I WAS saddened to read the other day of the passing of a man whose life’s work was death.

Norman was an undertaker, and must have been well into his nineties when he became a customer of the Co-op Funeral Parlour rather than its principal operator.

When I was fresh out of school, one of my weekly tasks was going to see Norman at his place of work in Macclesfield.surrounded by the grisly trappings of his trade.

In those days, local newspapers used to carry lengthy reports of every funeral in their patch, t not only giving details of the dear departed’s life history, but also listing the names all those people who had attended the funeral, and who they were representing, as well as a full list of floral tributes.

If it was a local dignitary, sportsperson or whatever, our paper would send a team of reporters to stand at every entrance to the church, collecting the names of people as they came in, but for the late Mr or Mrs Average, we relied on the undertakers to provide the details, in exchange for a brief mention at the end of the obituary.

Despite his sombre trade, Norman was a barrel of laughs, a merry quip never far from his lips, and his sheaf of reports was always accompanied by a lemon bun in summer, or a hot Vimto in winter.

He knew everything that was going on in the town, and could be relied upon to supply good leads on stories unconnected with the cemetery.

There were perhaps half a dozen funeral directors in the town, but Norman was always the most forthcoming.

Sometimes he would advise me to go along to the home of his latest client, where the widow perhaps wanted to add a little to the brief details he had been able to supply. Only posh people were on the phone in those days, so personal calls were the norm.

On more than one occasion I have been welcomed into the home to hear about old Fred’s crown green bowls exploits, and then invited to step into the front parlour and see him laid out in his coffin in his Sunday best - quite an experience for a 16 year old youth who had never seen a dead body before.

Journalism was a much more personal business in those days when using the telephone was a last resort. One of the daily duties was going down to the police station to see the duty inspector, who would spend a leisurely half hour going through the previous day’s log of events, from road accidents and burglaries to lost dogs and escaped budgies.

It was more Dixon of Dock Green than Line of Duty, but virtually every minor event was faithfully published on the grounds that local papers were all about separating the wheat from the chaff, and then printing the chaff, that would nowadays appear on Facebook.

Upstairs from the police station was the court, which in the days before fixed penalties and police cautions sat every day, issuing £2 parking fines and £1 fines for riding a bicycle without lights.

We used to slavishly publish the lot, a practice which provoked a former schoolfriend to rib me mercilessly for churning out stuff that no-one would ever read.

Outrageously, I included his name in the depths of the parking offenders section the following week - and it was his turn to burn with humiliation at the sustained mockery of everyone who knew him.

Nowadays, he would successfully sue me for libel for thousands of pounds in damages, but things were different then.

Going to court could be a hazardous business, for the press bench was directly behind the dock where defendants stood. Witnesses were frequently asked by the prosecuting solicitor whether they could see the person they had seen shoplifting, urinating in a shop doorway or making off with the collection box from the parish church in court - and on more than one occasion, I have been the one picked out.

It was scary at first, but it happened so often the magistrates got to know that I was not in the habit of wearing a mask and stripy jumper and carrying a sack with “swag” written on it.

Court reporters got to know to the second how long certain magistrates would adjourn for “to study the evidence” when in fact they were having a cogaretteor walking their dogs, so we could sprint across to the Bulls Head across the road, have two quick pints of Double Diamond and be back in the press bench just as the clerk intoned: “All Rise!”

Young reporters don’t know what they are missing these days.