WELL-KNOWN Bury journalist Joe Horrocks has died, aged 79.

The former Bury Times reporter and news editor, who later set up his own successful news and PR agency in the town, died in Wythenshawe Hospital where he was receiving treatment for heart disease.

He was born in Hawkshaw and, as a teenager starting his first job as a trainee reporter, he used to cycle each day to Holcombe Brook to catch the train to Bury, leaving his bike outside the blacksmith's forge on Bolton Road West.

Joe, a pupil of Bury Grammar School where he was a keen cricketer, began his newspaper career aged 16 at the Bury Times after leaving school in 1937. He served in the RAF as a ground radar operator during the Second World War, stationed in the Middle East, Italy and Cyprus, and returned to the newspaper after demob, later becoming news editor.

He left to join the Daily Express in Manchester as a sub-editor and, in 1953, he moved to the then Evening Chronicle in the city. He also worked on the Sunday Express, Sunday Pictorial and the News of the World.

In 1954 he set up Joe Horrocks Press Agency in a rented office in Broad Street, Bury. Soon after the freelance news and picture agency took off, he moved to Bolton Street above Wally Wilson's bookmakers in front of the old Bury Palais, now the site of the Castle Leisure Centre.

The agency sold news to all of Britain's daily newspapers. It then expanded into TV newsreel coverage as the regional BBC and Granada developed. He launched a national music paper, Big Sound, and went on to edit one of the first full colour regional papers, the Manchester Comet.

Joe moved to wooden offices off Bolton Street in the late 1960s and developed the business into a public relations company, representing many local companies such as Walmsley's, James Kenyon and Son, James Crompton, the East Lancs Paper Mill in Radcliffe, Hird-Brown Electronics in Bolton, Chloride Batteries in Swinton and the British Paper Machinery Makers' Association.

He produced many company newspapers which were printed on the Bury Times press, then in Market Street, and he handled the PR account for Bury Council. He also produced promotional films for local companies.

Mr Noel Richley (90) was a reporter on the Bury Times when Joe started.

"He joined straight from school wearing his long, rather than his short, trousers," said Mr Richley.

"In the first few days he was thrown in at the deep end and it was hard graft. It was a case of sink or swim, but it was quite clear that Joe was going to swim." Mr Richley went on to work as chief news editor at the Press Association and would often receive copy from Joe's agency.

"It was always reliable. I never had to check if he had a name right or ask for any more, you knew that you were safe with it," said Mr Richley.

"It would make me proud that we had come from the same place."

On retirement, Joe moved to Spain, returning to live in Holcombe Brook ten years ago. Recently, he completed a short book on his boyhood memories of Hawkshaw.

He leaves a wife, Eunice, and two sons, Paul and Stephen.

The funeral service takes place today at 1.30pm at St Mary's Church, Hawkshaw. The family have requested no flowers. Donations can be made to the Wythenshawe heart failure clinic. Tribute from former Bury Times editor Frank Thomas JOE Horrocks made his mark not only as a respected and highly competent newsman, but as a pioneer of the local scene of colour print technology.

He was quick to grasp the potential of the rapidly-emerging newspaper production techniques and to adapt them to a string of publications he planned and designed on contract, using the facilities of the newly-installed Bury Times web off-set press. These skills he harnessed to his consultancy work for a wide range of corporate customers.

In addition to running a 24-hour news agency, supplying copy to national and regional newspapers, TV and radio, he filled the role of public relations consultant to several major local companies, among them James Kenyon (Albany International) and papermakers' engineers Walmsley, as well as the local authority.

But it was as a newspaperman that Joe Horrocks will be best remembered, particularly among his former colleagues.

He had a natural instinct for sifting out newsworthy copy and for presenting it quickly and accurately. Many young reporters who worked with him in his early days on the Bury Times learned much from the high standards he set in the newsroom.

It was these skills that underpinned much of what he accomplished in later years when advising companies how best to promote their image.