50 not out - Mike Amos clocks up half century at the Echo

The story beneath explained their terror: “The explosions from the quarry are terrifying and vibrations make Mr Burn and his wife ‘feel as if the house were going to split apart’.”

It was the first story to be written by the evening paper’s newest reporter – an 18-year-old called Mike Amos, fresh out of Bishop Auckland Grammar School with three decent A-levels to his name who, exactly 50 years ago, was taking his first timorous steps into a career that would last a lifetime.

Born in Hardwick Hall at Sedgefield, which was then a maternity hospital, he would have preferred to have had a more exciting job than a journalist – a fireman or a policeman, for example – but his choices were narrowed by his incorrigible eyesight.

“My whole life has been coloured by not being able to see,” he says. Perhaps it is being magnificently myopic that has made him such a fine observer. In 2011, his optician told him that his short-sightedness was compounded by diagnosed that he was colourblind – “it came like a bolt from the green”.

He started with the Despatch, the Echo’s now defunct sister paper, on Monday, August 30 – 50 years ago on Sunday – on the princely sum of £9 1s 6d a week.

That first morning, he’d been given the office junior’s chore of compiling the Fifty and Fives list of local cricketers who’d hit a half century or taken five wickets over the weekend. After lunch in the Priestgate canteen in Darlington, the whippersnapper and a proper snapper, photographer Ian Wright, were sent to investigate a rumour that Barton quarry in North Yorkshire had reopened and the villagers weren’t too happy.

The resulting report contained none of the euphonious words that have since become the Shildon scribbler’s trademark, but it did highlight his unerring ability to talk to ordinary people and to winkle a story out of them that is greater than any initial expectations.

For serendipitously, the brazzend fond reporter bumped into the Burns who were absolutely scumfished by the egregious affair. In the quarry story, he found a rich seam.

The Burns took him to their home of Lime Kiln Cottage, which was 80 yards from the stoneface, and showed him how they were being showered with large rocks every time the quarrymen fired explosives.

“Twice or three times a week, and with only five minutes warning, blasts from the quarry send boulders raining on to the house and its garden, ‘smothering the place in dust, cracking walls and making us run for shelter’,” he wrote. “Boulders weighing up to 3cwt have landed on Mr Burn’s lawn and flower garden, and also cracked windows and knocked off tiles.

“One landed right on his doorstep, and another knocked a four-feet hole in the concrete wall of his stable. Had the rock landed half-an-hour later, his 13-year-old daughter’s pony would have been killed.”

For all the undoubted skill of the rookie’s report, there is a little literal in the intro – Barton, it says, is “in peaceful North Yokshire countryside” – but it would be wrong on this auspicious occasion to mention such a minor matter.

Instead, we are commemorating a career that is about to enter its sixth decade, a career that has chronicled with unique brilliance the communities of County Durham, Cleveland and North Yorkshire, a career that has been glittered with countless awards, topped in 2006 by an MBE – for services to journalism.

“I am hugely blessed,” he says, paying tribute to his wife, Sharon, who is supportive beyond the call of marital duty.

In 2011, Mike retired from full time journalism after 46 years of writing in the Echo under a variety of guises, including John North, Backtrack, At Your Service, Eating Out and Gadfly. But the itch still has to be scratched, so he continues to contribute two of the paper’s most popular columns – that should be pages – every week.

“Mike’s contribution to The Northern Echo and the regional press is unprecedented,” said Peter Barron, the editor of The Northern Echo. “For someone to give half a century of service to one newspaper is an astonishing achievement and his contributions to the paper are as valuable as ever. He is indisputably the best journalist I have had the pleasure to work with and to learn from.”

However, the 50th anniversary doesn’t find Mike in the finest fettle. He is about to retire after 20 years as chairman of the Northern League, and has embarked on a 500-mile sponsored walk, called the Last Leg, around each of the clubs’ grounds. However, on Tuesday, near Alnmouth, he slipped and broke his arm.

But even that won’t prevent him writing.

“I should still be able to get the column to you on time,” he said, yesterday.

A true professional even after 50 years.