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The
Gentlemen Ranters site is a brilliant
compendium of reminiscences of the great days of Fleet Street. - The
Times
Issue
# 138
March
12, 2010
This Week
Let's start
by getting the terminology right. First, Wayzgoose
(origin obscure) always falls on Maundy Thursday and is the traditional
day off work for daily newspaper people because - in our day - there
were no papers on Good Friday.
Second:
old hacks celebrate it because (a) it's as good an excuse as any for a
piss-up and (b) it's worth saving because it's such a lovely word.
Third:
Liz Hodgkinson suggested that it would be a good day for all those
freelance contributors who are vexed by their commissioning editors to
make themselves unavailable for the day - and a fairly gentle first
reminder that they think they deserve respect (and decent remuneration).
But
- fourth - that isn't a strike. Freelances by definition can't go on
strike because they are their own employers; they can, however, be
unavailable for work and if they are all unavailable at the same time,
the message may get across.
And, fifth,
Wayzgoose falls this year on April 1, All Fools' Day, which is the date
chosen to launch Colin Dunne's book, Man
Bites Talking Dog.
So any freelances looking for an excuse for not answering the phone can
explain that they were in Fleet Street... at a fellow freelance's book
launch. Job done.
Liz Hodgkinson
follows up the need for such industrial inaction with detailed examples
that will surprise old-timers and should shame the current
practitioners of the inky trade. Bow your heads, Daily
Telegraph, Guardian, New Statesman, Esquire and Time Out. Liz's call has also been taken
up by freelances all over the place, including here (1), here (2), and here (3)
Terry Fletcher, former
editor of The Dalesman, delves into
Colin's aforementioned book.
Mike Gallemore
promises to remember some Wayzgoose experiences in time for next week's
edition but this week he's reminiscing about his first job, as a
freelance.
(You see how
there's a little theme developing here? It has to stop.)
Harold Heys remembers
the delights of working with two subs who never spoke to each other.
And Mark Day
recalls the time when a loony management - unlike this website, which
turns back the clock - decided to turn the clock forward.
#
Ranters of the
world... unite?
 By
Liz Hodgkinson
My Ranters
piece on the ever-shrinking freelance fees has produced an impassioned
response from many aggrieved writers who have witnessed the gradual
disappearance of their income.
And
it's getting worse as ever more publications plead poverty and give any
old excuse as to why they can't pay a living wage or, indeed, any wage
at all. Just this week, I read that Time Out
wants an
‘enthusiastic graduate' for a three-month internship. Office experience
is essential, as is a ‘sound knowledge of London's retail landscape'.
The full-time job is unpaid.
How many
enthusiastic graduates will rush to apply, I wonder?
Now
that ever more former staffers are being forced into freelance activity
through redundancies and swingeing job cuts, we cannot just sit back
and let the accountants decimate our fees.
So
here's what we do. We know that unilateral action will get nowhere, and
only collective action will produce results. So why don't we all lay
down tools on April 1, Maundy Thursday, and instead, congregate in the
Harrow pub in Fleet Street where, coincidentally, Colin Dunne's book
launch is being held?
In
the olden days, Maundy Thursday was traditionally a journalist's day
off as there was no paper on Good Friday. Murdoch and Maxwell changed
all that, as indeed they did with working for Christmas Day.
Here's what
my son Tom had to say in an email when he read my piece on Ranters:
I
contacted the freelance organiser at the NUJ and he said that he has
tried and failed to get a strike going.
I
suggested to him that we think about a one-day ‘strike' which is
perhaps combined with an afternoon in a Fleet Street boozer, and I said
that you and your gang of old hacks would be up for it.
Tom lists
the reasons - which will be familiar to all freelances these days - for
downing tools in protest:
Here are a
few common grumbles:
Tumbling
rates. The Telegraph,
for example, now pays just £250 per thousand words. This
means low
quality features and low quality news,both of which will depend ever
more heavily on press releases. And poor freelancers.
Payment
according to click. There is a horrifying new trend where bloggers'
fees depend on how many readers their piece attracts, which quite
clearly means that they will tend to write sensational bits of opinion
which go heavy on key phrases like ‘David Cameron'. The medium will
profoundly influence the message.
A
startling lack of courtesy from commissioning editors. My own example:
I wrote a 1,600 word piece for the Telegraph
Review section and filed it five weeks ago. Since then I have
heard not a peep despite four emails chasing up.
Late
payment.
Commissioning
a certain amount of words, printing a cut-down version and then paying
only for the reduced version. This trick was played on me by the New
Statesman.
Simply
not paying. Esquire took eighteen
months to pay me for a piece, and only then after the NUJ got heavy
with them.
Extra
low payments for blogs. The Guardian
offered me £85 for a five hundred word opinion piece (for
their Comment
is Cheap section). This sticks in the craw a little when you consider
that the site is completely plastered in advertising and also that Guardian MD Carolyn McCall takes home
over a million quid a year.
