It was the noises and the smells of the printing works that remain engrained forever – the monotype machines clattering in the corner, the linotypes belting away in a peculiar sort of harmony, each with its own particular sound; the smell of the ink, the heat of the pots of molten metal.

And the laughter.

Fifty years ago, a fifteen-year-old from Ashe Road in Shantalla walked in the side gate of the old Connacht Tribune offices on Market Street ‘in trepidation’ – early for his first day of what turned out to be his one and only job.

The first person that Philip Smyth met inside the door was John Robinson – with no dilution of his Geordie accent despite his many years living around the corner from this new recruit in Shantalla – who greeted him with “Mr Smyth, how you keeping?”

“There was no one else there – but then he brought me out to John O’Donnell who was the foreman of the composing area,” Philip recalls, reflecting on a remarkable 50-year career with the same Connacht Tribune.

Last week, the Connacht Tribune directors and staff gathered to honour a colleague and to mark that rare achievement – and that brought back memories of that very first day on August 26, 1974.

“The noise; the smell of the inks mixing on the machine as the paper was printed; the molten metal – all new experiences for a youngster of fifteen,” he says.

“From the compositing area, you could see the printing works – and what it was all about. You could see the linotypes, the hot metal. On the far side was all the machinery and that was one noisy spot; the rumbling of the web printing the paper, mixed with the presses printing commercial jobs at the same time; the bindery collating that jobbing work.”

That was the start of a career that continues – through decades of unparallelled changes in the industry – with Philip now heading up the production department he’d joined as an apprentice at 15.

Caption: Philip Smyth with Connacht Tribune staff and directors at a special event to mark his 50 years of service.

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