Newsagent Jim Mitchell from Carlton Colville has been in business for 50 years. Photo: Nick Butcher

For 50 years he has sold and delivered the news.

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But now Jim Mitchell is making the headlines himself after marking half a century of working at a family newsagents.

Jim runs Carlton Colville News and Cards in Famona Road, near Lowestoft, having begun work as a boy in 1962.

His first foray into the world of newspapers and confectionery saw him delivering items for his parents Alec and Joan Mitchell who poured their life savings into setting up AG and JM Mitchells in Poplar Road.

In 1968, the Mitchell family moved the short distance across Carlton Colville to set up shop in Famona Road where their newsagents has become a part of community life.

This week, Jim, 65, spent every day getting up at 5.10am to get ready to open his shop to his loyal customers and prepare his 13 newspaper deliverers – just as he had done countless times over the years.

So dedicated is the father-of-two to making sure Carlton Colville News and Cards remains a thriving community hub that he has not had a holiday for 20 years and only takes Christmas Day off each year.

Among his customers are 50 loyal EDP readers who buy a copy of their favourite paper from him every day. Jim said that over the last 50 years, the biggest change he had seen was in the sweets the store stocked – with a move from traditional local confectionery, such as Foremans bottled sweets, to mass produced items.

He said: “It seems people in Britain have always been addicted to sweets, but different sweets at different times. “Chocolates and sweets are always being re-born with new tastes and different wrappers. “I do prefer the more traditional sweets – I love hard boiled ones.”

Jim also recalled when the shop sold newspapers such as The Daily Sketch, The News Chronicle and The Daily Herald, which became The Sun, and the heyday of broadsheets.

anthony.carroll@archant.co.uk