Lincolnshire Echo journalist Peter Brown has retired after 44 years in newspapers – 40 of which have been with the Echo. Peter is also known in his guise as Pedro the Clown, who has been entertaining children for 16 years, but for hundreds of people he is best known for his Gossiper and The Way We Were columns. In his final Gossiper column he looks back on an enjoyable career…

Little did I ever suspect that when I first walked through the doors of the Echo office in St Benedict’s Square in September 1966, I would still be here six years into the next Millennium.

But in the world of newspapers, some very unexpected things happen!

It has certainly been a time of enormous change – not just for me but for the industry as a whole.

When I first started as a reporter, if I had wanted to send a story back to the office from some far-flung part of the circulation area, I had to find a public telephone box that was actually working, make a transfer charge call via an operator and dictate my words of wisdom to a copy typist at the other end of the line.

I would often be accompanied on my travels by a photographer, who would use glass negative plates to capture the images before he rushed back to the darkroom to develop and print his handiwork. These days it’s all mobile phones and computers.

The dark room has long since disappeared into history.

In the early years, when we worked five-and-a-half days and two evenings a week, and went to night school three times a week, I used to illegally leave my Lambretta in the garden behind St Benedict’s Church, across the road from our office. Today, we park our cars in a secure compound behind the office, and where barriers rise and fall by remote control.

The move to our present offices in Brayford Wharf East was something I shall never forget.

Some weeks earlier, we had our first glimpse inside the building when construction was still going on. We all had to wear hard hats and we were escorted up and down bare concrete stairs and shown where internal walls would be constructed before the opening date.

When the big day finally dawned, several of us eagerly piled into the lift with a load of desks and chairs, and the lift jammed between two floors – starting a tradition which was to continue, on and off, to the present time!

The Echo has gone from broadsheet to compact, and we have all shared in the pride when the newspaper has carried off national and regional awards.

In its 116-year history, the Echo has had just 15 editors – and I have worked under 11 of them.

There was one editor who would always introduce me to visitors with the words: “This is Peter Brown. He’s got the best job in the building!” And I think he was absolutely right, at least as far as the last 21 or so years have been concerned, when I have been writing The Gossiper page.

The page has helped turn complete strangers into my friends.

Through our readers, we have been able to reunite friends and relatives who hadn’t seen one another for years. There was even a memorable time when we were able to reunite a couple after many, many years. They ended up getting married and I was thrilled to be invited to the wedding.

I reckon I have done something like 6,000 Gossip columns over the years, and I would very quickly have run out of ideas and stories if it hadn’t been for the help and kindness of a small army of regular readers.

Occasionally, writing The Gossiper page has taken me into strange locations. Like the time in the early 1990s, when I wrote my stories sitting at a desk inside a cage at Gerry Cottle’s Circus, with a big African lion looking over my shoulder.

More recently, I was delighted when I was invited to become an honorary freeman of the city (above).

In my retirement, I plan to carry on my long-standing role of Pedro the Clown. So, if at some future date, you happen to spot a strange-looking character with make-up, red curly wig, clad in an outrageous suit, and juggling a set of fire torches, don’t forget to say hello – because it just might be me!