A feature writer who has worked for a regional daily for almost 31 years is leaving the title this week.

Paul Taylor, left, has worked for the Manchester Evening News since 1982, joining from the Ashton-under-Lyne Reporter, initially as a news reporter then as a feature writer since 1999.

He has had his own column at the title for the last 14 years and also spent more than 25 years as the paper’s music critic.

Paul is taking voluntary redundancy as part of the plans by Trinity Mirror to axe 92 regional jobs and create 52 new ones across the group in a move towards more content-sharing across its regional and national titles.

He bade farewell to readers in his final weekly column, which has described the highlights of his time at the MEN.

This included a host of famous names he has interviewed, such as Paul McCartney, Muhammad Ali and Dolly Parton, along with the ordinary people hit by extraordinary circumstances.

Paul wrote: “In August 1982, I walked into the Manchester Evening News offices in Deansgate as a cub reporter. It was almost exclusively a man’s world: men beating out a din at typewriters while smoking furiously; men shouting ‘Boy!”, summoning a messenger to carry a scrap of copy paper to a waiting news desk; men heading off to the Abercrombie for a liquid lunch after the main edition deadline had passed.

“Almost 31 years on, this is my last day at the MEN. I’m moving on. No hacks clattering out stories in a fug of cigarette smoke now. No male-dominated newsroom, either, and the better for it.

“I have gone from typewriters to Twitter – a period of change as great as any since Caxton introduced the printing press to this country over 500 years ago. Where once we would rummage feverishly through yellowing files of old cuttings to research a story, the internet puts history at our fingertips. The quandary now is whose history to believe.

“And yet with so much possibility comes uncertainty. Straddling the worlds of newsprint and internet, the future of newspapers never seemed so uncertain as it does today.”

In his final column, he wrote about meeting ordinary people hit by tragedy, including the late Winnie Johnson, mother of Moors Murder victim Keith Bennett, and Colin and Wendy Parry, who turned the loss of their son Tim in the IRA bombing of Warrington into a quest for peace.

Paul also reported on the miners’ strike, the Manchester bombing, the trial of Harold Shipman and the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games, along with a host of Royal visits.

During his time at the paper, he has been shortlisted for feature writer or columnist of the year in the Regional Press Awards on five occasions, although he has never won it.

Paul, who now plans to freelance and to spend more time on his motorbike, added: “You the readers tell us daily whether you like or loathe what we write. But the most eloquent commentary I ever had on my work came the day I bought fish and chips only to find they were wrapped in one of my stories.

“We do our work and we move on….tomorrow’s fish and chip paper. And now it is time for me to move on.”

Paul can be contacted for freelance work by emailing [email protected].