FORMER compositor Keith Towells will bid farewell to the newspaper industry today (Friday) after a career with the Free Press that has spanned a full half century. Keith, aged 65, has spent his entire working life with West Somerset's top weekly, joining the paper as an apprentice on his 15th birthday in August 1955. Within a year he had also learned to work the monotype castors and in the early 1960s his skills were put to good use when he was one of five apprentices who knuckled down with management to produce a four page Free Press for the six weeks of the national printers' strike. The then owners of the paper - the Cox family - apparently promised the apprentices a trip to London to see a football match, but Keith is still waiting for the tickets to arrive! Beginning his working life in the jobbing printing office, Keith progressed to the news floor as foreman and when new technology meant the end of the hot metal system for printing the paper, he came foreman of the 'paste-up' department. But he faced an even bigger change in his career when the Free Press went to electronic full page make-up and the department was closed. His tasks since then have included running a copy collecting service between Williton and the paper's satellite office in Minehead, dealing with 500 subscriptions for copies of the paper every Friday and looking after the advertisements for local estate agents, who say he provides a service second to none. Staff and managers of the now Tindle-owned Free Press - including the company's chairman Sir Ray Tindle - gathered to wish Keith a happy retirement at a celebratory lunch at Halsway Manor. Free Press general manager David Tucker said Keith had been the best possible employee a company could have and had taken all the changes in his usual dependable and enthusiastic way. "But more than that, he has been a great colleague and a friend to all of us. "We will all miss him, his dependability and cool head in a crisis, as well as his willingness to help. "We wish him a long and happy retirement." Gifts, which included a painting of a local scene, a watch and gardening equipment, gave a clue as to how Keith, who has a grown up son and daughter and three grandchildren, may be spending some of his new-found leisure. "I think I shall be keeping busy just working through the long list of jobs my wife has been compiling," he said. The DIY enthusiast also revealed that his working life could have taken a very different direction if a local builder had had a vacancy for a carpenter's apprentice 50 years ago. "It was a toss-up between printing or carpentry but I don't regret the way things turned out. "I have seen an awful lot of changes over the years and the work was certainly much harder and more physically demanding in the old days. "I'm going to miss the people at work but I think I'm going to be kept fairly busy at home." Keith and his wife joy are pictured with, from the left, former Free Press vice-chairman Reg Dickinson, Sir Ray Tindle, general manager David Tucker, editor Gareth Purcell and Tindle Newspapers chief executive Brian Doel. Photo: Steve Guscott.