Fifty years on, Parkinson shows up once more
THERE WAS a reunion after more than 50 years for two NUJ members at the UK Pensioners Parliament in Blackpool.
One of the union’s delegates to the June event, John Ley, met up with guest speaker Sir Michael Parkinson, with whom he shared a flat in Manchester when they were young journalists in the 1950s. They chatted back stage as Sir Michael prepared to address a packed Blackpool Winter Gardens.
John Ley said: “I last saw him when he left our flat in Chorlton-cum-Hardy. He was a feature writer on the then Manchester Guardian and I was a reporter on the Daily Mail. He left to take a job as a feature writer on the Daily Express in London.”
Shortly afterwards John Ley also joined the Express, but as a reporter in the Manchester office, and he spent most of his career covering Northern Ireland for the paper before returning to England to become assistant news editor in the Manchester office.
In his speech Michael Parkinson asked why people were afraid of growing older and called on younger generations not to “shove” those older than them into a corner.
The NUJ delegation ran a media workshop to help pensions campaigners work with the media.