Mike Amos is a great friend, a fellow product of Shildon, Co Durham and the man responsible for the chance in journalism that my deeply unimpressive educational background failed to justify. As my first chief reporter, running the Bishop Auckland district office of the Northern, later Evening Despatch (and later still defunct relic of provincial evening newspapers), he was an invaluable mentor. To boot, he's the godfather of my elder daughter and once accepted my Blonde on Blonde double album by Bob Dylan in settlement of a stubborn debt.
Declarations of interest over, Mike is beyond sane doubt a giant of journalism, a multiple award winner and arguably the giant of journalism's regional newspaper form. A reporter bold or vain enough to publish memoirs finds his or her work of notoriously little interest to those not in the trade or having blood ties to the author; Mike, with his newly published autobiography is one exception (another friend contemplating his own may yet prove another).
My copy is paid for and in the post. Given the state of postal services, I'll be lucky if the book has yet crossed the Channel and Mike's cheque will probably arrive just after Brexit causes the pound to be devalued still further. Here, in a third-person but as-told-to kind of piece intended for the Shildon Town Crier but delayed by that organ's non-appearance during the Covid-19 crisis, is a snapshot of what to expect from the book ...
Veteran North-East journalist Mike Amos – Shildon lad and very proud of it – has written a 400-page autobiography chronicling his 55 years in journalism, almost all on The Northern Echo.
Titled Unconsidered Trifles, it overflows with anecdotes of local lads from safe blower George Reynolds to television star George Romaines and from much-loved entertainer Bert Trussler to LibDem councillor Tommy Taylor, who ended up in hospital after a colleague at the [Shildon] Wagon Works accidentally caught his elbow while Tom was cleaning was from his ear with a matchstick.
The doctor at Darlington Memorial [Hospital] really did ask if he’d enjoyed the match.
Unconsidered Trifles also recounts how chart-topping American singer Del Shannon was turned away from a sold-out [New] Shildon Workmen’s Club despite insisting that he was the turn – “they all say that,” said the doorman [demanding his club membership card] – and how Peters and Lee, No 1 in 1972, played the GR Club for £15 between them.
Owned by George Reynolds, the GR Club was at the bottom of Main Street – formerly the Snowplough Hall and now an Asian restaurant. Mike recalls walking home from Tindale Crescent late one night when a battered Thames van pulled up alongside.
The driver, a chap in dark glasses, sought directions to the club. Mike said he’d be passing in in a couple of miles and was invited to hop in. The driver was an attractive young lady. Soon it transpired that they really were the double act who’d hit No 1 a couple of weeks earlier but who George had booked for buttons a few months earlier [still].
Familiar leather hat on his head, GR paced outside the eponymous club, told them they were late and was generally pretty ungrateful. Lenny Peters, who was blind, told him that they’d kept their side of the bargain and wondered if they might have a bit more than the footling fee they’d been promised.
George pulled out a bit of paper. “What’s it say on there?” he demanded.
“Fifteen pounds, Mr Reynolds,” said Lenny Peters, [perhaps wishing he had not theoretically recovered his eyesight].
“Then 15 quid’s what you’re getting,” said George.
Mike Amos is one of male twins, born in 1946 in the Hardwick Hall maternity hospital in Sedgefield and raised in Albert Street, just below the King William [pub].
Sir John Harrison was another Albert Street boy, Mike recalls – born there in 1860 and after emigrating with his parents becoming a leading architect and national celebrity in Australia.
Mike and his brother Dave attended Timothy Hackworth junior mixed and infants, were taught for three years by Tom Coates in a class of 50, 47 of whom passed the 11+ and headed for grammar school in Bishop Auckland.
On his first day in the infants he also met Mike Armitage, later to become a long-serving secretary of Shildon Football Club and a much respected member of the national FA Council. The two remained best friends from that nervous first day at school until Mike Armitage’s death, aged 60.
Without help from the dole office in Main Street, Mike Amos began in newspapers after A-levels, a £9 1s 6d a week junior reporter in the Bishop Auckland office of the Northern Despatch, sister paper to the Echo. By his early 20s he was also an Independent member of Shildon Urban District Council and churchwarden, church council secretary and parish newspaper editor at St John’s.
The book also records that, after O-levels, the church youth club went on a holiday – organised by Geoff Clarkson, the curate – to Biarritz, the millionaires’ playground on the French Atlantic coast. Perhaps wisely, it doesn’t go into too much more detail.
He left Shildon at 26, has long lived at Middleton Tyas, near Scotch Corner, but frequently returns for a beer with old friends and to watch the football club. For 20 years he was also chairman of the Northern League, almost his last formal duty in that role to present the league championship trophy to the Railwaymen in 2016 – the club’s first title since 1939.
He was seven times named North East Journalist of the Year between 1988-2005, won three national awards for his Backtrack sports column, was appointed MBE in 2006 for services to journalism in North East England – an award presented by the Queen herself – and was an inaugural member of the Provincial Journalism Hall of Fame.
Unconsidered Trifles, comprehensively and nostalgically illustrated, was completed after his redundancy from the Echo in December 2019. Though the book affectionately embraces the entire North East, many other Shildon stories include:
- The blizzard weekend in March 1983 when many guests at the Shildon police dinner/dance at the Civic Hall had to stay overnight on the floor
- The curate who slept in – for evensong
- The late night taxi driver summoned to the Timothy Hackworth who spent an hour outside the museum oƒ that name before realising that Mike meant the pub
- The occasion that Mike was put on a fizzer at Old Shildon WMC – and what happened next
- The unforgettable day out with Mike Hardy and the Shildon Countryside Movement to a pro-hunting
protest march in London. - The former wagon works employee who at 100 became Britain’s oldest active sportsman
- Memories of PC Tom Trebilcock, the best known police officer in the town
- Why the back street behind the family home was the most popular kids’ football pitch in Shildon
- How long serving councillor Walter Nunn passed the journey from the district council headquarters in Spennymoor to County Hall in Durham
- The Shildon lad who took charge of the fireworks for the Queen’s golden jubilee at Buckingham Palace – and other pyrotechnics around the world.
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Sub-titled “Memories of a jobbing journalist”, Unconsidered Trifles costs £10 softback and £22 hardback. Essential reading for townsfolk past and present, it’s available from Mike Amos at 8 Oakfields, Middleton Tyas, Richmond, North Yorkshire DL10 6SD. Please add postage, £3 20 softback and £3 80 hardback. Further details, including online payment, email him at [email protected]. Cheques should be made payable to Mike Amos.
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