ON NEW Year’s Day, the Kent Messenger Group will have a new chairman.

Edwin Boorman, 70, steps down after 46 years to make way for his 39-year old daughter Geraldine Allinson.

Trevor Sturgess spoke to both just before they swapped chairs.

******************************

"HE meant well." That’s what Edwin Boorman would like written as his epitaph.

But others would say there is far more to his remarkable life than that.

High Sheriff, Deputy Lieutenant of Kent, chairman of Kent Youth, chairman of North Kent Success, Kent Ambassador, chairman of St John in Kent, the Royal British Legion Industries and Maidstone Trust, responsible for raising money for the County Town’s Millennium River Park.

The list of voluntary and charitable roles goes on and on. His service to community, county and country has been immense.

But Mr Boorman has also found time to run a successful newspaper group. For many years, he was both chief executve and chairman.

He built up the business, adding titles and acquiring radio stations. The Kent Messenger Group’s annual turnover is now around £50million, with more than a million readers and 150,000 radio listeners.

He admits it’s not easy giving up the chairman’s role, but recognises that 70-somethings should not be running companies. He is pleased that his daughter is ready to take over his role.

He said: "Geraldine will be the youngest chairman in the regional newspaper industry and I think that everybody will be able to relate to her."

She is a lot younger than he was when he became chairman at the age of 55, although he had been in charge since he was 29.

He joined his father Henry Roy Pratt Boorman, the "Guv’nor", in the business when he was 24. How things have changed. When Mr Boorman was secretary of Kent Newspaper Proprietors Association, he wrote to 23 members.

"Now you need only write to five, and only one is a truly Kent newspaper group and that’s us. That’s an achievement."

Regrets? He’s had a few. Like Air Messenger, the company’s "airline"; like music tapes; like recycling old newspapers for animal bedding. "But my main regret is that I’m too old to continue," he said.

One of his best decisions, he believes, was buying Press Association shares for £2,500, an investment that later turned into £5million. This windfall helped the company survive a financial crisis.

Family firms are not easy to run. Mr Boorman recalls the rows he had with his father over the proposed move to its present headquarters in Larkfield in the late 1960s following a massive fire at its then HQ in Maidstone.

"My father took the view that if we moved away from the centre of Maidstone, we would lose the support of the people of Maidstone. My father wasn’t ready to hand over the business to me."

But Edwin won the argument, and says he will try not to interfere too much in Geraldine’s decisions.

Mr Boorman has been at the helm during seismic change in the newspaper industry.

"We are on the verge - perhaps three years away - of reinventing a local media company. I want this company to be the authority that people turn to whatever they want to know about Kent. We should be the Google for Kent which directs people to the right place for the answer."

Mr Boorman will remain with the company for at least five more years.

He has moved into a new office some 50 yards across the road from his old one, now occupied by his daughter and already given a decor makeover. But he insists he won’t interfere.

On January 1, he becomes the group’s second President. His late father was the first.

Mr Boorman’s has been a life well-lived, with vast amounts of time and money invested in the county he loves.

"My job over the next five years is not only to help Geraldine but to be the link between the board and the shareholders. I hope I do this well enough for them to value it so I continue for a long while yet.

"I’ve enjoyed it - it’s been a huge privilege. Being chairman of the KM is one of the best jobs in Kent."