the front and back of the Mail on many occasions.

Having served the newspaper for so long, John became the de facto historian putting together the ‘Way Back When’ page and ‘Back to the Future’ feature in recent years.

Away from the office, John was an all round sportsman in his youth, excelling at cricket and football as well as pool, at which he represented Northern Ireland.

Although John has officially retired from Morton Newspapers he plans to ‘keep his hand in’ by covering the local courts for the Lurgan Mail and Portadown Times as well as continuing in his role as ‘Mail’ historian.