Martin Throssell, editor of the Great Yarmouth Mercury, is leaving the paper after 10 years at the helm.

Having spent 40 years in regional journalism he has decided to give up the busy world of newspapers and will leave the Mercury at the end of July.

Martin started his journalism career with EMAP on the Newmarket Journal in 1962 when the late John Sindall was editor.

He has since worked for a number of East Anglian papers, including the Eastern Daily Press where he worked as chief reporter, assistant news editor and deputy editor.

He was also the launch editor of the King’s Lynn Mercury before joining the Great Yarmouth Mercury.

Although now officially retiring, Martin still plans to keep busy.

He said: “I’m nearly 60 – that’s old enough to stop working. My wife has retired and I’m fed up leaving for work and she’s still in bed.

“I’m looking to pursue an interest in training – I’m an NVQ assessor and internal verifier – and I’m getting an allotment!”

He admits he will miss reporting on the changing town of Great Yarmouth, which has seen the busy years of oil and gas exploration in the North Sea pass and the holiday habits of people who had automatically spent two weeks there change.

He will also miss the opportunity to get news into the papers that other people would like to keep out – something he’s been proud of over the years.

He said: “Anyone can get news given to them on a plate.

“Our role should always be to look beyond that and see what isn’t being volunteered to us, and what is even being concealed. It means being in and knowing the community where you sell papers.

“A favourite story has always been a report about wife swapping out in the villages when I worked at Diss.

“It all came out of a throwaway line in a parish magazine and after the story started off in the (now defunct) South Norfolk News it went all around the world and I got a cutting back from a version of it in an American newspaper headlined Swingin’ Sticks, Sex Strip Chicks.

“I’m also proud of a letter I received only this year from a ladies organisation thanking me for regularly finding space to print reports of their meetings and concluding: Our membership has doubled in the past 12 months and we are sure this is due to your regular insertions.”