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Together we tottered across Blackfriars Bridge at the end of a shift. "Brain like chewed string" I used to say after eight hours in 'the Slot', the centre of action at United Press International. UPI, where the world's news clattered east and west continuously, remorselessly at 60 words a minute through ranked teleprinters and reperf machines spewing miles of tickertape.
Possibly we tottered via those old Fleet Street watering holes, the Tipperary, or Red Lion, The Wig and Pen or the Popinjay. Maybe we paused to allow the Sun's newsprint lorries to pass, standing in the warm woosh of a ventilation shaft smelling of printing ink, oil and paper. The smells, the excitement of feeling at the hub of the world's news, of camaraderie and clocks showing the time in capital cities: gone. The old 24-hour Daily Express art-deco black-glass wonder used to hum with first-edition urgency. Now quiet.
My first UPI computer the size of a bedroom is now tiny, in the pocket of every tourist and passer-by in the street; as phone, camera, mobile office. Swapping news, liking fake news, spreading post-truth prejudice and unedited disinformation at the click of a button.
Paul Campbell has captured first hand the multi-media revolution of the past six decades. Including when we 20-something hacks tottered across that bridge to explore the planet. He went on across the world with success in newspapers, radio, television, magazines and a dozen book titles before, 40 years later, a computer aided chance put us in touch again, to find it was just as though we'd said "Cheers mate, see you tomorrow. What luck."