We
need to stand up and protest against this new shoddy treatment, and a
strike is the way to do it. Freelances also need to meet up and talk.
The computer has separated us; hence the meeting in the pub.
It's
time to fight back, and the best way to do that is to sit in the pub
all afternoon, combining protest and merriment in time-honoured fashion.
Solidarity!
Ranters reader Bob
Dow had this to say:
Loved
your piece on Gentlemen Ranters
(always my first port of call on a Friday) and totally agree with you
about the way good, hard working, honest freelances are being treated.
I
was a staff man up here in Scotland for 30-years until I was dumped a
year ago during a Daily Record
cull. Since then I have found it astonishing the crappy rates that
newspapers pay freelances and the unbelievable attitude and lack of
respect towards us.
If
you want to build up a head of steam on this then I am willing to lead
the kilted hordes over Hadrian's Wall...
Right, then.
See you there, including the kilted hordes!
By the way,
my other son Will told me about a successful freelance outcome at Mojo, a music magazine to which he
contributes and which runs almost entirely on freelance contributions. Mojo,
owned by the huge German conglomerate Bauer, had written round to all
their contributors saying that not only were they buying all rights,
but if an interviewee took legal action over any piece, the individual
writer would be culpable.
This
resulted in all the Mojo
contributors getting together and refusing to write a single further
word for the publication until they backed down - which they instantly
did.
We
know that very small, struggling publications cannot afford to pay
writers much, or even anything, sometimes. That's how it has always
been with small magazines and how it always will be. But large
multinational organisations, which are the ones we are talking about,
are an entirely different matter.
They CAN pay
but they WON'T pay - unless we make 'em!
Freelance journalist Liz Hodgkinson
is the author of Ladies Of The Street,
published by Revel Barker at £9.99
#
Mr
Dale's diary
By
Terry Fletcher
Like
spent salmon returning from the deep ocean, world-weary hacks are
supposed to yearn to end their days editing the weekly paper where it
all began. So perhaps I should have been a little more wary when Colin
Dunne turned up in my office bearing a lunch invitation.
In
fact, Colin had already driven past the door of his own launch pad at
the Craven Herald and Pioneer in
Skipton's High Street to reach us. At that time I did not realise that
mine was the job he truly coveted; editing The
Dalesman, a small pocket magazine that gives the Bible a run
for its money as Holy Writ across the Broad Acres.
Despite
the Tykes' legendary ‘care' with brass we still managed to persuade
enough of them to buy it each month to make it the country's biggest
selling regional mag. And, to be fair to Colin, it is a job to kill, if
not actually to die, for.
Combined
with editing its sister magazine, Cumbria,
it demanded a glorious monthly progress through the Yorkshire Dales,
North York Moors and Lake District national parks. Over and over again.
Envious colleagues regularly reminded me I had the best job in
journalism.
Not
surprisingly, it's a vacancy that does not come up too often and I, a
refugee from rough trade journalism, who down the years had variously
freelanced masquerading as ‘Howley of Barnsley' and run the Yorkshire Post
news operation, was only the fourth incumbent in more than 60 years.
Colin had finally lost patience waiting for me to give it up but, being
the all-round decent chap he is, had decided that rather than push me
under a passing tractor he'd start his own version in the deep south,
which he called Downs Country.
He'd
turned up hoping for some tips on the publishing side - obviously the
writing was already taken care of - though he ignored my key piece of
advice: Don't Do It! Regular Ranters have already learnt of the six
fun-filled if financially less-than-rewarding years he had creating and
wrestling with the title as it steadfastly refused to leave home and
pay its own way.
I'm
still not sure what he got from our encounter. I know I got a long
hilarious lunch and a foretaste of the many tales that have enlivened
almost every edition of Ranters and have now been gathered together
into a book.
 Man
Bites Talking Dog
charts Colin's rise from the Raving Herald
(what other way was there to go but up?) via a string of publications
as varied as the Leamington Spa Courier,
the Newcastle Chron, the Mirror and YOU
magazine to his forlorn foray into life as a press baron.
Some
join our trade to save the world. Colin admits he just wanted to lose
his virginity and simultaneously escape the clutches of the Skipton
Building Society, the other employment choice in this small market
town. To this end the Herald
offered not only a life
free of double entry bookkeeping but the irresistible allure of a key
to the office. It was intended to allow keen young reporters to put in
some unpaid overtime.
Colin's
heart was set on a rather different kind of night work. In those days,
he says, before trainee reporters could afford a place of their own or
even a car, an apprentice Lothario with access to an empty warm dry
office had the fifties equivalent of a penthouse flat and an Aston
Martin at his disposal in the seduction stakes.
