The Community Council's Lunch Club welcomed a distinguished guest to its most recent meeting.
George Edwards was editor of the South Wales Evening Post, having enjoyed a career in journalism spanning 44 years. Mr Edwards was the club's after-luch speaker on 5 June. When he was 12, George wrote to the football writer of his local evening paper, the Derby Evening Telegraph, and told him his ambition was to have his job some day. He received an eight-page reply giving advice and on July 28, 1958, at the age of 16, George left school and joined the Telegraph as a trainee reporter. He remembered his first wage as being £3.2s.6d a week for duties which included standing outside churches taking names for funeral reports. In 1963 George decided to become a freelance in the Peak District and in August that year he won his scoop interview and a handshake with John F Kennedy who had called in to see his sister’s grave at Chatsworth Park after a presidential visit to Manchester. The world’s press was not told of the visit, but George and his freelance colleague found out about it and were the only journalists present when JFK’s helicopter landed at Chatsworth. The story went round the world, three months before the president’s assassination. George also spoke about his friendship with Brian Clough; how his first editor refused his first ever expenses claim (for three-pence) on the basis that he was young enough to run to cover stories, rather than take a bus - and how one reader tried to claim £4m from the South Wales Evening Post for the use of a picture of his daughter. George was just one of many speakers we have welcomed to the lunch club. If you want to join us for lunch, you will find a warm welcome, good company - and some excellent, nutritious food. You can read more about the lunch club here.
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