Still Lives by Brian Page

1:24pm Saturday 26th April 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

It was one of those magic moments that make you believe in happenstance.

It went like this: There was I interviewing another journalist in the pub (of course) about his new novel. Brian Page was telling me he believed every ordinary person in the world has a story to tell if only the reporter is interested enough to prize it out. And just then, along came an attractive young lady who plonked herself beside us and began to tell us hers.

She had come to York to see if the police here would believe her story about a northern council official who ran brothels and dealt in drugs. He had got her on to drugs and raped her, she said. But the police in her home city would not accept a word of it. She'd overheard us talking about newspapers and did we want to do a story about her?

She even had a book of scary, blood-splashed drawings and ramblings all about the sorry saga. She had created the book in mental hospital where she went to sort herself out.

It confirmed Brian's theory so well, I thought it was a put-up job to convince me, but not a bit of it.

His debut novel, Still Lives, is a nostalgic, touching but humorous account of life as a journalist. Most of it is based on true stories about ordinary folk he has encountered as a newspaper man, mainly in the north-east, over several decades.

There's the street sweeper who was awarded an MBE, the sexy launderette lady, the suicidal window cleaner, the battered wife out for revenge and the barmaid with a bizarre Barry Manilow fetish.

The novel's hero is Morrie Armstrong, a dinosaur in the brave new world of young editors who consider their newspaper is merely a brand', and that readers are customers'.

When Morrie's boy-in-a-suit new editor comes along, he upsets our hero with his corporate-speak gobbledegook and comments like: "Journalism, journalism? What has that got to do with the 21st century media market?"

Though Page denies it, other characters in the book are loosely based on journalists he has worked with, including me, though I swear I did not recognise myself in there. Which is just as well because he lifts the lid on the hard-drinking, heavy-smoking lifestyle and antics that journalists once revelled in but would rather the readers did not know about.

"To me, the best newspaper stories are about ordinary people who all have something extraordinary to reveal if the reporter will listen and probe. That's what the reader wants," says Page, who is immensely proud of his working-class roots and philosophy.

He has won numerous awards for writing and design and nowadays he is a freelance editor and training consultant based in York... but he still hankers after the good old days of newspapers.

I loved the book. It took me back, but frankly, I think he has been very kind to some of his old mates when I think of some of the stories he could have told. Phew!

And what of the young lady in the pub who told us her story of rape, drugs and corruption? Did we pursue it? Quite simply, newspapers do attract the loonies. And without incontrovertible proof, you can end up in court for libel and contempt.

• Brian Page's Still Lives is published by Exposure Publishing, price £5.99, and can be ordered on www.diggorypress.co.uk or amazon.co.uk