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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 »
Speeding to my own funeral
Posted on 10:04am Monday 1st September 2008
Those of you who see me poodling along Totteridge Lane in my Toyota at a steady 30 mph — with cars impatiently overtaking and zooming away over the horizon — probably have me marked down as a boring law-abiding senior citizen.
Dennis Signy »
I'm sponsoring the 2012 Olympics
Posted on 9:46am Tuesday 26th August 2008
Soon after I got my demob suit in 1948 and slid seamlessly back into my role as a fire engine-chasing young reporter, I was sitting in the Times offices in Church Road wondering where my next scoop was coming from.
Dennis Signy »
One or two surprises
Posted on 5:23pm Monday 18th August 2008
Life's full of surprises. One of my first duties as a Times reporter in the London Blitz early in the 1940s was to get called out to Elm Park Gardens, Hendon, following an air raid ... and tipping an incendiary bomb from a rafter into a bucket of water held by my editor, Barrett Newbery.
Dennis Signy »
Help, I'm shrinking!
Posted on 8:44am Monday 11th August 2008
In my days as 14894617 Sergeant Signy of the Intelligence Corps,based on the North West Frontier as one of the last remnants of the British Raj, I stood tall as the representative of King and country. My Army pay book, which I lovingly retain as proof for unbelievers that I was proficient at a rifle shooting test, records my height as 6 feet 1 inches.
Dennis Signy »
Remembering my friend Margaret
Posted on 11:11am Monday 4th August 2008
The day I wrote a preparatory "obituary" for Margaret Thatcher some 25 years ago I met her at Alexandra Palace in the evening when we shared a speaking platform.
Dennis Signy »
Birthday blog
Posted on 11:48am Tuesday 29th July 2008
It's my birthday. I was born in the General Strike of 1926... I guess my parents didn't know what to do with themselves.
Dennis Signy »
What's in a name, Clarence?
Posted on 9:23am Friday 25th July 2008
Man in the news Clarence Mitchell, the spokesman for Kate and Gerry McCann, the parents of missing Madeleine, was one of the brightest of the hundreds of eager-beaver young journalists I launched on the world in my 17 years as editor of the Times group.
Dennis Signy »
A shirty tale about superstition
Posted on 12:55pm Monday 21st July 2008
When Mrs S joined the Citizens' Advice Bureau at West Hendon many moons ago her first "client", unbelievably, was a Chinese sea captain living on the Grahame Park Estate at Colindale seeking advice about getting a do-it-yourself divorce.
Dennis Signy »
I'm in my 'lucky' gear for football
Posted on 3:00pm Wednesday 16th July 2008
Please note for posterity that I wore the cashmere jacket I bought in a cut-price sale at Barnet Football Club when I went to Clarence Park in the fair city of St Albans last night for the start of my football season.
Dennis Signy »
A dinosaur in awe of the young
Posted on 8:58am Monday 14th July 2008
Not a day goes by when I am not reminded of the words of the title of the famous Lionel Bart musical - Fings aint what they used to be.
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