Does anybody still bother about covering the local mags courts? It was cheap copy, after all, like covering council meetings. Ken Lemmon, when he was my news editor on the Yorkshire Evening Post, told me he’d never seen a set of council minutes that didn’t contain five page leads and at least 15 fillers.
For freelance agencies, it seems the copy is too cheap. Even in London the corrs can’t make a living out of it. Yet in our day (you’ll excuse the expression) every courthouse in the land appeared to sustain freelance operations – some of them of course were the local men doing linage, but some were thriving stand-alone court agency businesses.
You’d think, wouldn’t you, that those proprietors claiming to be strapped for cash and bemoaning the cost of ‘newsgathering’ would see the advantage of getting some young hopeful to learn shorthand and then just sit where the real local stories came up.
It might be a thought too far, that covering courts and councils was actually the cornerstone of what we used to think of fondly as Democracy. But it was also free, and privileged, and anybody with a hole in his, er, balance sheet ought to appreciate that.
There were good stories, local stories, daft stories and sometimes great stories. And the courts and councils were frequently where they started.
Nowadays they appear to be overlooked and even ignored. But they were stories that affected the readers of local papers, and were about people they knew. And then every so often there’d be something worth flogging to the nationals.
Those were the days, then, that Harold Heys recalls with a sort of fondness. Nick Jenkins (via Ken Smiley) reminds us that a good relationship with Their Worships could also be helpful in court reporting.
As for the rest of this week’s fare, it’s very much as it is intended to be, with stories prompting other stories.
A bit like being in the pub, then. Which is where we all came in.
A few weeks back I wrote a piece about the demise of the District Man. Well, I haven’t found many on a steady trawl through Lancashire. But I did bump into freelance Andy Rosthorn who told me one of his many tales, this one about the time he was a district man in Nelson in the mid-60s.
Andy, for those who don’t know him, made his name on the Daily Mail in the 70s and his claim to fame is that he is the only man to have been sacked five times by the Mirror Group. He is a world expert on Rudolf Hess and has more daft newspaper stories than anyone I’ve ever known. In more than 25 years I can’t recall him being on time for anything. Ever. He once rang me as he headed for the Adelphi pub through the grounds of Blackburn Cathedral. He had, perhaps, 200 yards to cover. I shot straight round. He arrived two hours later.
I’ll come back to his tale shortly. But first I’d like to bemoan the disappearance of another member of our profession: the Staff Court Reporter. There aren’t any that I know of now, probably because no one can do shorthand any more and magistrates and court clerks don’t take kindly to digital recorders.
It was often a monumental bore, but every now and then a spark of magic made it worthwhile. You never knew when it might happen. It could be in the middle of a dull Due Care or a litany of some unfortunates who hadn’t paid their TV licences. How many great tales have been missed in recent years, I wonder? Freelances do their best but it’s a thankless task.
Just one example. When the Sunday People entrenched back to London from Manchester in 1988 I went covering my home town of Darwen for the local evening before going off a few months later to fly the racing desk on Eddie Shah’s Post. It was close on 25 years since I’d covered a court but I soon fell into the swing. I’d get a cheery ‘Hello’ from the magistrates, most of whom I knew, and ‘Hiya, H’ from the local villains, all of whom I knew, and then I’d settle in a corner for a snooze. My probation officer pal would give me a dig in the ribs if anything interesting was happening and I’d immediately start scribbling away.
Next on the list this particular morning was a non-payment of vehicle excise licence and I decided it was time for a nod. I was awakened by a dig and a kick on the ankle and I went effortlessly into shorthand mode. Some poor sod was explaining that he and his wife had no money as they had just paid for the funeral of their baby who had died from unexplained cot death syndrome. Even better – sorry, worse – it was their second cot death. Magic! I slid over smartly and was interviewing him before the case had finished.
