.jpg)
Below is a tribute to Frank Keating written by Richard Edwards.
Of all the glowing tributes dedicated to the late, great Frank Keating, surely the coverage in the Hereford Times would have given him most glee.
In his local rag, however, the ultimate epitaph was bestowed thus: ‘A former Hereford Times journalist has died at the age of 75 …’
How Frank would have laughed. Still a Hereford Times man, some 50 years after being sacked as their cub reporter (for taking a girl to the cinema instead of attending another parish council meeting). It was so perfect a sign off, I wondered if Frank himself hadn’t called the copy in last thing on Friday.
Laughter – at journalism, journalists, Herefordshire life, but most importantly, at yourself, was one of the many career and life lessons Frank taught me. After a moist-eyed, melancholy few days mourning his loss, I’ll hold on to that laughter now as I say goodbye m’dear – and thank you.
Frank was the first journalist I met. The fact he lived nine miles away from me in Herefordshire was a revelation in a county where inspiration, let alone genius, was in short supply to a sports-mad teen. Glass of red in one hand, pipe in the other, and armed with an array of spellbinding anecdotes, he had me hooked within minutes. Life was settled there and then, aged 15. I wanted to be like Frank.
It was typical of his generosity in all things (not least the gin afforded to his tonics) that Frank took me under his wing and became not only a mentor, but my father figure in journalism. In the same way he coaxed stories from his sporting subjects through charm and gentle persuasion, so he coaxed something of a journalist out of me.It started with gentle encouragement to file staffroom-stirring stories in the school newspaper, then a suggestion I wrote up each Hereford United match I watched (in those days, every damn home game, I confess). The Hereford Times would not take the copy – they would not even have me in for work experience. No matter, laughed Frank, recalling the story of his sacking before penning my first ever reference – packed with so many wonderful, floral Frankisms that it appeared little 16-year-old me already deserved a place in history alongside Ian Wooldridge or Hugh McIlvanney. That hand-written letter got me through the door and into the first newsroom my tea making skills ever graced: the Birmingham Metronews. After a month’s work experience, I was straight back to Frank to show off my fist full of cuttings. And so my career began.
Frank told me when he first started in Fleet Street, he would “hang off the coattails of the greats”, following them to lunchtime winebars to absorb their every word. I did the same to him – pestering him on the phone for guidance and access to his precious contacts book (“m’dear I’m up to the eyeballs … but how can I help…”) and making frequent pilgrimages back to see him in Marden.
The problem was, Frank was so supportive and humble, and I was so green and naive, that I really believed I could learn to write like him. Only when I put pen to paper did that fantasy collapse.
Not that my flamboyantly awful efforts to parrot Frank’s lyrical style weren’t noticed. My Western Daily colleagues produced a leaving frontpage for me headed “Special Poetry Edition”. And on my early shift baptism at the Evening Standard, the editor’s response to my first piece was hardly the ringing endorsement I was hoping for: “This is all a bit … flowery”. Again, Frank was on hand with reassurance. His first published Guardian article was 350 words on a county hockey match between Bucks and Surrey. As he later wrote: “They pitilessly cut all my florid flam about autumn leaves and Windsor Castle in the distance. But they actually printed the boring bits in between.”
I began to specialise on those boring bits – and although I was bitten by the bug of news journalism, where Frank had suggested I start to get a grounding, I still dreamt of the day I would have my own book-filled, paper strewn, trophy lined, cartoon-walled study. The day when a sports editor would send me the yearly calendar and say “take your pick”.
With experience, and some knowledge of the trade, my respect only grew for Frank. His writing was a complete one-off, entirely inimitable, and perhaps most impressively, he ascended to the top of a sometimes difficult, sometimes jealous, sometimes dysfunctional profession whilst remaining always a true gent, loved by fellow reporters, writers, subs and editors alike – and most of all, the readers.
Frank never lost the boyish enthusiasm and never stopped reading. I don’t remember seeing him without a newspaper in hand, under arm or within reach; to the very end he still had his bundle delivered daily to Marden and his finger on the pulse; the ultimate professional.
During occasional lows, he reminded me the job itself was the reward (“never expect thanks for filling a story”) and always, but always, he was a champion of humility. When I would wax lyrical about his latest column, he would denounce it as mere “rhubarb” which he had “cribbed” from elsewhere.
Talking shop with Frank was a joy, but there was something else too: when he stopped touring the pressboxes of the world, he found a deep peace and contentment embracing the joys of fatherhood and family life with Jane. That life lesson was relayed again on my wedding day, where despite being unable to travel, he gave my best man a majestic pay-off to his speech: “the world’s your oyster – and trebly so with such a beautiful and remarkable woman at your side”.
The first time we saw Frank in frail health, he refused sympathy. ‘I drunk, I smoked, and I had a bloody great time in the course of getting myself to the state I’m in today’, was the theme of it. Je ne regrette nien. And more than that – as he penned ever more regular tributes to passing heroes, friends and colleagues, the overriding sense was of a celebration of life balancing out the grief of loss.
As Frank reflected when Guardian rugby correspondent Carwyn James died 30 years ago: “The sheer fun was the thing. For which, much thanks”.
BN would like to thank author Richard Edwards for permission to post this article
