What was Kensington News? by Adam Trimingham
Kensington Church Street in London was part of the Swinging Sixties – especially the lower end, when Biba the boutique arrived 60 years ago, in 1964.
But, in the less fashionable bit near Notting Hill Gate, there was a business that had changed little during the last century. The Kensington News and West London Times was slowly dying.
It had three reporters – all male, because the editor Barbara Denny thought women were less likely to work long hours. The starting salary was £150 a year. She claimed to have employed Barry Norman and Michael Winner, both local lads, and fired them.
The paper was printed on an elderly press in a mews building round the corner. It struggled to produce eight- page broadsheets. Readers were often festooned with strips of paper like confetti because they had not been cut properly. The circulation was officially 20,000 – but I discovered it could not have exceeded 4,000.
The managing director motored to Kensington from his Sussex home each day to do nothing noteworthy. His main aim was to keep Barkers, the department store in Kensington High Street, paying for a front-page ad.
Kensington was a favoured spot for entertainers such as Spike Milligan, sometimes seen painting the Elfin Oak in Kensington Gardens. A mother constantly came to the News to tell us about her talented daughter’s latest acting success. The daughter’s name was Francesca Annis.
The News also reported on slum landlord Peter Rachman and his wicked ways. He was so angry that he told Barbara Denny to stop publishing stories about him. But she was made of sterner stuff and was unmoved by his threats to set snarling dogs on her. The national press did not report this story until after Rachman had died.
consistently reported on the crying need to help newly arrived West Indians and wrote passionate editorials, but it was too small a voice and no one was listening.
When the Grenfell Tower fire killed 72 people in 2017, commentators asked if a stronger local press would have drawn attention earlier to the shocking state of the area.
Regretfully, the answer had to be no. Papers like the News were too feeble to have much impact, and Mrs Denny’s pleadings were not taken up nationally in Fleet Street.
When Mrs Denny took a holiday, she left the least callow youth in charge – once it was me and I just survived.
But another reporter was not so lucky. He wrote a libellous story about a landlord and the resultant legal action left the paper ripe for a takeover – which duly occurred. Meanwhile, crowds flocked to Biba down the hill, with almost nobody spotting that the old News had gone. Adam Trimingham
