Bobby Boudin started at the newspaper in 1961 when he was just 16, after completing his A-levels at De La Salle College. He retired last Friday after a presentation attended by staff past and present.
After years of experiencing Bobby’s humour – and, in particular – his custom of producing either a yellow or red card, depending on the seriousness of their errors, staff were able to turn the tables on him and produced red cards to the sound of whistles and much laughter as they bid him farewell.
Bobby joined the JEP at the same time as his classmate and former Chief Minister Frank Walker and managed to balance his day job with a night job spinning discs at La Tropicana nightclub in St Ouen.
At the JEP Bobby rose through the ranks from sweeping the floor and making the tea to managing the pre-press department.
He was a member of the team who moved up to Five Oaks in 1977 when the paper moved from Charles Street.
He started in the days of hot metal printing, a technique using molten lead which was far removed from today’s hi-tech computerised printing systems.
Speaking about his time at the JEP, Bobby said: ‘We have gone virtually from the stone age to the space age and it has been an amazing journey. I have loved every minute of it. You stay at the cutting edge of technology all the time and never stop planning. It has been very challenging and very gratifying.’
He enjoyed his night job nearly as much as it brought him into contact with the likes of Led Zeppelin, George Best, Bobbie Charlton, Denis Law, Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Savile, Labi Siffre and the Rolling Stones.
