Remembering Wally Fellender - an old-school reporter who dedicated his life to East Devon

Nub News editor Philip Evans continues his series looking back over his 55-year career in journalism, many years of which have been spent covering East Devon.

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Wally Fellender was an old-school reporter. He worked for Pulman's Weekly News, covering most of East Devon, throughout the Second World War years, and then looked after the Axminster and Lyme Regis patch after hostilities ceased until his retirement in the early 1970s when I was appointed to succeed him.

In those days Pulman's – launched in Crewkerne in 1857 by George Pulman of The Book of The Axe fame – was the bible throughout East Devon and South Somerset. The paper, broadsheet in size, was owned by the Western Gazette and printed in Yeovil. In its early days it was delivered by horse and cart overnight and sold for one halfpenny and included some snippets of national news as well as stories from throughout Somerset, Devon and Dorset.

Although It was published on a Tuesday, the papers were delivered to the Axminster area on a Monday afternoon. Readers would queue outside Mr Barnard's Newsagents, later to become Popple's in Trinity Square, to get a copy, most of them football fanatics who wanted to see the extensive coverage of the local football scene written by sport editor John Lukins, who wrote under nom-de-plume of "Clubman".

As well as playing football I was a keen cricketer and I once had the temerity to ask John Lukins why Pulman's cricket coverage was so poor. He told me in no uncertain terms that if I thought I could do any better, why didn't I come up to the Yeovil head office every money and write the reports myself? So I did, leaving home at 6 am every Monday and writing the weekend cricket reports for a 10 am deadline.

And then I spent the rest of the day working as a freelance in the PR department of Bass South West in Yeovil, helping to produce their in-house company newsletter.

Despite all the years that Wally worked for Pulman's, he wrote his news stories by hand and not with a typewriter. He had a very distinctive, backward-sloping style which was difficult to read.

All Wally's copy was sent up to the typesetting department in Yeovil on the last train on a Sunday evening for setting in hot metal on a lineotype machine early on the Monday. Wally's distinctive handwriting used to drive the typesetters to distraction.

And it tickled me that when Wally returned after more than 40 years' service, the company bought him a typewriter!

Wally's were big shoes to fill and I soon found that out being a district reporter for Pulman's Weekly News was a 24/7 commitment. Nothing happened in the Axminster and Lyme area without Wally reporting on it. As well as attending every council meeting in the area and Axminster Magistrate's Court, Wally would turn up and every single event.

Coffee mornings, summer fetes, flower shows – Wally would turn up at all of them and list the names of everyone involved, including all those who ran a stall. And we also covered every funeral, standing at the church door and ask all the mourners for their name. Wobetide you if you spelt them wrong.

My least favourite events to cover were carnival processions because I had to follow Wally's example and take the name of every person on every float. It was always a race against time to get all the name before the procession moved off and on more than one occasion I had to run beside a float pleading for the names. At flower and fatstock shows the first, second a third winners all had to be recorded.

The attraction of working for Pulman's was that you worked from home and had a company car. Working out of his front room at Porthkerry in King Edwards Road, Wally devoted his life to Axminster and district and rarely took a break or holiday from his duties. He was loved and respected by all and I have always considered him to be one of my journalistic heroes, having learnt so much from him.

Alas, soon after his retirement, he was admitted to hospital and as a diabetic had to have a leg amputated which led to his death. Some years ago I tried to get a road in Axminster named after him to honour someone ho did so much for the town, but unfortunately it did not happen.

In next week's Nub Newsletter, I will recall my first week at work in which is witnessed three different tragedies.