It was swings and roundabouts. A few weeks later, I recall, I lost a fiver to Kevin, the probation man. Some yob had assaulted the police and got off with a fine. I’d bet he’d get sent down – just like another yob the previous week. I was so pissed off I went round to the magistrates’ rooms later, knocked on the door, and asked a rather surprised chairman if he could explain why I’d just lost a fiver (I actually tried to draw a comparison between the two sentences). He huffed and puffed and was suitably embarrassed before slamming the door in my face.
His embarrassment at so flagrant an injustice (my loss of a fiver) was nothing compared to the time I pitched up late at Padiham court as a junior. ‘Ask at the cop shop,’ I’d been told and the desk sergeant pointed me up the winding stairs.Five doors. All the same. Pick one. Always go for the middle one, was the usual ploy. I swung it open and out fell a brush, mop and, from a high shelf, a metal bucket. Ok. Left to right. Success!
An elderly guy was sitting at a desk writing away. Obviously the local man. I edged in and sat besides him, snaffling his court list. ‘Where are we up to, cock?’ I asked. He recoiled and gave me a look that would have frozen hot pot. I slowly took in the room. The open-mouthed police inspector, smirking solicitors, a puzzled gallery… ‘Oh, sorry,’ I apologised and made as dignified an exit as I could muster. Leaving the bemused magistrate to get on with it.
But back to Andy Rosthorn’s tale of his days covering court and just about anything else in East Lancashire back in the 60s. Andy used to cover Reedley Magistrates where ‘thanks to a gritty hinterland and the mordant wit of its clerk Mr William Whittle, it was always good for a tale or two’.
They were NEWSpapers in those days, says Andy. The days of same-day stories in t’ Pink as the evening paper was called. And it was long before police – and council – media management. We well knew that good stories break without warning in the unpredictable battleground of a magistrates’ court. But you tended to get a bit too close to the local villains and vagabonds.
He remembers hesitating over the court list one day. It just didn't look right. The defendant's occupation was given as ‘tarmacer’ and he didn't like the sound of it. Macer, to rhyme with racer? – Surely not. He took care to dictate it as ‘tarmacker’ which sounded much better.
The following day colleague Peter Storah and photographer Ken Rumney suggested a pint in the Carters' and Motormen's Social Club – otherwise known as the ‘Fast and Slow’. It was a rough joint, rough even for Nelson, but it opened early. It was used for board meetings and deal-making by those itinerant bands who travelled the North of England offering lumps of tarmacadam to homeowners.‘Just enough left on the lorry to do your drive, surr.’
They’d just settled in at the bar when they spun round in unison at a thick brogue from a dark corner: ‘Oy! You’re reporters aren’t you?’ And, pointing at Andy: ‘I know you!’
Suddenly, he was alone at the bar. The other reporters and photographers were on the move, edging carefully towards the door. A big guy loomed over him. Hairy. Greasy. And still pointing. At Andy’s nose. He clung to the bar, offering a smaller target.
‘I know you. Saw you at court. You did my case. Story’s in t' Pink.
The veteran District Man or old-hand Staff Court Reporter will sympathise with the predicament. Somehow, a whispered ‘Only doing my job, pal’ would have had rather a hollow ring to it. Alone, Andy awaited his next move. It was unexpected.
‘Well done, lad! You're t' first reporter to get my job right in all these years. It's got to be tarmacker, hasn’t it? Just like you put. I’m bloody sick of being called a tarmacer every time I’m up. We’re not tarmacers for God’s sake…
‘What’re ye ’avin, lad?’ he said, slapping Andy heartily on the back and almost puncturing a lung.
By this time, of course, with immediate danger past and conviviality in the air, Andy’s colleagues were more than happy to edge back to the bar to join in the all-round congratulations and bonhomie and to partake of vast quantities of free liquid refreshment from the horny hands of their new friend Tommy the Tarmacker and his fellow travellers.
Incidentally, I noticed the Daily Mail a couple of weeks back had Tarmacer in about 60pt in a front page WOB. Tommy wouldn’t have been impressed.
