Standard vendor hands out final edition after 47 years

An Evening Standard vendor who has been giving Londoners the latest news for nearly five decades will hand out her final batch of papers today.

Pat Sharp is retiring after 48 years distributing the Standard outside London Bridge station.

The 65-year-old began aged 18 in 1972 with her mother-in-law, Carol Sharp, whose family had been in the newspaper-selling business for over a century. For years, on her 2.30pm to 7pm shift outside London Bridge, she handed out 2,500 to 3,000 papers every day. She says she remembers “all the bowler hats people used to wear”. She also recalls the 7/7 bombings, when she sold 8,000 papers in a day as workers rushed out of offices to find out what had happened.

The great-grandmother now lives in Meopham, Kent, and in recent years has made her hour-long train commute to her pitch at the station’s Shard exit. She said: “I think I’m ready to finish now. I’ve done my time. It’s a lovely job in the summer, but in the winter it’s so cold.

“But I’ve done this all my life, and I’ve enjoyed working with the public. I’m not someone who could sit in an office and clock in nine to five, not my sort of thing.” She added: “This is a job you either love or you hate. My mother-in-law used to say, to work on the papers it’s got to be born into you, it’s not something you learn, it’s just something that’s in you.”

Ms Sharp has helped lead a team of distributors at the station since the Standard went free in 2009. She plans to look after her 90-year-old mother and “keep busy” with her seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

On her inclusion in today’s paper, she said: “It’s quite an achievement — I’ll take this last edition home with me.”

Circulation manager Tim Freeman said: “Pat has been always been an outstanding vendor with a fantastic relationship with her customers … She will be much missed.”