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| Birth of a newspaper |
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| Thursday, 21 June 2007 | |
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Clin Bond’s fond souvenirs of its conception, delivery and early infancy.  One day early in 1987, deep down in the Dordogne, a certain Rod Craig and I were having a chat over his neighbouring winemaker’s red stuff. A common theme cropped up: the steady growth in the number of English (by which, of course, we meant British) settling in the region, a phenomenon I’d been observing since my arrival as one of the early birds in 1975. Rod, an ex-newspaperman from England, reckoned that these people definitely needed some form of bulletin, a communication tool, so why not start one?  Not long afterwards, joined by Peter Hankey who would look after the accounts, Rod started editing, helped by me as dogsbody with the accent on sales and distribution. Of course, we argued long over what to call the journal, but finally settled on ‘The News’ as being a simple and straightforward title, also understandable by the French. I have haunting memories of crouching over Rod’s kitchen table in the dead of winter, in anorak and scarf to keep out the cold while cutting and pasting (literally, physically) texts churned out on Rod’s then high-tech, top of the range computer – an Atari or a Commodore, I can’t remember which. Five thousand copies, all of eight pages, ‘The News’ number one came out in June ’87 and was rushed, hot off the press, to tourist boards, campsites, Anglo- French clubs and Brit-favoured watering holes. In those early days, distribution was one our worst headaches, we were not yet recognised as press barons benefiting from the national, and of course, highly bureaucratic, distribution system, so we were obliged to spread the good news, as it were, ourselves. I remember driving to Bergerac railway station and bribing the train guard to drop a load off at Sarlat, destined for the local British enclave; then backtracking to leave piles in cafés for the Duras and Eymet ‘chapters’. We soon found that we had a tiger by the tail: the growth in demand was tremendous and it was a hard task keeping up with it, especially as we three founders also had day jobs to hang on to. However, finally recognised by officialdom, nationwide distribution to newsagents became possible. By this time we were actually able to employ people and hours were spent churning through French phone directories searching for British names to whom we could send out invitations to subscribe. And so, by stages, over long years, we managed to grasp the tiger by the scruff of the neck rather than the tail, the rest of which, the tale that is, by now you probably know. |
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