The End...

This is a bit weird.

I'm not a newspaper columnist any more. After submitting my foldy phones piece last week, I received an email saying The Mail are rearranging how they do things.

Going forward, there will be a weekly "On the podium" section on a Monday, where a particular topic will be discussed. One week will be local MPs giving their viewpoint, the next the current columnists.

Word count will be around 250-300 words (I was writing 400, originally 500, with that full-page period at 1000), so greatly reduced.

Disappointingly, I had to ask if they wanted a final column from me for this week, before the new section starts on Monday. I was hoping I'd have a chance to say a kind of goodbye after seven years of penning my column. But they didn't. So, just like that, I'm no longer a columnist.

In case they said yes, I wrote a farewell piece, so, for old times sake, here it is:

One last Friday feeling

Seven years ago, I was wondering what to write my first column about, having been kindly given the opportunity to pen a weekly column for the North West Evening Mail.

I’d come second in the Big Blogger competition, run to find a new columnist, and had somehow managed to not scare everyone off with my ramblings. The excellent Darren McSweeney rightly won and took on Monday duties, whilst I was granted the opportunity to bookend the working week with my slot. “Grand”, I thought. A great chance to write about anything I want.  

Barring the very occasional gap for a holiday, I’ve cluttered up your Friday on 355 occasions, first of all under the banner of “Thank grumpy it’s Friday”, before switching to “A wry look at the week” at the start of last year, and a heady four months of producing a full page of randomness, opinion and unnecessary alliteration, before settling on the current format.

Doing a bit of rough maths, I think that means I’ve taken something in the region of 200,000 words and rearranged them in an attempt to be coherent and (hopefully) entertaining.

It’s been a pleasure, frustratingly difficult, ridiculously easy, scary, and has involved many evenings staring at a blank page willing a good idea to pop into my head.

I’ve never lost sight of one thing though – it’s a privilege and an honour to be handed a space in The Mail with a brief to “write about whatever you want”, and I’m very grateful to everyone who helped to make that happen and has supported me – especially the lovely Mrs. G, who has read each and every one of them and told me they were great (even when some certainly weren’t).

That’s my final Friday fling done, then. Thanks for putting up with me all this time. 

I’ll still be giving my thoughts on a variety of subjects on alternate Mondays as part of a new section, and I’d love to hear what you think on the subjects being discussed.

Did I complain about Lewis Hamilton, wind chimes, roadworks and Audi drivers enough, do you think? Were there enough 1980s song references? And what am I meant to do with this notebook full of hastily scrawled ideas that never got developed?

Maybe I’ll write them into the movie version.

Over and out.

(Tape time: No 168 - a Queen compilation. I was obsessed enough in the late 80s to put together a series of cassettes containing tracks written by each member of the band. 168 is Freddie IV.)