LIVERPOOL’S first citizens came together to celebrate 200 years of breaking news, exclusive scoops and campaigning journalism as the Liverpool Daily Post and ECHO were awarded the freedom of the city of Liverpool.

Comedy legend Ken Dodd was joined by LFC greats Tommy Smith and Ian Callaghan, Hillsborough campaigner Margaret Aspinall, Daily Post editor Mark Thomas and columnists Rex Makin and Joe Riley.

Council leaders, mayors, aldermen and the Lord Lieutenant of Merseyside, Dame Lorna Muirhead also joined the celebrations at our Old Hall Street offices last night.

Ken Dodd took to the floor, telling the audience: “I applied for work experience at a publication called the Liverpool Express, I was particularly taken on because I showed them I could make tea.

“I was going to be what they then called a reporter – they call them all sorts of things now.”

But the comic admitted an affection for the newspapers he grew up with, recalling popular cartoons Curly Wee and Gussy Goose before making a bid for his own column – as an agony uncle.

He had the audience chuckling with his advice for young ladies.

Reflecting more seriously, he added: “The Liverpool Daily Post and Echo both reflect the life and times of our great city... Liverpool is a city of laughter and a city of tears.”

Alastair Machray, Editor-in-Chief of Trinity Mirror Merseyside – owners of the Liverpool Daily Post and ECHO – thanked the council for the honour and paid tribute to all those who have worked at the newspapers since they began life in 1811 with The Mercury, which would later become the Liverpool Daily Post.

He joked that today’s Daily Post is a bargain, given that the first paper to bear its masthead cost one pence and contained only eight pages and said he took pride in the paper’s role today as the voice of business and commerce in Merseyside.