Matthew the Newsagent (#87)

A visit to #87 in the Times Radio Early Breakfast Club

This article was originally published in The Stornoway Gazette

I find myself writing to you today from the train. I’m on my way back from Matthew the Newsagent’s in Pagham, West Sussex, on the south coast of England. Matthew has become the figurehead of the Early Breakfast Club on Times Radio. He’s got more loyalty points than most. I realise there’s a good chance you’ve no idea what I’m talking about.

When Times Radio began at the end of June 2020, on the Early Breakfast programme, we opened the doors to the Early Breakfast Club. This is an exclusive, but inclusive, club for our listeners to join simply by sending us a text message. Each person who texts in to join, gets a membership number that they then use every time they get in touch, to increase their loyalty points. It’s like a Tesco Clubcard, or the BA Executive Club. The more you use it, the more points you get. I keep track (as best as I can) on a spreadsheet which has nearly 1,200 names on it.

For a while, we’d been planning a bit of a tour of places where our Early Breakfast Club members spend their time while they listen to the programme, to broadcast the programme and hear their stories and about their lives and workplaces and pastimes. I often say that our Early Breakfast Club members have the unique ability to add real life to the news stories we talk about: the volunteer vaccinators, those signing up to house Ukrainian refugees, community survival techniques during lockdown. Matthew the Newsagent is no different.

Matthew the Newsagent behind the counter of Pagham Newsagent’s. Me, live on air on Times Radio Early Breakfast, Tuesday 17th May 2022.

Matthew joined the Club on the day we opened the doors and has texted - I kid you not - most days since. So, we decided to visit him to find out about what happens at Pagham’s Newsagent, where he arrives every morning at around 5am after making the 22 mile drive from his home. He told us about his optimism for recovery post-pandemic, and that he’s bought a second store at the other end of the courtyard of shops to accompany the newsagent’s. The reason? Customers kept asking him for things that he didn’t have space to stock and he wanted to supply them.

The newsagent’s is traditional - a rusty, dusty red carpet is on the floor and has been for some time. The shelves are inked by the newspapers they support each day. The greetings cards - Matthew says he has to stock mostly the “with sympathy” variety - are arranged more neatly than I’ve ever seen in any shop ever. There are second hand book shelves and DVD exchanges and four shelves full of jars of pick ‘n’ mix selections. He’s got a shop like Tarmod a Van - Norman, who used to trundle round the Isle of Lewis with an essential grocery shop in a van.

If it hadn’t been for the paper boy, she’d have been stranded on the floor for days

On that note, perhaps the most striking similarity, actually, is as he described the amazing role that he, and his staff, play in the community. One lady asked him to source a new door bell for her. So he did. And later today he’s going to go and install it for her. He says he’d rather do it than leave her with the inconvenience of finding someone else and waiting for them to have time to visit and paying them. He told me that customers will come into the newsagent’s to tell him, in graphic detail, about their latest trip to hospital, sometimes with accompanying visual aids. I dread to think. People come in with items that have been delivered, that need returned - and ask Matthew to actually exchange the product for a different size. He frequently clarifies that he’s not M&S, but just the middleman for their deliveries.

He told us that the paper boys are on alert to spot if the papers aren’t making it out of the letter boxes of some of the older recipients in the community. Recently, one of them noticed yesterday’s paper still sticking out so he called Matthew. Matthew called the police. The elderly lady had fallen 24 hours before. If it hadn’t been for the paper boy, she’d have been stranded on the floor for days.

One of our guests described the newsagent’s shop as the backbone of the community. Spending a couple of hours there today, it is clear that he is right. I suppose it has been forever thus. The local shop is where you go to get the news, and the news - from papers and from one another. You know the shopkeeper, and they know you. They have all the supplies you need or get what you request. They look out for you - why has Elizabeth not visited today, why has Murdo not collected his paper that we keep for him, why are there more cakes left than usual? Who’s missing from the run of the day?

It’s easy to forget the importance of actual human beings when online, instant shopping gets as ridiculous as ordering tongs on Amazon to have them delivered three hours later (I don’t know why I so urgently needed them, but there they were). But we’re careless when we forget. Invest in the people around you because then they can invest in you.