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Features editor pens final column after 43 years

A retiring daily features editor has written his last column after 43 years with the same newspaper.

Bristol Post journalist Tim Davey began his career as a teenager with the Gazette series in Gloucestershire before joining the Post newsroom in 1970.

During that time he was worked as a reporter, news editor, TV editor and features editor and has frequently stood-in as editor at the Local World-owned newspaper.

Tim, 65, has written an an award-winning weekly column called Dazed and Confused for the past 10 years and used his final article to reflect on his lengthy career.

Tim Davey can put his feet up after retiring on Friday

He recalled his early days as a trainee reporter at the Post’s former Silver Street office before the move to the new purpose-built headquarters in Bristol’s Temple Way.

“The newsroom inhabitants ranged  from spotty long-haired youths like me, imported from rural weekly newspapers, to wonderfully entertaining scribes, some of whom secreted themselves away from public view behind teetering towers of old, yellowing, newspapers,” wrote Tim.

“But we had fun there, for all its inadequacies, and, because the Post shared the Silver Street space with its country cousin, the Western Daily Press, we could all enjoy the antics of its legendary editor Eric Price, a man who could hurl a cowering hack’s typewriter through the fourth floor window as good as the next man. And did.”

Tim, a lifelong Bristol City fan, also praised the city’s mayor for raising the area’s profile, spoke about his favourite local politicians, as well as the big stories which the Post has covered in the last four decades.

“Across those decades there have been some extreme editorial highs and lows, from the joy of million pound football pools winners to the riots in St Paul’s,” he wrote.

“From the absurdity of wrestling with Mr Blobby to standing alone in the middle of Axbridge on the night following the Swiss Air Disaster which claimed so many local lives. The sense of grief that awful evening was both tangible and oppressive.”

He admits to feeling trepidation at the thought of retirement after so many years with the Bristol Post.

“It’s an odd, quite eerie feeling, but back at home my wife has already made it clear she’s having none of my nonsense,” he added.

“I hope,” she told me, “that you’re not just going to sit in that chair and stare into space all day.

“With four grandchildren I’m guessing there’s precious little hope of that but what’s so wrong with staring into space? After all, as Star Trek repeatedly stressed, space is our final frontier.

“And that, from where I’m going to be sitting, is definitely something worth some serious contemplation as I prepare to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

Bristol Post editor Mike Norton said: “We will miss everything from his journalistic expertise and knowledge of the city to his curmudgeonly comments in conference.

“But we will especially miss his fine writing.”

 

 

4 comments

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  • January 13, 2014 at 10:55 am
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    Best of luck to Tim, a thoroughly nice bloke and a first class journalist. The Post and the (ever-dwindling) profession will miss him.

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  • January 13, 2014 at 1:31 pm
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    Tim, you’ll enjoy retirement. It’s richly deserved. You were a pleasure to work with, a brilliant writer, a mine of information and an all-round good bloke. I look forward to seeing you at Ludlow races.
    Andy Wright

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  • January 13, 2014 at 8:43 pm
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    Good luck Tim. There will be a lot of people like me whose career overlapped with Tim for a few years. A lovely guy whose only fault was his blind loyalty to Bristol City FC.

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