Go and Make the Tea, Boy! - Memories of life as a young reporter during the 1960s

BEATLE haircut, one set of smart clothes to his name… and with a rock ‘n’ roll attitude hewn out of five resentful years at a boys’ grammar school.

This was the 16-year-old John Phillpott who, in that long-lost summer of 1965, started out on a life-long career in Midlands journalism.

It was the era when a young trainee reporter could be sent to a fatal road accident one moment and ordered to make the tea for the entire editorial staff the next.

These were the days when a young journalist might cover a budgerigar show on a Saturday afternoon and a few hours later interview Ray Davies of the chart-topping Kinks.

Yes, it’s all there in Go and Make the Tea, Boy! The reprobates, drunks and various other paid-up members of life’s Awkward Squad all splash across these pages in glorious technicolor, as this no-holds-barred narrative of life on a provincial newspaper back in the Swinging Sixties gets into gear.

About the Author
John Phillpott has worked on many Midlands newspapers over the last half century variously as reporter, feature writer, sub-editor, chief sub-editor, reviewer, columnist and letters editor. He has also written for numerous magazines and national publications. His previous books are The Shilling (Graficas e-book, 2011) the story of a soldier relative’s experiences during the opening battles of the First World War, and Beef Cubes and Burdock, (Austin Macauley, 2018) a memoir about a 1950s childhood spent in a Warwickshire village. John lives in Worcester and is married with two daughters and two grandchildren. He has also played guitar and harmonica on a semi-professional basis. His hobbies are history and wildlife studies.