Published: Thursday, 8th May, 2008 16:30
There's a buzz about the Tele
By Elaine Bowers
Print Article
IT'S VITAL: Provost Michael McCormick says customers queue in his newsagent shop waiting for the Tele to arrive. He believes it has a vital role in the community.
PROVOST Michael McCormick has had a long association with the Greenock Telegraph.
While readers are used to seeing him in our pages in his role as a high-profile politician, many might not know he was starring in our pages long before he started to wear his chain of office.
As a youngster, Michael was a talented table tennis player and champion golfer. His sporting achievements were recorded in our pages and kept by his family, who ran McCormick’s newsagent in Grosvenor Road.
While Michael was eager to see his scores in the paper, there was one occasion when he was not quite as keen to be featured on the front page.
He said: “When I was 17, I crashed my car driving up Sir Michael Street. The car was written off. It was a bad accident but I went back to the paper shop because I was working that afternoon.
“Folk asked where my car was and I didn’t want to tell them, so I said it was in for a service.”
Unfortunately, it was not long before his secret was out. He said: “In those days you got the early edition and the late edition of the Tele. An hour after I arrived in the shop, the second edition came out and my car was on the front page — smashed to pieces.”
When his father took over the newsagent shop, Michael, then 14, delivered the Teles to Quarrier Street and Weir Street. Today Michael runs the newsagent and said the Tele is as popular as ever. He said: “In the shop, there is a buzz when the Teles come in. Folk look forward to getting it and there are 10 folk queuing before the van arrives.
“Even when you get the paper at 7.30am on a Saturday, we still have folk waiting for it.”
Michael recalls years ago an elderly man used to queue in the shop every day for the Tele. He said: “He was there every day and then one day he didn’t appear. One of the guys went to his house and discovered he had collapsed and was in hospital. The folk who had been used to speaking to him in the shop went to visit him in hospital.”
Michael praised the Tele’s coverage of the arrival of the QE2 in Greenock last year, saying: “It was absolutely fantastic. I sent copies of the Tele that week to relations in Canada and friends in England. They were all really taken with the photography and the coverage.”
One of the cuttings he remembers most involved the Queen’s visit to Port Glasgow. He said: “The Queen visited the Port Glasgow buildings. When the Queen was shaking hands with the Provost of the time, in the background was the alley where my father’’s family lived. All the windows are full of faces overlooking the Queen and my grandparents were there. The family all had the cutting.”
Michael added: “The recent Pride in Inverclyde features have been fantastic. I completely agree with the Tele — we should all have pride in Inverclyde.
“It has also been great to see the paper join forces with the council to promote the clean-up campaign We’re In It To Bin It.
“I also think its great to see a local paper bringing some fun into the community and I particularly enjoyed reading the story about National Jelly Bean day and the give-away of the sweets.
“To mark Local Newspaper Week, I would like to congratulate the Tele on the role it plays within our community and wish it every success for the future.”
BUTCHER Duncan MacKenzie, of MacKenzie Butchers in Inverkip Street, Greenock, has been reading the Tele for 30 years.
Like many of our loyal readers, Duncan rarely misses an issue.
He said: “I like all the wee ads because I advertise.
“The Tele is one of those papers everybody in Greenock turns to. If you don’t, you miss something and the people of Greenock hate to miss something.
“I have lived in a lot of parts of the country with a daily paper — including Aberdeen and Dundee — and none of them has the hold over the populus that the Tele has. It is amazing. I don’t know how they do it.”
Duncan particularly enjoyed our recent stories about the world-famous QE2 visiting Greenock. He said: “It was great coverage.”
As well as reading the Tele to keep up with local news, Duncan feels the paper is important to the success of his thriving business.
He said: “When you advertise, you know the vast population of the town will be reading it.
“If I can get my advert right, we are busy.”
IAN DARROCH, director of Inverclyde Funeral Directors, also has a long association with the Tele.
He used to deliver the paper in Port Glasgow when he was a young boy and recalls spending the £1 a week he made on wee toys.
Ian, who reckons he has been reading the Tele for about 30 years, said the paper was always at home when he was a child.
He said: “Once I got married, I started to read the paper for local stuff and because I was in business.
“When you are spending money, you want to know what is going on. I read all the death notices. I think a lot of people buy the Tele for the funeral notices.”
LLOYD KINGSMAN, of The Greenock Mortgage Shop, told us his staff always get a copy of the Tele each day and enjoy chatting about the stories during their tea break.
He said: “I have been reading the Tele since I came here in 1989. I usually look at the property on a Tuesday, but I like everything.
“I work my way from the front to the back and check to see if anyone I know has got the jail.
“The Tele is one of the best-selling local papers, as far as I know.
“I don’t know what it is, but it seems to be you can’t go a day without the Tele.
“I walked into the house last night and my wife had already bought the Tele so we had two copies, and that often happens. It is part of everyday life.
“You have to get it to know what is going on. Sometimes I wait until I get home and read it after my tea and sometimes I get it at work during the day. The staff here all read it in their tea breaks and they will look at the photographs and say ‘there’s one of our clients, I remember her’.”
Lloyd said the coverage of the Tall Ships arriving in Greenock in 1999 was one of his favourite Tele memories.
Morton fan FRANK McGRATH never misses a copy of the Tele and is always quick to turn to the sports pages.
Frank, of Passport Travel, in Shore Street, Gourock, said: “I have been reading the Tele for 20 years for all the local news and football. I look for local news and, like most people, I look at the births, deaths and marriages to see if there is anyone I know.
“The Tele keeps the district up to date with what is happening and I rarely miss it.”
Like Duncan, Frank praised our coverage of the QE2 coming to Greenock and said the stories from the day were among those that stuck most firmly in his mind. He said: “I like the way the Tele has done the features on the QE2 coming in for the last couple of occasions. It was incredible.”
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