Ashley Painter, pictured this week, was the subject of our very first ‘splash’

TODAY (Friday) marks the 1,000th issue of your weekly Islington Tribune – and so it only seemed right to track down the man who was the subject our very first front page 20 years ago.

Ashley Painter was described as a “City whizz” when we reported how he had given up his £300,000 a year job as a high-flying lawyer to help the homeless at St Mary’s Church in Angel full time.

Now 58, Mr Painter told us this week: “I found it quite empowering. For the first time in a long time, I was doing something I was passionate about: helping other people, which is not necessarily a part of the high-flying role of a financial and corporate lawyer.”

The Tribune began life in 2003 after fans of our sister paper, the Camden New Journal, urged us to send reporters into Islington.

At the time, Mr Painter told that first edition that he wanted to raise £400,000 to redevelop St Mary’s Crypt and expand the church’s soup kitchen, and he succeeded.

“It was spiritually fulfilling,” he said. “I was reaching out and helping others, and putting others before yourself.

“It’s a Christian teaching. It was quite, at that stage, foreign to the work ethic of people working in the City. I was happier, and a lot less stressed.”

He said he left St Mary’s and his Danbury Street home around 2006 to move to Dubai to work as a lawyer again – before realising that life wasn’t for him.

He moved back to London in 2010, and is now living in Kennington and working for the NHS in mental health services.

“I work with people who were off work, trying to get them back into work, or people who were off sick and trying to get them into work with all the reasonable adjustment things,” he said.

“What I found is that I can use the whole lot of my legal skills to help people do that, and explain it to them and their employer in a way that they understand.”

He says his work in St Mary’s is something he uses every day.

“It helped me understand how other people’s lives were, and the impact that poverty and inequalities have on people’s lives. I don’t come to judgement as quickly as I might have before.”

During his time in St Mary’s, Mr Painter helped to expand the soup kitchen the church had in the Crypt, run by Vergers Tom and Barbara Quantril, also pictured on our first front page but who have unfortunately passed away since.

“Tom and Barbara have stuck in my memory. They always used to go above and beyond,” said Mr Painter.

He told us he wants to encourage people to follow in his footsteps if they feel like a change.

“I would recommend it to people,” he said. “It might help them in their own lives because they’re giving back something.

“I was really stressed, and it was really getting me down. It was scary to leave behind, but, be brave.”

• Send your memories of being in the Tribune to editorial@islingtontribune.co.uk

Our thanks…

THIS is a special anniversary for our newspaper – 20 years in print and, this week, our 1,000th edition.

Truth be told, we began life in 2003 at a time when a wider decline in the industry was already starting – a trend which has only accelerated more recently as even some of London’s best-known titles begin to appear as ghosts of their former selves.

We were told that this paper couldn’t work, but we ignored the doubters.

And here we still are, perhaps because the founding editor Eric Gordon and his team brought to the Tribune all of the guiding principles that had served them on the Camden New Journal for years before.

Simply put, that we are not here to make profit for faraway shareholders – we are here for our readers.

We are, then, fiercely independent of the four or five big newspaper companies that now own nearly every local title in the country. We refuse to be a dashed out identikit product. That’s why the Tribune’s reporters can still be found out exploring and meeting residents every week.

Our raison d’etre is simple: to inform, to campaign where necessary, to listen to those struggling to be heard, and, hopefully, to entertain as well.

So over the past two decades we’ve found our stories right here on the borough’s streets.

It’s a fact that Bob The Cat’s story only became a book and movie sensation after his owner, James Bowen, was asked for an interview by our passing reporter Peter Gruner.

There is resolute seriousness to what we do as well, however.

We tackle crime not by trying to scare but by trying to decipher how to stop it recurring.

And we campaign for the good public services our readers need and deserve, challenging those in power where needed.

Twice our battle bus helped save the emergency services at the Whittington Hospital. It is always ready to ride again.

Over the years, you will have seen the ‘bylines’ of many talented journalists who been devoted to their task. Many have gone on to work on national titles.

But behind the scenes there are many more people in production, sales, accounts and distribution whose names do not appear in print but keep our show on the road.

Several have been with us from day one and we are as in debt to them as the reporters seen on the historic front covers spread across these pages.

But we also owe thanks to those who support us by taking advertising – you are supporting strong local journalism in doing so, as well as promoting your venture in the borough’s best read paper.

And, of course, we say thank you to our engaged readers. We would not be here without your warmth and encouragement – and, yes, your constructive feedback too.

On our birthday, we remain as committed as ever to telling your stories.

RICHARD OSLEY
Editor