5:58pm Wednesday 2nd December 2009
By Lawrence Dunhill
BUCKS Free Press stalwart and popular entertainer Jack Blake has died aged 89 - after more than half a century printing the newspaper.
“Wacky Jacky” started his career at the BFP in 1934, aged just 14, and retired in 1985.
The life-long Hazlemere resident suffered from bowel cancer for the last year of his life and died on Tuesday, November 17.
Daughter Gill Pateman said: “My dad was a total jester and loved making people laugh. He used to go round to houses and hospitals to entertain elderly people.
“He would dress up in all sorts of wacky costumes. There are photos of him as a chicken, a baby, a ballerina and just about anything that was funny.”
“I feel really privileged that he was my dad and have been overwhelmed with good memories of him. He had a brilliant life even though he had a few very bad knocks in his time.”
In 1984 Mr Blake was involved in a serious car accident and underwent surgery to his leg, chest and face.
Surgeons “literally had to rebuild his face” and the story of his miraculous recovery was recorded on the front page of the Bucks Free Press Midweek edition of February 21 that year.
Roy Holmes, a friend and colleague at the BFP, said: “He used to say to me that after his accident every day was a bonus. He was a bundle of laughs and the most genial man you could ever meet.
“He was a master of words and puns but I can't give you any examples because I'm not Jack.”
Mr Blake was born in 1920 and went to Hazlemere C of E School. He had won a scholarship to go to grammar school but his parents couldn't afford the uniform.
On leaving school he started as an apprentice compositor at the BFP, at its old offices in the High Street in High Wycombe. He was then made an overseer in 1956 when the newspaper moved to a new base in Gomm Road.
Mrs Pateman said: “He saw great changes in the industry and although he said modernisation was a great thing he always loved the old machinery.
“He kept an printing press in his garden shed and would make personal Christmas and birthday cards on it.”
“Getting the newspaper out was a massive operation but my dad could read upside-down and back-to-front – he was fantastic at it.”
Mr Blake ran the BFP social club and would dress up as Father Christmas and organise a pantomime every year.
He also entertained elderly people with his 'Wacky Jacky Roadshow'. He loved entering competitions and once won a brand new Mini Cooper by dreaming up an advertising slogan for Heinz Soup.
His wife Daphne died in 1998 but he leaves behind two daughters: Patricia Frewer, 62, and Gill Pateman, 56. He also had seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Former colleague Dennis Oliver, 67, said: “He was a happy go lucky little man and liked to see people enjoying themselves.”
When the BFP celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2006 Mr Blake remembered his 51 years at the newspaper: “Most of those years there were around 300 employees and there was a great feeling of companionship.
“On Friday mornings staff had to pack the papers at 2am and newsagents would pick up the newspapers at the site.”
When he retired he was given a reproduction of the first front page edition he worked on dated April 13, 1934.
The funeral is at 12.15pm on Tuesday, December 8 in Milton Chapel at the Chilterns Crematorium in Amersham.
Family flowers only. Donations to the Urology Unit at Wycombe Hospital. Cheques payable to Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHST Charitable Fund (5877).
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