Burton Mail features editor Bill Pritchard spent a long week hoping that a pub landlord didn’t turn up.

He told HoldTheFrontPage: “Features writer Genevra Jones interviewed a local landlord who had been a rugger player and yachtsman. Now as Burton is as far from the sea as one can get, we thought it may be of interest to find out why he settled here.

“During the day the landlord failed to attend a protest meeting of Marston’s tenants he had organised. He made no mention of this when Genevra interviewed him around 5pm that evening.

“Although he seemed a bit glum about trade in the pub there was no hint he was quitting.

“It appears that following the interview and photographs he went to the brewery, dropped off the keys to the pub, and vanished.

“Genevra was on holiday and had filed the story for the Saturday Weekender section lead on July 29.

“There were various stories in the paper during the intervening days all saying he had not returned.

“The editor, Brian Vertigen, decided that if the landlord turned up then I hadn’t got a story which left me sweating on whether I’d have a Weekender lead, plus page of pics, or two blank pages come Friday lunchtime.

“Fortunately for me the landlord failed to reappear so with a quick standfirst pointing out that this was an interview given on the day he vanished the pages were filled and I went down the pub – no, not the one without a landlord”.

Do you have a story for us?
Ring the HoldTheFrontPage newsdesk on
01332 291111 x6022, or to e-mail us now – click here