JOURNALIST John Hawkins has spent the last five decades covering some of the biggest stories in Gloucestershire.

As he prepares to close his notebook for the last time, we look back on his astonishing career in news

After 53 years of running one of the UK’s oldest news agencies, John has finally decided to call it a day.

His decision to wind up the Gloucestershire News Service - which has provided stories to the SNJ, the Wilts and Glos Standard and the Gloucestershire Gazette and many other local and national news outlets over the years - comes just four years short of the agency’s centenary.

John’s career started in 1967 when he was recruited from school in Gloucester aged 16 to become a trainee reporter at the agency.

Five years later his boss Jimmy Hyett, who founded the Gloucester-based business in 1928, sold it to him.

By then John had been well trained as a reporter and went on to win the South West Young Journalist of the Year competition.

During the ensuing half century, John would recruit and train many young reporters who would go on to successful careers in newspapers, radio and TV and in PR.

One of his employees, Jan, would later became his wife, and the couple went onto have two sons and two grandchildren.

Over the years John and his staff unearthed and covered scores of national and international stories from Gloucestershire - the biggest of which was the Fred and Rose West case.

For three months in 1994, John and his staff provided dozens of reporters with a base in the agency’s small offices off Westgate Street.

“It was by far the busiest and most demanding period in the agency’s history,” said John.

“We were at the epicentre of events which made headlines around the world.”

By chance, one of John’s earliest assignments as a 16-year-old cub reporter in early 1968 concerned the mystery disappearance of 15-year-old Mary Bastholm, who is suspected to have been a West victims.

When John started his career, disseminating news stories was slow and laborious with reports dictated over the phone to ‘copytakers’ in newsrooms.

Then came Telex machines and finally the computer era dawned and everything changed.

“At first we found it incredible that we could write a report and send it to numerous newsdesks at the press of a button,” said John.

“Nowadays we all take the speed of electronic communication for granted.

“It’s astonishing how much that has changed in my lifetime.”

John also spent 20 years commentating on Gloucester Rugby for radio and also wrote up home matches for the Sunday papers.

The agency’s core role however, was covering Gloucester Crown Court, local magistrates courts, tribunals and inquests.

In 1993, one of John’s stories about the attempted murder of a couple who were attacked, tied up and sent careering down the hillside at the Barrow Wake viewpoint near Birdlip in a burning car made the front page of the Sun.

John and his team were also regularly commissioned by the nationals to cover breaking stories in the area and royal stories.

Attending polo matches at Earl Bathurst’s Cirencester Park became one of John’s regular assignments in the 1990s when Princes William and Harry were children and frequently went to matches, often with their mother Princess Diana to watch their father play.

In 2003 the princes were involved in an incident at Cirencester Park which led to John getting a royal scoop.

William was driving back across the estate when he overtook Earl Bathurst, who was in a Land Rover.

Unaware that the princes were in the car, the Earl chased after them as they were exceeding the estate’s 20mph speed limit.

Two royal protection police officers who were following went to William’s rescue, pulling in alongside the irate Earl to explain the situation and prevent him confronting the princes.

Dozens of reporters and photographers arrived at the estate the next day chasing the story but the Earl refused to speak to any of them apart from John, who was invited in for a full interview at the kitchen table about what had happened in the road rage drama the previous day.

John estimates he and his colleagues have sent out more than 100,000 news stories in his 57 years of journalism,.

He is now planning to write a book about his career.