Thanks for Don Walker’s tribute to Ken Smiley (Ranters, June 12). As Don pointed out, there was no job that Ken felt was beneath him. Which was how we came into contact with him while he shifted at Reveille (a Mirror-owned weekly paper... ask your parents, or grandparents, as I always tell trainees these days).
Ex-Mirror trainees Nick Kent, Geoff Stimson and, later, myself found our first ‘Fleet Street’ jobs there, in Reveille’s New Fetter Lane office. And it was there that we came under the spell of the ‘real’ Fleet Street subs who made up Reveille’s regular weekly casual rota: Iain Stevenson, Derek Prigent, Bill Fletcher – and Ken Smiley.
Being a weekly, the hours at Reveille were very congenial. A 9.30am start meant that by lunchtime we were ready for refreshment, and ‘lunch’ involved each member of the subs’ desk buying a round at the Printer’s Devil, or sometimes – if we fancied a bit of a stroll – the Bishop’s Finger in Smithfield. It was over these lunchtime pints that we three (joined later by ex-Brighton Argus man Steve Castelli) most enjoyed the company of Ken, who was, being an old-school sub and a journalist who had been around a bit, a master story-teller.
Two particular stories stick in my mind – both tales from his early years as a reporter in Belfast. The first is a useful lesson in working relationships with officialdom, and the second just couldn’t happen nowadays, with every reporter toting a laptop.
Ken had cultivated a local JP, who would make himself useful when he was struggling to find a court story worth reporting.
As a dull court list dragged to a close, Ken would catch the magistrate’s eye. Obligingly – and often to the surprise of the defendant – the JP would suddenly work himself into a rage and launch into a furious tirade: ‘People who ride bicycles without rear lights are the scourge of society... an absolute disgrace... a menace that must be removed from the streets... the entire province must share my sense of outrage...’
This was all delivered at dictation pace and Ken, knowing he now had the page lead he needed, would gratefully get it all down. Including the rather lamer ending: ‘Fined 1s 6d.’
Then there was the time Ken was drafted in as a rugby reporter, producing live copy for his evening paper. How hard can that be, he thought, installing himself behind the aged typewriter in the press box.
‘Coleraine kicked off into a blustery wind...,’ he typed, ripping his first 200 words from the old Remington and handing them to the waiting messenger.
As the match went on, he warmed to his task, easily dashing off the required words and sending them off, via the messenger, to the composing room.
At the final whistle, he knocked off his final instalment, handed it over, and sat back to relax. Job done.
That was when the old Bakelite phone in front of him rang. It was the sports editor. ‘Nice job, Ken,’ he said. ‘Now, we just need your 1,000-word considered report in the next half an hour.’
Which was not easy for Ken. Not only did he have no record of his running report in front of him – but he had absolutely no recollection of what he had been watching for the previous 80 minutes.
I am truly, madly and several flagons deeply indebted to Colin Dunne for handing over his wilting quill to me (Ranters, June 12). It may have been a poisoned pencil to him, but it was a passport to exotic bars for me.
Of course, once I'd got my feet under his cobwebbed desk, I did have my endless Hunt-the-Eric-Wainwright days which were hard to justify because I could never get my hands on till receipts from The Waiters' Club, allegedly his bolt-hole in Leicester Square; and Alasdair Buchan and I could put only so many darts into the board behind the 4th floor door before being discovered by Derek Jameson. And I could try only so much bullshit on the Reveille Boat People sent as our apprentices before they cottoned on and became executives.
But in between our three-hour (on a bad day) lunches I did manage to scribble a few words – even though the Ranters editor claims never to have read one of them.
In fact the wonderful Mike Molloy claimed I earned more per word than Arthur Hailey. I'm sure he must have been talking about the quality of my prose.
