Tony Patey joins committee

Posted: May 2nd, 2016

Former Mirror City desk man TONY PATEY  is the latest recruit to the AMP committee. He said: “It would be an honour if I could help my past colleagues in any way.”

Tony started in journalism as a rookie reporter on the Hertfordshire Mercury, and later had stints with East London News Agency and on the Bucks Herald.

He joined the Romford Times in 1967 and transferred to its sister-paper, the Stratford Express, as chief reporter at Barking and Dagenham. Al Shillum was his news editor, and among his mates were current AMP chairman Jill Palmer, and his wife-to-be Ann.

He later became news editor of Retail Chemist weekly in IPC Fleet Street. A scoop about a Swiss drugs company coincided with a vacancy on the Daily/Sunday Mirror City desk under Bob Head. Bob liked what Tony wrote, interviewed him in a London Wall wine bar and took him on. At 25 he might have been the youngest reporter on the staff.

In 1987 Tony left the Mirror and trained as a teacher at Cambridge University. He taught and lectured, then a chance call to a Fleet Street mate led to a spell as economic correspondent on The European from 1993 until it closed in 1997.

Tony, now 68, later worked at an international college where he was NASUWT FoC and Cambridge area rep, then he became industrial reporter for the Morning Star. Since retiring in 2013 he has taken certificates in TEFL, acting – and Open University nuclear physics.