A 'typical' week in a newsroom? Hardly.

This originally appeared in my Bath Chronicle column on November 24 after a crazy week in the office....

On Monday night, November 21, I had the pleasure of talking to the Weston Local History Society on the subject of the local and national media – past, present and future. It was, hopefully, an informative evening for everyone but there was one point when I was literally lost for words. And that was when one of the members asked me to describe ‘a typical day’ in the life of an editor or a newsroom.


The reason I couldn’t answer immediately is that I realised there is no such thing as a typical day and although we are governed by strict deadlines, what happens between the end of one week’s paper and the publication of the following weeks is totally unpredictable.

And this week has really proved the point.

I was away for a few days last week, only popping back into the office in advance of the Christmas light switch on. I therefore expected that on Monday all the talk would be about John Cleese and the Christmas extravaganza but by the time I came in again the agenda had moved and we have gone on to have a truly remarkable week in the newsroom which really reiterates why the best jobs are those where you never quite know what is going to happen next.

For a starter, we were very short staffed due to holidays and sickness. We all assured ourselves we could cope – and cope we somehow have – but what we weren’t expecting was the astonishing amount of important news stories that had flowed into the office for our small team to deal with.

As hopefully you will may seen in the paper of November 24, it was a big week locally filled with both tragedy (the story of the soldier David Boyce killed in Afghanistan and the sad story of the woman who died at a Bath petrol station) but also with triumph in the shape of the light switch on which brought the whole community together – as did the moving march through our city by the servicemen returning from the Middle East. Throw in the fact that we had some fascinating news about expansions to two of our biggest supermarkets, an RUH fire, the build up to Bath City’s big FA Cup match and so many other stories that  put the whole team on full alert and that really was a week where I can feel even more proud than usual of the small but dedicated team who do everything they can to give you the best possible newspaper, website and Twitter updates.

Of course, we can only produce the news service we do by the fantastic support we receive from you all as our readers and this gives me one of those rare chances to say thank you for that. We care passionately about our community and because you also care passionately about how your community is represented this ‘teamwork’ means we can hopefully always rise to the occasion on weeks like the one we have just seen.

I was out talking again on Friday, November 25, this time to a group of students at Kingswood School about journalism. And one of the points I  made to them is that this is a job where you never quite know what is going to happen next and that is why it is so hard to answer the question ‘what is your typical day’.

And next week? I have no idea.

John Cleese is a comedy legend. Discuss.

This originally appeared in the Batrh Chronicle on November 17 - the night John Cleese switched on the Bath Christmas Lights

Tonight, thousands of people will line the streets of Bath to see the comedy legend that is John Cleese officially kick off Christmas in the city at the lights switch-on.


It is easy to throw around the word “legend” but I think the instantly-recognisable Mr Cleese deserves the term because he has genuinely touched everybody’s funny bone at some point in his career. And with comedy being every bit as subjective as music and art, that is no mean feat.

For many of us, of course, Mr Cleese will always be the tall spindly-legged one from the greatest comedy team ever assembled – Monty Python. Legions of teenagers have discovered Python and made a lifelong pact with them, and few groups of men of a certain age cannot do verbatim impressions of pet shop owners selling parrots, Yorkshiremen explaining how tough their lives were or people trying to stay optimistic while being, ahem, crucified.

And yet not everyone got it. No siree. For every Python devotee you can always find a nay-sayer, a non-believer for whom the knights that say Ni were just, well, silly (which, of course they were, which is the whole point). But silly without being funny. And from my experience (limited I grant you but stick with this) most of them were female. Monty Python is, I believe, predominantly a male manuscript of funny. And if you don’t agree with me I will hit you with a big fish while standing next to a canal.

So, to some heretics Monty Python wasn’t a feast of hilarity, so Mr Cleese & Co couldn’t be “comedy legends”. But then came Basil Fawlty. Trying to find someone who didn’t find that funny should be as hard as finding someone who thought a rat was a hamster or a chef who is fresh out of Waldorfs. Often voted the best sitcom of all time and repeated as often as the weather forecast, Fawlty Towers made our light switch-er-on-er a national treasure.

Our man’s status as a comedy legend was therefore sealed in that Torquay hotel reception – but if you are still not convinced then I give you the films. Aside from Python’s big screen outings (which are their best work anyway) I offer you the twin peaks of A Fish Called Wanda and Clockwise, two beautifully crafted, expertly written movies that were both funny and intelligent – something sadly which is often mutually exclusive.

Among all that – and I haven’t even mentioned the books, tours, film cameos or, er, AA adverts – there is something for everyone and that is why I feel we have something quite unusual in front of us tonight – a man that has probably made every single one of us laugh at different times. And how many other people, past or present, can we truly say that about?

Of course, I am sure none of this debate about his status means a fig to Mr C and he is just happy that he can still make people smile. But in a world where none of us seems to agree on anything, to have someone do their bit for Bath who is so universally admired and respected and whose work will be making people laugh when we have all sang our last Always Look On The Bright Side of Life chorus, should give us all a warm feeling, no matter what the temperature is tonight.