A former weekly newspaper editor who married a local beauty queen after interviewing her for a story has died in Australia at the age of 94.

Christopher George, left, began his journalism career in 1932 at the age of just 14 when he became a proofreader for the now-defunct Thanet Advertiser and Echo.

After leaving the title, he suffered from tuberculosis for several years but was later employed again by the paper, becoming its last editor before it merged with the East Kent Times in 1955 and he became news editor of the combined publication.

Christopher emigrated to Tasmania in 1959 with his wife Jean and young son, but has now died at the age of 94.

He had met his wife when interviewing her as the beauty queen of Ramsgate’s first post war summer fair in 1946 and they married two years later.

After they moved to Tasmania, Christopher became a journalist at The Mercury in Hobart but he moved to become a television and radio journalist with the then Australian Broadcasting Commission and worked there for 19 years until his retirement in 1982.

He was the ABC’s parliamentary reporter for many years and had his own radio programme called This Week in Parliament.

Christopher, whose wife Jean died in 1992, leaves his son Martin.