THE Northern Echo's longest serving employee has celebrated 40 years with the newspaper.

Systems manager Geoff Elvish, 55, started his working life as an apprentice compositor on September 10, 1962.

He said: "When I started it was the old hot metal days and since then we've gone through an industrial revolution in the printing industry to the electronic age today."

In between, Mr Elvish has seen paper tape-controlled computers in the Seventies, to cut and paste typesetting in the Eighties and right through to the fully electronic operation of the present day.

He added: "To be working here for 40 years is a sobering thought. But because there's been so many changes it's been quite an interesting experience over the years and that's made a big difference."

Mr Elvish was given a presentation in front of colleagues to mark the occasion.