AND there was me thinking John Phillpott’s main claim to fame was that he knew a Pinkerton’s Assorted Colour. For those unfamiliar with this mid-1960s pop group, which may be quite a few, the band from Rugby had its one and only hit in 1966 with the extremely catchy Mirror, Mirror, a song that had dancers on their feet in every ultra violet-lit, dandruff illuminated night club across the land.

It was written by rhythm guitarist Tony Newman, a near neighbour of John in the Warwickshire village of Churchover, and he happened to mention the fact to me one day when we were reminiscing.

We did a lot of reminiscing, because John and I worked as colleagues on this newspaper for well over 20 years and shared a love of rock ‘n’ roll and stuff like that.

Ah yes, it’s that John Phillpott, noted WN columnist, chief sub editor, letters editor, theatre/concert reviewer and just about everything else bar the tea boy.

Although he had been known to do that too.

Which brings me neatly to the title of John’s latest book – there have been three of them so far – called “Go and Make the Tea, Boy!”, a phrase with which he became depressingly familiar during his fledgling years in journalism.

In fact our careers through the profession have almost run in tandem as we’ve shared the changes in styles, methods and attitudes which have affected the industry over the years. Although I began in ’63 and John in ’65 – that’s 19 not 18 – we both started during society’s seismic shift of the Sixties, which is unlikely to ever happen again and made it a very exciting time to be a young reporter carrying a Press card.

A belief summed up by John thus: “Despite the passage of the years I still look back in amazement at how easy it was for a newspaper reporter to gain access to all manner of disparate events within the space of a single day.

“It was perfectly possible to cover a boring old flower show on a Saturday afternoon and mingle with pop stars later that evening. It is an understatement to say that those days are long gone.”

Bearing the aforesaid magic Press card, he recalls dashing straight from the annual meeting of the Rugby and District Angling Association in the Peacock Inn to interview Stevie Marriott and the Small Faces, then at the height of their fame and appearing across town at the Benn Hall.

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For me it was skipping off from a committee meeting of Worcester City Council to chat with Jimi Hendrix in his dressing room at Worcester Gaumont. For both young journalists, such excitement was very much the cherry on the daily grind of news stories, accidents, court cases, weddings, funerals and just about anything else that happens to anybody.

After leaving grammar school in the summer of 1965, John began as a junior reporter on the Rugby Advertiser, joining a culture in which you were made very aware of your station in life by certain individuals. Hence the title of his book: a cry that went up whenever the more senior reporters in the newsroom (which was everyone else) wanted a brew.

However youth does have its advantages, something that was especially so in the Sixties as newspapers struggled to adapt to a new teenage market which suddenly had money and influence.

John found himself a high profile niche when he took over the Advertiser’s “youth page” and – something which will also come as an eyebrow raiser to his former colleagues on the Worcester News subs desk – soon found himself the most popular young man in Rugby, especially with the girls.

They would virtually swoon at his feet in an effort to persuade him to get them an autograph of the latest pop star he was about to interview. A situation which he no doubt milked, but sadly failed to bear fruit when John met American blues legend John Lee Hooker, who despite his enormous musical achievements, could hardly read or write. So no autographs, or anything else, on offer that night.

The book is peppered with all the sorts of characters, experiences, activities and inevitable mishaps that inhabited the newspaper world of the Sixties and I loved the one when young Phillpott in his parka and on his Lambretta scooter took a wrong turn and found himself accidentally caught up in the motorcade of Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who was visiting Rugby.

Trapped between motorcycle outriders and Sir Alec’s official car, he had no alternative but to go with the flow. “The pavements were thronged with what appeared to be hundreds of waving bystanders, so I waved back,” he writes. “A school friend among the crowd who recognised me was laughing hysterically.”

After a few hundred yards he saw a fortuitous escape route down a side street and took it. Today he would probably have been shot.

A warm and lovely book about how things were back then. As Buddy Holly once sang: “I’m just sitting here reminiscing...”

l Go and Make the Tea, Boy by John Phillpott is published by Brewin Books at £9.95.