But snigger ye not young Dunne. Let me tell you tales not even your talking dogs dare whisper. My talking dog could. He was called, and I noted it well, Beethoven. Every bark was a gem and every drool kept the cost of my honeymoon down. I'd acquired a bride and taken her to Hollywood for a honeymoon. Those lovely Mirror Group people provided the exes and that nice Mr Ford a scarlet Mustang to prance around the Hollywood Hills. Mr Beethoven, about to hit the world's silver screens, provided the excuse. Better than subbing Callan's diary copy. (Where are you Paul?)
But of course it didn't end there. That nice Mr Ferrari (the car chappie) arranged for me to spend time on IpanemaBeach. Until then I'd thought dental floss was supposed to go in your mouth.
Then that other Mr Ferrari (the news editor chappie) sent me to the Algarve in search of a naughty lawyer – and he wouldn't let me come back until I'd found him. Brendan Monks and I were devastated. It was the height of summer and all the girls seemed to be so poor they couldn't afford clothes. The expenses were wisely invested in keeping the poor wretches warm at night. For weeks!
Some of the days were Hell. A bar somewhere in Scandinavia, I seem to remember. And I even got to Heaven – a gay bar owned by Richard Branson. That, I think, was just before Paradise – a brace of blondes in that cluster of houses in California.
Then there was the posting to Siberia. Someone tried to freeze me out – but it wasn't that nice Mr Molloy. He paid for me to warm up the women in the coldest place on earth. I think that was after my adventures in Death Valley – allegedly the hottest. Oh these swinging temperatures are making me come over all thirsty. There... that's better. Well, better than swapping the Fourth Floor for real writing.
As you know, Col, I never did that. But the stamps in the passports kept coming.
I screwed up the chance to help launch a Murdoch title in the US (forever grateful to the wonderful Tony Miles for pretending never to have seen the resignation letter) but then bagged a Mirror sabbatical (young readers, don't even bother) to the San Diego Union. It was another hell: 300 miles of beaches and the first assignment to the only nudist one among 'em. Gawd, Col, you'd have hated it.
Even tracking down Ronnie Biggs to his new flat in Rio turned out to be a banker. He bought all the drinks in his club and I later flogged his phone number for £500. It was daylight robbery, said the lucky news editor.
Squeezed in between these gruelling gigs were hacks' cricket trips to dreadful places like Bali, Cuba, Chile, Argentina, India, Australia, Singapore, Zanzibar, Grenada and beyond. We got the taste for it from Alderney, where our first hosts, John Arlott and son Tim, showed us why the island is said to be populated by a couple of hundred drunks clinging to a rock. Colin, it were just like The Stab.
My words, meanwhile, lined up in orderly fashion to meet their spike. I, on the other hand, met the other Spike – and spent many happy weeks taking gin and jazz with him while I allegedly put together a series. Mr Milligan was so impressed by my ghost writing (certainly no one believes they saw it) that he invited me to his family Christmas party. And believe me, when it came to the falling down liquid, he was no Scrooge.
I even had similar – but not as boozy – adventures with Esther Rantzen. But when we later bumped into each other on Corfu, only husband Des admitted to knowing me. Esther has much in common with Mrs R.
Occasionally, I've had to meet real writers. Take Leslie Thomas. We and our respective brides went for a sail around the Med. As an ex-Evening News man you'd expect him to be able to take a drink. Two nights and one storm in, with mainsail billowing and the barman barfing, young Leslie reached over the bar and emptied a full three fingers of Scotch into the sink. ‘That's it, Rimmer’, he said. ‘I'm beaten’. And weaved off into the bilges. Or wherever superstars go to speak into the Big White Telephone.
Lack of practice, you see. That's what we got on Floor Four. Hours, days and thousands of pounds of it. Commons expenses? Small change. You were there, Col, but ducked out before the mink really lined the coffin.
Those MPs know nothing. Duck houses? I know people who bought Cotswold cottages. And Rolls Royces – they snappered them up. And Gold Rolexes from the East and... oh, the list goes on.
