Three generations of one family, one of whom found love and marriage working at the Surrey Comet, have wished the paper a happy birthday.
Pam Farley, 83, started at the Comet in 1964, when the whole operation, from editorial to printing, was based in Church Street, Kingston.

As a payroll control clerk she quickly became one of the most popular members of staff, and her memories of the paper are happy ones.

She said: “I remember a lot of people coming in as apprentices and staying for ages. It was a family firm and they were really nice people to work for.

“It was a real print shop. We had lots of problems printing everything, because you had to physically lay out the pages and all sorts, but there was a great sense of everyone working together to create the paper.”

She stayed with the Comet for 27 years and was still an employee when her daughter Rosemary Dolman joined the advertising department in 1973.

Rosemary said: “Back then everything would be drawn up and set onto templates for the page setters, it was totally different to the way it is now.

“The whole paper was created using a hot metal system before it went computerised. Just going down into the works there was such a great atmosphere.”

Covering her home patch of New Malden, Rosemary built up an array of contacts and became a mainstay of the community and an invaluable source of stories for her editorial colleagues.

She worked at the Comet from 1973 to 1986 and saw many changes in her time, not least the moves to Lower Ham Road and Skerne Road, Kingston, and then on to Twickenham.

She said: “You used to have graph paper and you worked to size, so you had to fit everything on to the page.

“When you did a feature you had to do your own layout and take it down to the guys in page layout to show them how you wanted it to look.”

Pictures of houses taken for the property pages were sent off to be turned into plates for the pages, a far cry from the digital ease with which things are done today.

Conditions were undoubtedly more difficult, but the whole family speaks of great camaraderie between employees across departments.
Everything was based on site and there was a social club with its own bar situated upstairs from the metal works.

They were banned from drinking in the bar at lunchtime, but the club became a hive of activity in the evenings and hosted many a dance and social function.

Rosemary, 53, met Chris, 57, who worked in hot metal, thanks to the regular social shenanigans.

They even held their wedding reception in the social club because so many of their close friends were company employees.

He said: “It was a very good place to work, excellent. Friday night was always party night and we used to finish the plates and, as soon as the pages were gone, it was all down the pub.

Such was the draw of the Comet that Rosemary’s daughter Sam Burley decided to join advertising sales in 1991. She fittingly took over the New Malden patch from her mother, and the transition was a natural one.

Sam said: “It was a very personalised paper and the advertising staff used to go out to do features with the editorial staff.

“When we did the New Malden fortnight we had a Comet float, and one year the theme was the Comet through the ages. Everybody got involved. It was a lot of fun.”

Her son, Samuel, aged four-and-a-half, has not decided whether he wants to join the Comet team.