Kevin Brockbank spent 37 years as a print engineer, installing presses around the world, before five heart attacks in five hours knocked him out of the industry in October 2012.

Saved by means of accidental CPR - a long-time colleague fell onto his chest and restarted his heart - Brockbank has restarted his career with a multimedia journalism course at the University of Lancaster. 

Now into his second year of the course, Brockbank has not let his heart transplant, received in the middle of 2021, and subsequent four-week coma slow down his ambitions.

“It’s very interesting, we’re doing everything [in multimedia]. So every week we go out, interview people, and put a TV package together, and it’s broadcast on the UCLan [University of Lancashire] network,” he told Printweek.

Having been made redundant after his initial illness, Brockbank decided to retrain after an operation to have a stent put in left him unsure if he would ever be fit enough to install printing presses.

“I’m not going to be able to be chasing around the world putting presses in, because I might not get fit again [I thought],” he said.

“So why not become a journalist and still be in the print world, on the other side of the fence? I thought that would be a nice job.”

Brockbank certainly has history with the industry, having started out with Miehle-Goss-Dexter when he was just 16.

One highlight was in 1985, aged 26, when he was told by the Goss managing director: “I’ve got a mission for you, and I can’t tell you what it is or where it is.”

The mission would see him sent to Heathrow Terminal Four to meet a man - but Brockbank had no idea what the man would look like, or how he would find him.

“It was like something out of a James Bond movie, it was unbelievable,” he said.

“So I turned up at Heathrow, and I’m wandering around. Next thing, somebody tapped me on the shoulder - he was only about five foot two - at the terminal.”

The man was Thomson Regional Newspaper’s director at the time, Martin Board, who would whisk Brockbank off to South Africa.

The assignment would see Brockbank go to Johannesburg to disassemble a Metro printing press and ship it back to Middlesbrough. This was no simple job, either: the machine was five storeys underground, and the labourers employed by the company all Zulu, who spoke no English.

“We had difficulty getting that out, it was up a lift shaft and very tight - there was about three foot square around the unit as it came up to street level,” he said.

Three months later, the job was done, and he flew back to England.

The story, however, did not end there. During his South African jaunt, Brockbank had noticed just how cheap the wine was - and with a good number of huge shipping containers headed home, he decided to stow a few bottles of wine, some whiskey, and a big barbeque alongside the press.

A year and a half later, while on another job in Denmark, Brockbank got a call from that same director of Thomson Regional to meet him at Heathrow.

“It’s three o’clock in the afternoon, I’m in the middle of a job, and he hadn’t spoken to me for 18 months. He just said: “Kevin, meet me at seven o’clock tomorrow morning. Just be there.” End of conversation.”

Taking an overnight plane, Brockbank arrived, met Thomson’s man and was led immediately to customs - when the realisation hit.

“It suddenly dawned on me - I’m in there with the customs people, thinking “Oh my god, I’m gonna get busted for smuggling!””

The customs officer snipped the lead seal on the first container - no wine. Second, fine, but on the third, Brockbank could see the crates in the back of the container.

Leaping into the container, which was awash with machine oil, he invited the officer to have a look.

The officer politely declined - the ruse had worked.

“Six months later, we opened the first container [at Middlesbrough] - the first thing that came out was my barbeque!”