When I started in Geordieland, apprenticed to the bars of Consett (Guardian), Blaydon (Tyneside Courier), Darlington (Northern Echo) and Newcastle (Journal), I fondly imagined I might scribble for living. Rimmer, you see, has its roots in Rhymer – a barded fool of sorts.
Now, of course, I'm a bearded fool. But I can proudly say that I've made my living as a man of letters – without ever doing a day's work in my life.
Colin Dunne, I thank you from the bottom of my liver.
Revel Barker wrote a piece (Ranters, June 26) on bizarre cable messages:
Gobbledygook missives from unfeeling head offices have always been the bane of far-flung correspondents. While the poor hack suffers fly-blown miseries in malaria-ridden hellholes, his editors loll back in padded comfort, served cups of tea by charming secretaries while issuing impossible orders.
For a time I was a stringer for the Canadian newsmagazine Maclean's. My attempts to flog stories to them often hit the buffers. Queries would come back such as ‘Cannot locate Marbella. Where is this island?’ or ‘World shrunk two pages. Re terrorists killing eight, suggest wait until better peg’.
When the Spanish parliament was stormed by Civil Guards, I was cabled: ‘Six pages reserved Prince Charles wedding announcement. Will coup bid hold?’
One particular Maclean's correspondent unleashed a particularly satisfying revenge. The story may be apocryphal but some version of it surely occurred.
After suffering through mayhem, drought and general disaster in Africa, the correspondent was in a remote corner of the Congo when he received a telex message from Canada: ‘Your services no longer required. Please return all company cards soonest.’
Revenge is sweetest when it is served cold, they say. After careful deliberation, our man in Africa turned up at the nearest telex office at about the time when everybody in Toronto was knocking off for the weekend.
‘See this text,’ he told the operator. ‘Please transmit it to Toronto. Payment collect.’
‘All of it?’
‘Yep, the lot,’ said our man, handing the operator a generous tip.
On Monday morning staff at Maclean's were staggered to find their wire room ankle-deep in paper. When they picked up a sample, they found the African operator wasn't doing a bad job – Genesis, Deuteronomy, Joshua, they were all there. He was halfway through the Old Testament.
Quite a crowd had gathered round Jim Lewthwaite as he laid out his souvenirs on the desk. He’d just returned from Bangkok where he’d been sent to write a series on… now what was it? Early Siamese porcelain? Oriental calligraphy? The new spice trade?
Actually, no. This was the Sun. So, just for a change, it was a series on sex.
From among his mementoes, he selected a scrap of paper bearing his first name. It looked innocent enough. Just his name, Jim, in unschooled and wobbly writing. Hardly worth bringing halfway round the world. It had been written, he said, by one of the young bar-girls he’d interviewed. I said I didn’t think much of her hand-writing.
‘She didn’t write it with her hand,’ said Jim.
Let’s move on quickly. We can’t discuss things like this on a family website where any young innocent – Hilary Bonner or Philippa Kennedy – could easily stray in.
This was my introduction to life in the Sun. After I walked out of the Mirror – okay, flounced, I won’t argue – I found myself in the south of France where the novelist Paul Gallico had died leaving his sequel to The Poseidon Adventure unfinished – a story I’ve related elsewhere. I had been hired to pop in the odd full-stop and, if required, a nifty metaphor or two.
Ken Donlan, much-acclaimed and much-feared news editor, had invited me to join the Sun as soon as I returned. So ten weeks later, I found myself walking towards St Paul’s and turning right instead of left.
I won’t say I had never been south of Fleet Street before, after all both the Harrow and Scribes were somewhere down there. But it felt strange. Mirror men weren’t accustomed to too much travel.
Inside the Sun, that felt strange too. It was a newspaper office at odds with all the conventions of Fleet Street. Where were the leisure classes who populated the higher floors at the Mirror? Where were the storage rooms for writers and mistresses who had slipped from fashion? Where the corridors of the handsomely paid unemployed, some of them ennobled, that we had at Holborn?
