The 'late man' clocks off

THE life of the late-night crime reporter consists of long periods of inactivity and boredom, punctuated by adrenalin-charged battles against deadlines. It is a life that Tommy Lewis knows well. As the South China Morning Post 's 'late man', his contacts, tenacity and experience have helped ensure that when big stories broke late, the Post was on top of them. Now, after 40 years as a reporter - many of them on the crime beat at the Post - Lewis, who turns 60 tomorrow, is about to put away his pen and notepad.

His retirement will mark the end of an era in the Post 's newsroom. In a profession where reporters come and go, the slightly-built Eurasian newsman with the shock of black hair and the oversized glasses has seemed as much a fixture as the glowing banks of computers and jangling telephones.

He has covered many of Hong Kong's biggest stories, from the 1960s riots to the Lan Kwai Fong New Year's Eve disaster. He has lost count of the number of editors he has seen come and go, and watched journalism evolve from the ink-stained, rough-and-ready days of hot metal type to today's slick, hi-tech production.

Lewis admits he will miss the buzz of the breaking story. 'Being the night crime man, you spend a lot of time wandering around, reading papers, scanning the wires,' he says. 'But you never know what will happen in the next second. You never know when things can suddenly turn insane.' Lewis' childhood was far from an easy one. He was the youngest of five children, all of whom were interned by the Japanese at a concentration camp at Rosary Hill, near Stubbs Road during World War II.

'My father was a prisoner of war, and my mother, well, one day she went out to get food, this was during a time of severe bombings, and she never came back. My father was hospitalised for a long time after the war, and he died quite young. I stayed with my grandmother after that, then we were all put into boarding schools.' He began his career in the summer of 1959. After graduating from the Diocesan Boys School and a brief stint as a clerk at the Central Post Office - 'it was dirty, dark and it stank' - one of his former schoolmates bumped into him and demanded to know 'what the hell I was doing in this boring job'.

'He told me the South China Morning Post was looking for people, and suggested I give it a try,' Lewis remembers.