Today is the 40th anniversary of the publication of my first piece of serious journalism. It was the first of a three-part photo-journalism series I did for Leeds Student newspaper on the changing face of Leeds, which was then calling itself “the Motorway City of the Seventies” – another way of saying a large part of the city was being bulldozed flat to create a 4-lane inner ring road. (Ralph Berman, a medical student I shared a house with in Chapeltown area of Leeds was my photographer. Chapeltown itself would later become associated with the Yorkshire Ripper murders and race riots but that was outside my timeline.)
Looking at the back of my newspaper clippings for 23rd April 1971 (where I see I also came second, with 42% of the vote, in the poll for the student union vice-presidency) there’s an ad for that week’s gig at the university. The Kinks and Roy Harper were playing and the price of an admission ticket was 45 pence.
By coincidence, the 23rd April 1971 issue of Leeds Student was also the issue when the newspaper won its first Student Newspaper of the Year Award (it won the award for the seventh time in 2009) which was good going as the rag only began life five months earlier in November 1970.
The Times journalist Damian Whitworth (and a former Leeds Student editor) once said “Leeds Student alumni in the media are like rats in London, you’re never more than 20 yards away from one.” I’m not sure whether that makes me feel better or worse.
Where did the time go?
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