Frank Branston in his own words

As a tribute to Frank Branston, the founder of Bedfordshire on Sunday who has died aged 70, I thought it was best to remember him in his own words:

Branston on Bedfordshire on Sunday: “Many newspaper publishers consider editorial to be a nuisance, especially when it annoys advertisers. Bedfordshire on Sunday proved the opposite; that news, vigorous comment and humour are the saviour of newspapers, not their undertaker.”

Branston on the second edition of BoS: "The second edition is still a terrible memory. We had practically no advertising and our total revenue only crept over £700 because I had just had a crime novel published and my publisher, bless him, rowed in with a £70 advertisement. It was still 16 pages, of which about 13 were editorial. I wrote most of it and a friendly sub-editor came in to help lay out the pages. He didn't know what he was in for and we never saw him again."

Branston on 30 years of BoS: "We survived because we produced a newspaper which was different in content to the other four that were then being published in Bedford; a newspaper which, no matter how slapdash its production, still told its readers news they did not get elsewhere."

Branston on Fred Plester, his award winning ex-policeman reporter who was on BoS for seven years: “He won a journalism award every year he was with the paper except one - that year I was one of the judges. It took him a long time to forgive me, if he ever did. Fred boasted that he had put more criminals before the courts than the entire Bedford CID during the same period."

Branston on lobster: “The best thing to have with lobster is another lobster.”