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Celebrity chef Rick Stein has revealed how missing out on a job at the Western Morning News helped set him on the path to stardom.
He told the paper: “I’d been offered a job as a sub-editor for the paper in 1973. Then there was a strike, so the editor rang me up three weeks before I was due to start and said the job was no longer available. So I bought a nightclub instead, which turned into the Seafood Restaurant, and it went from there.”


The first edition of a 300-year-old Edinburgh newspaper has been sold on Internet auction site eBay.
The Edinburgh Courant, first published in 1705, was one of the country’s first newspapers and a forerunner of the Edinburgh Evening News, ceasing publication around 1873.


Reporters from the Manchester Evening News have been out buying an illegal stun gun to show how the high-powered electrical weapons are available on the streets for around £250.
An undercover deal was set up and the weapon was handed over by a “heavily disguised” man, with his face covered.


Exeter Express & Echo readers have donated cash to give hope to a seriously ill Moldovan girl who needs hospital treatment in the UK.
Devon-based charity Christian Response launched the appeal through the newspaper to bring Nadia Vladica to the UK for treatment on a chronic blood disorder.


Bristol Evening Post readers are backing a campaign to rid Britain of danger drug khat.
It is a shrub that is chewed over along period of time and contains amphetamine, and the paper has published a petition form for readers to fill in and send in.