Coventry Express

Yes and its corporate colours were black and yellow, the same as the Brandon Bees which featured heavily in their pages. It was a much livelier paper than the Evening Telegraph or Coventry Standard. My dad told me Iliffe took legal action against the paper citing some ancient statute which gave them exclusive newspaper rights for the Coventry area. The colour presses were then handed to Iliffe who used them to print the Coventry Standard and occasional colour wraparounds for the Evening Telegraph.

And here's the front page from Friday, November 8th 1963!...

I remember the Coventry Standard was a Broadsheet, whereas the Coventry Express was tabloid - much easier to handle.

... and the back! I wonder whether Julie Breakwell is a member on here?

Thanks Tony I remember the Beatles special issue which followed. There was a competition to spot four black beatles hidden among the pages. It was the height of Beatlemania. The local shops were crammed with Beatle memorabilia and Dora Bryan was about to have a number one hit with "All I want for Christmas is a Beatle".

Great link, Dutchman, but I don't think it ever did reach no.1. I have a dvd with every no.1 from 1953 up to 2003 (sad, I know) and it's not on there.

I stand corrected Adrian The Beatles were at No 1 & 2 that week. Dora never got higher than No 20 (was played an awful lot on the radio though).

It entered the charts at 29 and peaked at 21 - at Christmas it was 22, and out of the top 40 the following week

I remember the Express very well, I had just started my first job in photography in 1962 and my boss was commisioned to shoot the pics for the new paper which came out around September that year. We both had pictures we had taken used in the first edition. The first front page had a colour pic of the Coventry football team in their new sky blue kit and a leader written by Woodrow Wyatt. Nine months later I went on to work as an industrial photographer at Wickmans. I guess the Express eventually got their own in-house photographer.

And here are the prizes that the winners could look forward to.