Before I’d been there half a day, it was clear that here was a completely new system. There was a curious symmetry between stories to be written, hacks to write them, space available and subs to fit them. It flew in the face of everything Fleet Street stood for.
The way the Sun played the newspaper game, everyone was on the field and there were no spectators. Murdoch’s plan didn’t seem to incorporate a holiday home for hacked-off hacks. What’s more, I’d seen more reporters in the MirrorNew York office than they had here. Six years after the launch, Larry Lamb, the editor, who was ex-Mirror and ex-Mail, had proved his point. The sexy, slim-line Sun – they should have got me to write their ads – was roaring away. Big momma Mirror, running to fat and losing her looks, was on the slide.
I must confess that once I’d got over the shock, it was refreshing to work in an office that was buzzing as opposed to snoring.
This is not to say that it was a fun-free zone. Oh no. Have you ever met any of the industrial reporters? I have.
If Albert Lamb, the editor, took his nickname from Larry the Lamb in the Children’s Hour classic, then Ken Donlan should really have been called Mr Grouser (No? Ask your dad). When a new district man called in on his first Monday and said it was a sunny day in Birmingham, Donlan snapped: ‘If I want a weather report, old man, I’ll ring the met office.’ He didn’t do the light touch.
Donlan tucked Lewthwaite, who was chief reporter, and me away at the back of the building, with John Kay and Peter McHugh, their young industrial team. It was a small room, far too small to accommodate the rowdy energy from the two most exuberant hacks I’d ever met. Laughter, jokes, insults, personal abuse, pub games, laddish dares and challenges, public schoolboy Kay reading out snippets from Wisden, Geordie McHugh singing ‘Whisht lads, ha’ad yer gobs,’ – it was rather like being on a permanent stag party.
Every lunchtime and evening, they would charge over to the ‘thirst’ floor bar of the Cheshire Cheese, to join Bob Bedlow of the Telegraph and Bob Porter of the Mail.
By the time you added Mick Costello, who was possibly the only diplomat’s son on the staff of the Morning Star who spoke fluent Russian and also liked a fight, and Paul Routledge of The Times, the stag party had become a mobile riot. To soak up the pints, Ron, the waiter, would occasionally smuggle Yorkshire puddings awash in gravy out of the kitchen.
Bedlow, who was more accurately known as Bedlam, was credited with this exceptional slice of dialogue when he went to the post office during a Blackpool conference to pick up some wired money. All you need to know is that it was after lunch.
Female counter clerk: Can I help you, sir?
Bedlow: Yes, a large gin and tonic, please.
Clerk: I’m afraid this is a post office, sir.
Bedlow: Good Lord. In that case, a first-class single to Euston.
The industrial boys had their own Good Samaritan system. If one of them was unable to file his story, because of an unexpected attack by seven pints of Martson’s, then one of the others would cover for him.
Terry Pattinson of the Mirror once rewrote his story and sent it to the Mail to help out an incapacitated Bob Porter. Later, Pattinson got a bollocking from the night newsdesk because Bob Porter had got a better story in the Mail.
Sure enough, when McHugh and Kay returned in the afternoon, bounding in like big puppies, they would, almost certainly, attempt to take someone’s trousers down – if necessary, their own.
I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if they’d given me an apple-pie desk. Maybe you had to be there, but it was great fun.
Amazing really how all this giddiness evaporated at the sound of the soft tread of Donlan coming down the corridor. My memory may be at fault, but I don’t think they ever took Ken’s trousers off.
For some years now the Sun has had a much-admired chief reporter called Kay. The director of programmes at GMTV is a McHugh. Obviously it can’t be the two I remember, but it is an odd coincidence.
In Manchester, they used to say that Donlan, although a legendary news editor, was also an unpleasant bully. I didn’t find this at all. Maybe he’d quietened down by this time, or maybe it was because I was supposed to be writing cheeky, giggly, and preferably naughty features. Ken knew nothing about features. Giggle? – He’d die before he’d giggle.
