Tony Thomas edited the Comet for three and a half years in the 1970s. He returned to Kingston after two years to become managing editor and went on to become managing director of the division.

He remembers: The age and the degree of usefulness of the newsroom typewriters was a constant source of complaint by reporters to management.

One incident regarding typewriters is worth recalling.

It must have been around 1972 when the British Museum sent out press releases to newspapers announcing it was staging a display of ancient methods of communication, to include one of the earliest telephones and a turn-of-the century typewriter.

The reporter delegated this day to open the morning mail spotted the press release and, with some glee, also spotted that a blank sheet, bearing only the British Museum logo, had got into the envelope.
The museum duplicator had picked up two sheets and printed on only one of them.

That lunchtime, when most of the staff were over at the Druid’s Head in the Market Place, the reporter carefully fed the blank British Museum press release sheet into the most serviceable typewriter he could find, and carefully typed another version of the museum announcement, only this time adding that among the typewriters on show would be one belonging to Knapp Drewett & Sons that was at least 60 years old and was still being used, much against their will, by reporters on the Surrey Comet.

By various and devious means, the reporter ensured the press release by-passed the news editor and the chief sub, and ended up in a tray into which sub-editors “dipped” for general news copy to fill the page they happened to be working on.

The sub who picked up the copy fell for the hoax. But he wanted the story expanded, and sent the press release back to the newsdesk with a note suggesting they get a quote from management.

The news editor smelled a rat, spiked the rogue press release and prevented a severe outbreak of red faces on the management floor.
I was new to Surrey when I was appointed editor. I had my card marked by my boss, the managing editor and former editor, Gilbert Jenkins.

“Try not to upset Bentalls,” he suggested. “They’re worth a lot of money in advertising to us.”

As editor, I was always keen for the Comet to run surveys on this and that.

Someone came up with the idea of finding out who sells the best sandwiches in Kingston.

We announced the survey under the headline: “Who puts the punch into your lunchtime munch?”

As I recall, we invited Alfred Brooks, head chef of the Griffin Hotel, to put on a blindfold and judge them on quality, filling, freshness and price, and to mark them out of 10.

Bentalls came in near the bottom with four out of 10.

On the Saturday morning, when we published the results of our survey, the phone rang. It was Rowan Bentall.

I recall the conversation going like this:

“Mr Thomas?” (Rowan usually called me Tony, unless he had something serious on his mind). “Mr Thomas? I’ve just read the Comet. I’m livid.”

“But Mr Bentall,” I said, “this was a fair and responsible…..”
“And you can take it from me that I will not let this rest…..”
I could visualise the Comet’s advertising from Bentalls being slashed.
“This will do us a lot of harm….”
I tried to interject.
Rowan kept on. “A lot of harm. I have already taken action. I won’t have it.
“You can rest assured that I will be having words with our catering manager to make sure there is a great improvement in the standard of Bentalls sandwiches.”
“Can I quote you on that?”
Yes, he said. You can say: “I've tried one of our sandwiches and I couldn't agree more. They are not up to the standard we expect.”