Jane was linked in before LinkedIn

Jane Thomas never had a LinkedIn account but she would have loved this opportunity for networking and connection.

She was linked in before LinkedIn. In the pre-internet days, she could find anyone’s phone number or address by thumbing through the Yellow Pages, phone books or, for the “ex-directory”, making calls to her many contacts and professional friends who owed her a favour.

She was a natural researcher and could spot connections that would lead to the people she wanted to reach.As Assistant to three Editors at the New Statesman magazine between 1979 and 1987 and later at The Observer’s Life magazine and the TV series Hard News, she was worth her weight in gold.

She described her low-paid role as a “general dogsbody” but to her colleagues she was a fountain of good ideas, a gate keeper, fact checker, researcher, confidante, cheerleader and friend.

Moved, like me, to write about her after her death on 9 May, former workmates described her as “indomitable in her domain, she essentially ran the show” …. “technically the Editors assistant. But that title absolutely did not do justice to her role, which was in fact Queen of the good ship New Statesman” … “She would always have time to counsel, console, or on occasion deliver a good old fashioned kick up the bum to pretty much any member of staff - high or low.”… “She was so smart and on it and obviously in charge - but also incredibly warm, supportive and good fun.”

Sharing her Guardian obituary on Twitter, the writer Anthony Barnett summed her up in 140 characters thus: “A woman of her time. The restrictions of imperial Britain had gone. Women were free but few could find the roles they deserved. Personally liberated before feminism, she was never just an assistant.”

Jane Thomas had a gift for connection which she used to great effect for professional and personal reasons. As I look back on her life and our own mother-son connection, I realise just how much I owe her for getting me started professionally.

Long before I had any work experience, she helped pave my way to a career in journalism (and later communications) that has given me so much fulfilment. Looking back at my awkward teenage years when the adult world of work (especially the high-octane, ego-driven world of journalism) seemed so intimidating, I now realise it was one of the most valuable gifts that she gave me.

She was passionate about journalism and politics and I picked up on her enthusiasm. Nurturing my interest, she worked her connections to help get me started in journalism.As an elected official on the Richmond Borough Council, she had got to know the local media and so one Summer when I was about 14 she got me two weeks of unpaid “work experience” on the Brentford and Chiswick Times.

I can still remember the thrill (hers and mine) of seeing my first story in print – a NIB or news in brief about swans on the River Thames.

Next, she had me do bits of research and archiving at the New Statesman in Clerkenwell. She took pleasure in including me in her lunches with the writers and editors she worked with in the hope that I would begin to build my own confidence and make my own connections.

As I finished my second year at University College Cardiff, she persuaded her friend Helen Jacobus at Pennine Radio News in Bradford to give me a month of work experience and a bed in her spare room.

Now they call these things “internships” and are often linked to academic credits, but in the late 1980s this was the kind of self-organized work (and life) experience which could eventually land you a highly-prized job.

But she didn’t stop there. Always with her ear to the ground in London, she fell upon the tip of a lifetime and in her characteristically generous way passed it straight on to me to see what I could do with it.

With her advice and encouragement ringing in my ears, I sold the story to the Sunday Mirror which splashed it on the front page as a “World Exclusive”.

The story about the Queen of England having a “secret” heart test had every national newspaper scrambling to catch up. Speculation about the Head of State’s state of health was national news for a week before the British monarch climbed 152 steps to the top of Ardnamurchan Lighthouse to prove that there was nothing wrong with her.

Since the News Editor of the Sunday Mirror couldn’t figure out how this young man in Bradford could have scooped the rest of Fleet Street with one phone call, he promptly offered me a paid job for the rest of my Summer holidays just in case I produced another story like it.

I did not. But by then my Mum had given me the leg up I needed to get a proper job as a graduate trainee on the Western Mail, the national newspaper of Wales.

That’s where my professional career began. I would like to say I could have got there without her. But looking back, I am not so sure.

Thank you Mum.

P.S. My mother Jane Thomas died peacefully in Kingston at the age of 82 on 9 May 2020. You can read my obituary about her in the Guardians Other Lives here https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/may/19/jane-thomas-obituary