After almost four decades in the job, he is now Britain's longest-serving rugby league correspondent.
Hull and East Riding Mail reporter Allison Coggan tackles one of her own colleagues...

Richard Tingle, (57), is Britain's longest-serving rugby league correspondent following the retirement of Roger Halstead at the Oldham Chronicle.

It's a career spanning almost 40 years - 35 of them at the Mail - which has made him almost as well-known as the players and coaches he has reported on.

A one-time music correspondent in the 1960s, he's interviewed legends from The Who to Ike and Tina Turner and The Supremes.

His wife Sue "borrowed" his contacts book to arrange his surprise 50th birthday party.

She left messages for a stream of people, including a man listed simply as Kevin. She nearly fell down when Kevin Keegan returned her call.

Respected by players and fans alike, memories tumble out of him when we meet in a west Hull bar.

"My job is my hobby," said Richard (pictured).

"I'm very lucky and fortunate because I do a job thousands would love to do."

There were clues to his future profession, even as a child. He and his friends used to play a football board game with dice, with Richard writing up "match reports".

He stumbled on his first job after walking into the offices of the Scunthorpe Star.

He was given the job on the spot by the editor, father of actress Dame Joan Plowright who went on to marry Laurence Olivier.

The cub reporter, earning £3 a week, learned his craft the hard way.

He says: "I remember once, I'd finished a story and I was making myself a cup of coffee when the editor walked in and asked me what I was doing.

"He picked up my cup and threw it straight out of the window, telling me to get out to one of the coffee bars and find a story there."

A burly man with a no-nonsense frankness, Richard surprises me by revealing his strong belief in fate.

It was fate that meant he had a hangover and didn't take up his place in a car the day his friends headed to a cricket match.

The car crashed into Sutton Bridge in Lincolnshire, plunging into the river below, his friends killed by the propeller of a passing boat.

"That convinced me I had a future - or that someone didn't want me up there," he says, using his well-worn armour of humour to bat off emotion.

He became music correspondent as a scam to get free tickets for concerts. One night, on his way to see the Yardbirds at the Drill Hall in Scunthorpe, he was standing at a bar, waiting an age to be served and offered to buy the man next to him a drink to save him time.

His reward was an invite to a party, under instruction to say Eric had sent him. It was only once he arrived at the party that he realised the man at the bar had been Eric Clapton.

To earn extra money, Richard delivered newspapers to Gainsborough on Thursday nights for Scunthorpe Star owner Bill Caldicott. One night, Mr Caldicott asked if he fancied a job in sport. He did, and the rest is history.

Times were hard at the Scunthorpe Star and three years later he was called into Mr Caldicott's office and offered £500 if he could find another job in a month.

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