Peter Cordwell was born in Catford, in a prefab built to house those bombed out by Hitler’s Luftwaffe, and from that beginning his life has apparently been one conflict after another if you listen to his tale of woe, writes Michael Holland.
‘I passed the 11-Plus but was turned down by three domeheads in gowns at Brockley County Grammar School – now happily defunct – because my Dad was a delivery driver and my Mum a home-help,’ declaims this grudge-bearing man. ‘So I was sent to South East London Tech to “get a trade” but to this day I’m the least technical person on the planet!’ He adds for good measure.
He seethes and sizzles away when recalling a traumatic piece of metalwork, but seems to soften when talking about sport: ‘I was good at cricket, a spin bowler, and played for London Schools’.
I hoped I looked suitably impressed because I was. But.
‘We played against Eton, who beat us easily.’
A match that obviously still hurts. His working-class roots were once again taking a bashing.
‘I was offered professional terms at Millwall when I was 17 – I’d been playing in the Reserves with the legendary Harry Cripps.’ A glimmer of light cut through the darkening clouds. ‘But I turned them down.’
Peter also turned his career projection in another – less sporty – direction when he was taken on as a cub reporter at the Kentish Independent in Woolwich. ‘I couldn’t work out if I was hopeless or hapless, a working-class boy marooned in a middle-class world.’ His editor, Charlie King, worked it out and kept him on after a six-month trial. Perhaps, the young Cordwell had found his place in the world as a writer.
‘My truly breakthrough story – a 17-paragraph piece on local pop singer Sandie Shaw, the build-up leading to the last paragraph where, at a charity event, I asked her for an interview. “No,” she said.’
When his editor died, Peter’s enthusiasm for the Kentish Independent also waned and he left for a summer at the TV Times where they offered him a full-time job.
But now, Peter’s erstwhile football career was re-ignited when he was taken on by newly-promoted VPS (Vaasan Palloseura) in the Finnish Premier Division!
After two seasons as a midfield dynamo, he was back in journalism as sports editor of the Mercury, when it was based in Deptford High Street. He remembers the editor Roger Norman producing a magnificent front page on local elections day, urging people not to vote for the National Front. Headline: You’d better believe us!
One day while at the Mercury, Peter had to welcome some children from the Downham Estate and he thought he would build a rapport by saying their Downderry School team used to ‘put the fear of God’ into his school’s team. One boy’s response shocked Peter when he told him, ‘Oh, we don’t have a football team any more. We play mixed football and all the girls mess about doing cartwheels.’ Peter checked and found that the school had joined a 1980s’ campaign against competitive sport.
The following week, Peter wrote a front-page story condemning the decision. He takes up the story: ‘The front page story was about the sports teacher at Downderry resigning in disgust and opening a tropical fish shop in Bromley!’ He laughs at the memory now.
The upshot was that the school reinstated their football team and Peter was awarded UK Weekly Newspaper Sportswriter of The Year.
A bigger campaign was getting Charlton back to The Valley, ‘a battle that took seven years to win.’
The South London Press took over the Mercury and made Peter editor. ‘It wasn’t a happy marriage,’ he recalls, and when he was headhunted for the council’s Greenwich Time weekly he went off to be the editor there. ‘I took a Mercury team with me,’ he says with a smile.
Under his leadership, the paper won the national competition for local authority newspapers three times.
By now I had already realised that Peter Cordwell was a decent person who wanted to do the best for the people. Surrounded by photos of family and pink wallpaper, I could see he was a softy. With intermittent stories about his grandchildren, it was obvious that his moany old geezer act was just that, an act, because he had a great line in humour that revealed itself between the diatribes. He is a Jack Dee for the common people – but funnier.
The lockdowns were the catalyst for the next stage in Peter’s life. ‘I started to write short stories during Covid, just as something to do but really enjoyed it,’ says the man who has spent most of his adult life as a journalist dealing in facts. ‘I found I could think of a person from the past and write a story around him or her, finding a twist and a positive ending. Positive, because I’m not interested in “dark.”’ An attitude, he tells me, that he emphasises with his nine grandchildren.
The book, Buzzing! Tales of Empathy and Optimism is on sale now on Amazon.
ISBN: 9798851041846
RRP: £5.99
