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Dennis Signy OBE was a former wartime cub reporter on the Hendon and Finchley Times at £4-a-week and became group editor for 17 years in the late Sixties. He was a national press football writer for five decades, is author of several football books and director of Barnet FC. |
Dennis Signy »
I'm still alive and coughing
Posted on 1:31pm Monday 12th January 2009
As the sound of Big Ben ushered in the New Year at our apartment, I raised a less than traditional cup to propose a toast to 2009...in Lemsip.
Dennis Signy »
The ghosts of Christmas past
Posted on 12:04pm Wednesday 24th December 2008
As a callow and skinny teenage youth I spent one Christmas in the mid-1940s on my own based in a bungalow in Peshawar on the NW frontier of India as one of the last of the British Raj. If my memory serves me correctly, I relieved my boredom by driving through the Khyber Pass across to the Afghanistan border when my 60-year-old bearer finished pandering to my needs and went home to his eight children.
Dennis Signy »
A call from a dinosaur
Posted on 4:17pm Tuesday 16th December 2008
Not even my nearest and dearest would lay claim to me being a handyman or an expert in technology. I am to DIY and computers what Russell Brand is to good taste.
Dennis Signy »
Off to the Tower for Signy
Posted on 5:12pm Friday 5th December 2008
In those carefree 17 years when I was in the front line and the trenches guiding the Times group of newspapers, I was dubbed a "controversial editor" by the Sunday Times in a full page spread examining my front page comment that anti-Semitism was a worse problem in NW London than colour.
Dennis Signy »
I’m making a comeback
Posted on 1:06pm Thursday 27th November 2008
Forget the credit crunch. Forget talk of recession. Forget Barnet FCs dismal first half of the season with only three victories in 22 games (not easy that one, mind you).
Dennis Signy »
I feel like a million dollars
Posted on 4:40pm Wednesday 12th November 2008
Can you believe what you read in the papers? I never thought I'd say that after a lifetime in the profession. I'm a simple soul, a poor old pensioner who promptly pays his bills, coughs up his taxes with just a touch of middle class moaning, has never had an overdraft and has brought up five children.
Dennis Signy »
Writing a best-seller for glory
Posted on 5:40pm Friday 31st October 2008
When I wrote A Pictorial History of Soccer in 1968, with a foreword by George Best, the publishers rang a few days before the book came out to tell me that the advanced sales were 25,000 copies.
Dennis Signy »
Man bites dog - that's news
Posted on 12:27pm Friday 24th October 2008
Man bites dog is news. That's the ultimate test newspaper folk have used over the decades to justify stories appearing in print.
Dennis Signy »
Dorian Gray going wrong!
Posted on 8:44am Wednesday 15th October 2008
Every day I pass this portrait photo hanging in the hallway of our apartment and take note of this pleasant looking middle aged former editor in a smart dark blue suit and a white shirt -- then have a reality check face to face with the updated me in the mirror in the bathroom.
Dennis Signy »
Much ado about nothing-nothing
Posted on 10:03am Monday 13th October 2008
A renowned football writer of my acquaintance many years ago drew breath at the final whistle of a dire goal-less match and penned what should have been an immortal intro on his report to his daily paper: "Much ado about nothing-nothing".
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