He used to fire people for being cheeky. And his idea of being naughty was to have a polo mint – before noon sometimes. So he used to read my copy with a puzzled look on his face.
But he could command space. I wrote my daft bits about sex in Sweden and sex in France, interviewed Page Three girls – and Brigitte Bardot – and then wrote about sex by the seaside and sex in the office. I wrote them, Ken gave them to Larry. Larry put them in the paper. That was it.
I even got to do some serious stuff too. In Berlin, to write a piece on the Wall, I was taken round by an Army PR major, who was perhaps new to the job, and a leathery sergeant driver.
As we drove along the Wall, I asked whether soldiers from opposing armies still did their traditional exchanges and if there was a chance of getting a bit of Russian militaria for my young son. The major tore a strip off me. It was against Queen’s regs. Most irregular. No soldier would ever do such a thing. Simply wouldn’t happen.
Over his shoulder, the sergeant asked me what I had in mind. I said a cap badge would be good. A couple of hours later he handed me one.
What happened was that at crossing points, the British soldier would leave a copy of Playboy by the car and conduct a lengthy examination of the rear axle. When he came back, the magazine had gone and something would be in its place. The most prized item was a general’s hat which was rumoured to be made from sable.
What, I asked the sergeant, could he get me for a pile of Page Three pictures? ‘For those,’ he said, thoughtfully, ‘I could get you a Russian general’s hat with a bleedin’ Russian general inside it.’
In the passengers seat, the major choked down on his coronary.
In Magaluf, at the end of the season, I watched as the shopkeepers took down the inflatable breasts and willies and scrubbed off the boastful graffiti arithmetic (girls multiplied by times), and put out dinky little tables and chairs, with tea-for-two and an Arrowroot biscuit each. Changeover week, when the young singles – Sun readers every one – were replaced by Saga holidaymakers, who had once been Mirror readers. The future of newspapers was there for us all to see.
One Spanish hotelier told me that his countrymen believed there were two islands called Britain: one was populated by murderous teenagers, poisonously pissed all day, constantly fighting or fornicating in the gutter; the other was home to genteel elderly couples with walking sticks and squeaky deaf-aids who had very little money but perfect manners. They could not believe they came from the same country.
Oddly enough, in an office where almost everyone was writing about sex, there wasn’t an awful lot of it about. It was true there was one near-editor who became entangled with a lady features person.
Chris Potter, political writer, certainly did his best of remedy this. At a Tory party conference – and this was long before he was married – he was seen escorting two women, one a little older than the other up to his room. Clearly no harm could come of this because he pointed out that they were mother and daughter. Whatever was going on up there seemed to require a non-stop flow of champagne until eventually the kitchen protested. ‘I’m afraid, sir, it’s interfering with the breakfast arrangements.’ It wasn’t long after that he died.
Even so, that was out of town, and it wasn’t much to show for an office where you could witness Kathryn Hadley teasing her wild hair between her lips, Shan Lancaster’s blue eyes in a frame of blonde hair, and Kate Lidgate who appeared to have been designed without a single straight line.
Even in Pacesetters, the women’s department dedicated exclusively to writing about the female orgasm (and where, judging by the noise as you walked past, they were getting the hang of it), they were more interested in getting to the Pineapple gym than men.
But the cleaners at the Sun never complained, as they did at the Mirror, that you couldn’t open a door without the risk of seeing a naked editorial bottom bobbing up and down.
There was a streak of northern Puritanism at the Sun. Jim Lewthwaite, a brilliant newsman who came from a distinguished newspaper family in Manchester (dad, a news editor; brother on the Baltimore Sun), bore a quite startling resemblance to an American film star. One night when he got home late-ish (train problem, no doubt) to Clacton, he stood, swaying a little, in the bedroom doorway. ‘I’ve just met a bird who says I look like Robert Mitchum,’ he pronounced, to the unmoving mound of blankets.
