The day I sold 3000 newspapers

In the summer of 69 I worked selling London evening papers from my uncle Connies pitch on the corner of Baker Street and Marylebone Road. Neil Armstrong, Commander of the Nasa Space Mission, Apollo 11, had just set foot on the moon. Back in the day before iPhone and news feeds, papers were still the only way to immerse yourself in the news.

Between around 11am and 7pm on that Saturday, I sold 3000+ copies of the evening news and evening standard. About 2000 of them were bootlegs, boosted from the presses down in Fleet Street.
To visualise, 3000 papers would stack to around 25 feet in height and I (we) were clearing about thruppence in old money from each sale, which made my take around £115.00, in a time when £25 was a decent weekly wage.

It was the first day it seemed, of a brilliant future, also the day when nearly all the national papers decided to do their first full colour covers. Point was, it was happening, I was buzzing and the world would never be the same again. Especially after the first whole earth image* was published.

Space Oddity

Photo: Looking Back from Apollo 11 Nasa.