The smell, the sound and the excitement of newspaper production, as I’d always known and loved it, ended in 1982, when the Comet was moved from its long-time home in Church Street to a former furniture factory in Lower Ham Road (later re-named Skerne Road), writes June Sampson.

The new premises were only a short walk from the old, but, in terms of technology, a million miles away.

Nostalgically, I remember the Church Street days, when the air was alive with the clicketty sound of linotype machines.

Aproned compositors pored over their great metal workbench (known as the “stone”) setting out the slugs of finished type from the “linos” into “formes” – oblong containers the same size as the Comet pages.
I remember the foundry, where the type-filled formes were cast into curved metal plates.

First a pliable papier mache mould, known as a flong, was made of the forme.

This was then put into a circular “pony”, and molten metal forced into the letter mouldings to form a semi-circular plate for use on the rotary press.

Then there was the “melting pot”, where the discarded lead linotype slugs were melted down for re-use.

But molten metal, the lifeblood of the Comet since its birth in 1854, was redundant by 1982.

So the linotype machines, the stones, the foundry and the melting pot all passed into history along with slugs, formes, flongs, matrices and pony pots. Modern technology had superseded them all.

In Church Street the air had pulsed and thrilled to the roar of the rotary press and the commercial print machines.

Even after decades in journalism, it thrilled me to invade the tough complexity of the machine room, and beg a Comet literally hot from the press.

All was quiet in our new home. There was no rotary press, because the Comet was printed in Portsmouth on web-offset machines.

The chattering linotypes had been supplanted by keyboard terminals, each linked to a computer which sat in majestic isolation in its own specially cooled sanctum.

These keyboards produced punched tape, which was put through the computer.

This in turn issued yards of paper print to be cut and pasted into the columns and headlines required. Metal had given way to paper at every stage.

There wasn’t even the sound of feet to mar the calm. The new technology was so clean that the floors were close-carpeted, even in the works. Before that we’d walked on inkstained floorboards.

Only one department could still be heard.

That was editorial, where we journalists hammered away on our ancient but well-loved typwriters. Come the 1990s, even that sound link with the past gave way to computers.

Knapp Drewett, who owned the Comet from 1900 to 1982, was not only noted for newspapers. It also operated the largest commercial printing operation in southern England.

Geoff Stokes joined the commercial department in 1954 as a 15-year-old apprentice. So, as well as learning on the job, he spent one day and two evenings a week at Twickenham Technical College, and had to sit annual exams.

“Printing was a highly skilled job, and apprentices were grounded in every aspect,” he says.

“Everyone’s aim was to get into the newspaper side, but there was no chance of that until you’d completed seven years training.

“Even then there might not be a vacancy because it was seen as a job for life, and most people stayed until retirement.

“You just had to carry on as a journeyman until someone left or died.”
There were, he says, at least 30 flatbed machines for general printing and one rotary for Knapp Drewett’s newspapers, which at that time included the Middlesex Chronicle and Richmond Herald, as well as the Comet.

The main Comet was published on Saturdays, with a mid-week edition on Wednesdays, and men from the commercial department were called in to help on a paid overtime basis.

“We would have worked until 8am to 5.30pm. Then we’d come back for the start of the print run at 6.30pm and stay all night until it was done,” says Geoff.

He underwent “banging out”, a tradition stretching back five centuries to William Caxton, England’s first printer. It was faithfully observed at the Comet where, once an apprentice had served his seven-year training as a journeyman, he was banged out.

First he went the directors’ office to get his papers.

When he left, his workmates would follow, banging the walls, cheering, stamping and making as much din as possible.

Then he would be stripped, smothered in bronze-blue printers ink, and paraded naked through the works.

After that he might be dressed up, smeared in something repulsive, paraded through the streets and, finally, plied with drink until totally incapable.