Results tagged “journalism” from Chester Chronicle - Chester Memories

FOR two decades, writer Ian Skidmore was a familiar figure in Chester. He pounded a beat that took in the law courts, cathedral, and Army barracks, the Boot, Bear and Billet, Swan, the King's Arms kitchen and the bottom bar of the Grosvenor, the police headquarters and the zoo.

He spent part of last summer on a nostalgic visit to his old stamping ground and now he has published a book about it - his 25th publication in 25 years.

Forgive Us Our Press Passes, published this month, is a comic biographical account of his career as a writer and broadcaster in the 1960s and 1970s.

Ian, 79, who used to live at Picton Hall, Mickle Trafford, and now lives in Cambridgeshire, said: "The memories immediately came flooding back to me - the people, the places, the stories.
"A few of the landmarks, most noticeably and regrettably some of the pubs, the Garret Anderson Luncheon and Supper Rooms (the Chester Dining Club), had disappeared.

"Some, despite my best efforts to support them, had actually disappeared while I was there. And some appeared to have been moved. But it was a wonderful visit, and I can't wait for the opportunity to return."
After revisiting his old haunts, Ian revisited his book, revising it and more than doubling its length by adding more anecdotes about the surreal personalities - crooks and policemen, judges, bishops and bookmakers among them - that he encountered during his career covering Chester and the surrounding counties as a freelance journalist.

Forgive Us Our Press Passes was actually first written and published as a slim volume of biography in 1983. It was chosen as the BBC Book of the Year, had the highest listening figures of any book broadcast on Radio Four, and was read twice, in its entirety, on the BBC Overseas Service.
Actor Ian Carmichael described it as "a comic masterpiece" and said he hoped it would be turned into a TV series so that he could play the role of Ian.

One reviewer described the author as "the successor to Tom Sharpe", and another as "a great eccentric".
Ian, married to award-winning children's writer Celia Lucas, has one more book coming out this year - a biography of the Welsh painter Sir Kyffin Williams RA - which will make his total 26 in 25 years.
He has a few more - at least four, he says - that he describes as "works in progress".
After that, says Ian: "I am hanging up my word processor.

"The Royal Literary Fund has been kind enough to award me a pension for my contribution to Welsh culture - two of my books are on the curriculum of the Welsh universities, one for students of history, one for geography - and I will try to exist on that.

"Thereafter my only activity will be to write my blog: www.skidmoresisland.blogspot.com.
"I don't get paid for doing it, but I can write what I like, when I like."
Forgive Us Our Press Passes by Ian Skidmore is published in paperback by Revel Barker Publishing at £9.95