Those Torr-id early years!

TALKING to himself... Retiring business editor Martyn Torr makes himself th subject of Martyn Meets. PHOTO: DARREN ROBINSON

ASIDE from being the Chronicle’s Business Editor, Martyn Torr has interviewed many of Oldham’s most famous people for his popular Martyn Meets page. On the eve of his retirement, Martyn tells the story — as an Oldhamer himself — of his own colourful life, and how his six-week trial with the Chron became a 23-year labour of love


THE last 23 years have been the longest six weeks of Martyn Torr’s life. I have known the bloke all his life and he can be prone to exaggeration, but on this occasion he’s probably right.


The six weeks - or 23 years and five months, to be precise - relate to his time as business editor of this wonderful newspaper.

It’s a career that began inauspiciously and almost not at all, because the editor of the time, current company chairman Philip Hirst and then-news editor Mike Attenborough didn’t actually want him in the post when Fred Bottomley retired after 33 years at the business desk.

I was tempted to ask Martyn if he had ever wondered if the pair had cause to regret their November decision.

Martyn had been working on the sports desk since May, following the closure of a business magazine publishing house, Inside Publications in neighbouring Prince Street, that he had helped to set up.

What happened next was to dominate Martyn’s life for the next two decades, but we are getting too far ahead of the story of a lad from Clarksfield School who had dreamed of being a journalist for as long as he could remember.

“My mum bought me a duffle coat when I lived in Southport, before they bought the chip shop in Huddersfield Road and moved the family back to Oldham... and I always thought journalists wore duffle coats.”

Martyn was born in Carrington Street, Hollinwood on the first day of spring, 1948 — March 21.

Grandad Torr, from Limehurst — none of us can remember his first name - had six sons and three daughters. The woodsman at Evans Bellhouse in Newton Heath chose the tree and supervised the erection of one of the early Failsworth Poles.

Martyn’s sister Gillian came along three and a half years after Martyn and after he failed his 11-plus, despite attending Werneth Prep, mum and dad Alf and Irene moved to a new life in Southport.

“Life was much easier for dad on the coast,” recalled Martyn, with a wistful glance at his past, adding: “In Hollinwood he had to get up early, peel the spuds in a shed at the back of the shop, then go to work as a welder at Avro in Chadderton, before coming home and looking after the tea-time trade while mum fed Gill and me.”

Alf was also a drummer, and a good one, and was always bashing away on his kit. Often a call would come from a band saying they needed a drummer at the last minute — most often from a bloke called Stan Boardman — and Martyn’s father would load up his kit in the sidecar and ride off to the gig, leaving Irene to look after the kids and the chippy.

“I remember one night the phone rang and dad, as always, said ‘Yes’ as he always did and raced upstairs to collect his drums...

“Except they weren’t there. Mum had put an advert in the miscellaneous sales in the Oldham Chronicle and sold the drum kit while dad was welding.”

Alf was never able to say “No” and it was a trait his son picked up. The result? Martyn has been in constant demand as compere and master of ceremonies from events as diverse as the Civic Ball to sportsmen’s dinners to business breakfasts.

On returning to Oldham, Martyn was enrolled at Clarksfield School and was thrown into the hands of a clutch of brilliant teachers, led by the inspirational Fred Horrocks. Jack Schofield and Bob Birse, both of whom still live in Saddleworth, Maud Bradbury, who passed away quite recently, Tommy Bell and Mr Sutcliffe were to have a huge influence on Martyn’s life.

But Martyn was a poor student and his interests lay in sport - mostly football, but also tennis since he went to school with Ian Gleave, whose parents owned Manor Tennis Club in Waterhead.

There isn’t a sport Martyn hasn’t played in Oldham — except rugby league, as he was always a wimp — and he was a ferocious competitor at cricket, table tennis and latterly squash.

He wasn’t that good at any of these but has a host of trophies thanks to the quality of his team-mates.

Martyn and his pal Clive Hughes would write comics together, illustrate war stories and football strips and also had a Superman comics library in an old army kitbag.

This interest in writing led the pair to write a version of the BBC Television show “That Was The Week That Was” on school life at Clarksfield, which was performed by the fifth form at the end of term.

Astonishingly, at an event in Royton celebrating the 175th founding of Emmanuel Whittaker Ltd, one of Martyn’s old classmates David Hopkins, from Waterhead, approached Martyn and was able to sing one of the songs from the show from beginning to end!”

And so a writing career was launched. Careers teachers were optimistic Martyn would find a career in journalism and tried to direct him towards sales, but the resourceful Alf — an avid Chronicle reader to the day of his death at 86 — found a small advert for a young lad to join Oldham Press Agency in Waterloo Street.

A fresh-faced Martyn was interviewed by Roy Bottomley, half of the company’s founders, the other being Tom Brennand.

Martyn was taken on — ‘I’m starting you because you’re a cocky young bastard, and I like that,’ said Roy. And a journalism career that has spanned nearly 52 years was born...

More tomorrow