Photographers across the UK have been inspired and motivated by some of the great names in 20th century photojournalism. For Neil Barker it was Bill Lovelace of the Daily Express – with a little help from Jimmy Saville. Neil, now deputy chief photographer with the Burton Mail, told HoldTheFrontPage his story….

In 1982, I lived in Sheffield with my parents. Around that time, I wrote to Jim’ll Fix It, asking to be a sports photographer for the day, as I did a lot of this sort of thing at school – school teams and that sort of thing.

I heard nothing for over a year and in the meantime, I’d moved down to Sutton Coldfield as my father had changed his job. We had our post redirected (luckily!) as one day, over a year since I’d written originally, I got a postcard from Roger Ordish, the producer of the show, which said:

“Unable to contact you by telephone. Please contact this office re possibility only of a Jim’ll Fix It”

I didn’t take it in at first and my dad read it to me again and said, “You, errr, do know what this is, don’t you ?”

Then I realised….

We phoned the Jim’ll Fix It office at BBC TV Centre and they took some details, saying they’d be in touch, shortly.

A few weeks later, I got a letter telling me that I’d be photographing a football match. This subsequently got cancelled and re-arranged to photograph the Bob Hope Golf Classic at Moor Park Golf Club, in Hertfordshire – a pro-celebrity golf event in September 1983.

On the day, myself and my parents travelled down to the golf club and met up with the production team and Bill Lovelace, Daily Express Photographer. Bill is now retired, but was very highly regarded in the old days of Fleet Street – he really had been there, done that, bought the t-shirt and was a very nice person.

We spent most of the day photographing the golf event, whilst the TV crew filmed us and Jack Kay, Daily Express sports photographer, photographed the crew filming me.

Later that day, we travelled into London, to the old Daily Express building in Fleet Street, to process the films. This was the ‘old days’ of B/W film and prints (remember them, kiddies?) and we showed them to the picture editor who must have been suitably impressed, as none of Bill’s pics were used in the paper, being replaced by all mine of the event in the sports pages, plus a 3/4 page pic of Telly Savalas (Kojak) with an accompanying story to go with it in the news section of the paper.

It was a great day and I enjoyed it immensely.

Six months later, we travelled to London, to the BBC TV Theatre to film the actual studio part of the Jim’ll Fix It Programme and this was duly broadcast a few weeks later.

At that time, I had no specific idea as to what career I definitely wanted to follow, but this did set me thinking and I ended up on the NCTJ pre-entry course 1987-8 and started work as a trainee photographer with Surrey and South London Newspapers in July 1988, working an area from South of the Thames down to Gatwick Airport. In 1992, I moved to the Burton Daily Mail, where I am now deputy chief photographer.

I’d been working in London for about a year, when one night I was covering a Wimbledon football match and I met up again with Jack Kay, who was still working as a sports photographer for the Express. Bill had since retired. Jack then came down to Surrey and South London Newspapers a few days later and the Express ran a story on how five years after “The Express fixed it for Neil”, I was employed in the profession.

I still have the inevitable Jim’ll Fix It badge, together with the Express newspaper that my pics appeared in, and the print of Telly Savalas.

Back to the photography index

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