All he heard was her voice in the dark. ‘She must be mental.’ Keeps a chap’s feet on the ground.
At the time, the Sun had its stars. Walter Terry, the political columnist, was a real heavyweight who’d come from the Express. John Dodd, firmly in the first division of newspaper writers (and occasionally to be found on this website) was there. So too was Clive Taylor, prince among cricket writers.
When Clive retired, Larry Lamb challenged anyone who wanted to replace him to write a job description. At that time, for reasons I can no longer remember, it seemed a good idea to be absent from Britain’s shores for as long as possible. I applied. Larry called me in. He liked it. Frank Nicklin, the sports editor, would be talking to me.
Nicklin opened the door to our office and tilted his head towards the upstairs bar of the Tip. As I followed him down the back stairs, over his shoulder he outlined his plans for a new cricket writer. ‘There’s two chances of me giving our cream job to some feature writer,’ he called out. ‘Fat and no.’
Well, he’d certainly talked to me. And anyway, I would only have missed our wonderful British seasons, wouldn’t I?
In Jon Akass, I always thought they had the best columnist in Fleet Street. Whereas his rivals elsewhere whizzed off their columns almost as an afterthought to all their books and plays, Jon poured all his considerable talent into his column.
Flecked with cigarette ash – picture a speckled penguin – fuelled by carefully calculated gins, in between putting out the wastepaper bin fires which he used as central heating, he turned out a column that was rarely less than wonderful.
He avoided El Vino because he thought it attracted posers, preferring instead the shabbier boozers where he would find his friends Dodd and the TV writer Kit Kenworthy. Occasionally, in the company of his friends, Akass would come up with a piercing insight into our trade. In the Coach and Horses one night, steadily filling the ashtray while emptying the gin bottle, he said: ‘Everyone I ever met in newspapers who I really rated, the ones I thought were outstandingly talented, never got anywhere. And the people I identified as no-talent toadies are all in the top jobs.’
I don’t think I ever replied to that. Right then someone came in with some news. Larry was going. We were getting a new editor. Did anyone know a Kelvin McKenzie?
Some laughed. Some cried. Some began composing letters for jobs. One or two went home and hanged themselves. Oh boy, another new deal. Just when I was getting the hang of it.
###
On the shelf ?
Ian Skidmore’s Forgive Us Our Press Passes should be made required reading for every child-in-a-suit populating what passes for our newsrooms these days.
–Grey Cardigan, Press Gazette
Millions of his followers throughout the English-speaking world will treasure this book of some of his finest and funniest writing – Hugh Cudlipp
Vincent Mulchrone could penetrate in a flash to the heart of a story in a few deceptively simple words. – Vere Harmsworth
Slip-Up ... perhaps the best analysis of Fleet Street at work ever written.
– Keith Waterhouse
No journalist can afford to miss this cautionary tale… the story of the in-fighting and downfall of all concerned has one rolling in the aisles. Mr Delano’s eye is astute, his ear a credit to his profession at any level; and his wit is accompanied by the ability to write clear English.
-- The Times
The best book about journalism – ever. – Phillip Knightley
Every journalist should read A Crooked Sixpence. So go get yours now. – Roy Greenslade
A classic – Peter Stothard, (Times Literary Supplement)
Ladies Of The Street… An entertaining historical overview – Roy Greenslade (Media Guardian)
Out of the workaday rounds of a provincial yellow journalist, Gordon Williams has scraped together an occupational ambiance as definitive as dirty fingernails... a yeasty mixture of character and social climate...
– New York Times Book Review
The flavour of this sort of journalistic life is caught as well as in any novel I can remember.
Bizarre and hilarious… Nothing shorter than a paperback could achieve a balanced report of the brilliance of the advocacy and summing-up. – Hugh Cudlipp
Quite a crowd had gathered round Jim Lewthwaite as he laid out his souvenirs on the desk. He’d just returned from 