What
he also got, though he did not realise it at the time, was a first
class preparation for his future career. Skipton, for all its other
charms - mediaeval castle, Gateway to the Dales, Best High Street in
England (official) - is not the newsiest of towns. The area is so quiet
that until a few months ago the Herald
itself
acknowledged this almost total lack of incident by stolidly devoting
its whole front page to adverts. A former editor once defended the
design by admitting that in a close knit town like Skipton the ads were
the only bit of the content the readers did not already know about. As
for the rest, the Herald's job was
merely to confirm what they had already heard.
It
may not have set a young reporter's adrenalin racing but it proved the
perfect training for a career in which Colin admits he has never
actually covered a serious news story. Instead his life has embraced
the daft ones, the barmy tales; the ones that, whether serious papers
like it or not, people talk about in the pub. Like a lost budgie given
its own BR train home and, yes, Corky the Talking Dog of Drighlington
Crossroads.
But
when it also leads to fame setting British lawn mower racing records
and untold gastronomy accompanying a Barnsley black pudding magnate to
France, it does not seem a bad life. Throw in interviewing Brigitte
Bardot and mingling with affectionate Icelandic ladies while covering
the world's most cerebral pantomime - Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky's
cold war chess match - and who could ask for more? Certainly not Colin
as he ambles self-deprecatingly and sometimes bemusedly down the bits
of Memory Lane the post-match booze ups have not entirely erased and
accompanied by a cast that Damon Runyan would have been proud to have
invented.
He
might have claimed his career spanned the glory days of British
journalism but Colin prefers to consider it one of the silliest times
in one of the silliest industries, when newsrooms were packed with
characters, mostly disreputable, and journalists didn't have jobs, they
had fun. And Man Bites Talking Dog
mounts a pretty overwhelming case.
Whichever
version you choose, whether you're a misty-eyed hack or a gimlet-eyed
bean-counter, this compilation thoroughly deserves its downloading from
cyber space into the real world and, like all the best yarns, his
stories deserve re-telling. If you were there, buy it to remind
yourself of the good times but, more importantly, if you weren't, buy
it to see what you missed. Between the chuckles, the guffaws and the
belly laughs you'll find most of the important stuff they'll never
teach you on your Media Studies Course.
Man Bites Talking Dog by Colin
Dunne, will be published on April 1 by Revel Barker at £9.99
and is available on-line for order now from amazon-uk or Waterstones;
in the US from amazon; or
worldwide with free delivery from Book Depository.
Terry
Fletcher ran Howley's News Agency in Barnsley before
going on to be assistant editor (news) of the Yorkshire
Post and editor-in-chief of Dalesman Publishing and Country
Publications.
#
Tale of the tape
By Mike
Gallemore
Harold Heys'
reminiscences of his weekly paper days (Ranters,
last week) reminded me of my first job in journalism, working for the
far from renowned Stewart and Hartley news agency in Manchester in the
early sixties.
Bert
Stewart gave me the job because he'd had a call from my Dad asking him
not to give me the job. I'd gone through with him all the interviews
I'd managed to arrange - Stockport Express, Buxton Advertiser etc - and
he'd promptly rung them all and ‘advised' them not to take me on.
He'd
been a boy wonder ‘journalist' from the outset, while I'd been a boy
waster, concentrating my efforts on playing football, rugby, cricket,
tennis...
When
I left Manchester Central Grammar School I'd worked as an interviewer
and general dogsbody for a nationwide rheumatism survey, which was fun.
When
I went for the interview at Stewart and Hartley's Dickensian-style
one-room penthouse office on Mould Street, off Cross Street, behind the
original Manchester Evening News
office and the
Thatched House pub, it took around ten minutes and I started work
immediately. One of the terms and conditions was that I had to attend
Stockport County home matches. Bert was a director.
Bert
was a friendly, cuddly, happy soul who was a joy to be with. Gerry
Hartley was a different proposition altogether. To say he was a
penny-pincher was an understatement. He insisted that only he could
open the mail each morning. Not even Bert was allowed to open it. Gerry
would examine each envelope with a magnifying glass and any stamp that
wasn't properly franked, he'd remove with a steaming kettle and a pair
of tweezers for further use.
His
money-saving schemes were legendary. One of the reporters came in one
morning and asked everyone to remind him to go to Lewis's to get a Red
Indian outfit for his young son's birthday - it was a simple life in
those days.
Quick
as a flash Gerry had the solution. ‘No need for that. I made a Red
Indian head-dress for my son a few years ago. It's easy. Here's what
you do: Take some of this corrugated cardboard (he'd hoarded, having
gleaned them from packages that had come in the post), get a few
handfuls of feathers (opening the window and grabbing some of the
filthy pigeon feathers off the outside window ledge), stick the
feathers into the corrugated cardboard like this...and there you have it.
No need to spend money buying one. If you want to make it really
special, you can paint it.'
Gerry was
also a master in ‘recycling' bus tickets, which meant he did most of
his travelling by double-decker.
Working
at S&H, who had a retainer for most of the newspapers and
agencies
to cover every single court in Manchester from Rent Tribunals to Assize
Courts, was both an education and a lot of fun. I was thrown in at the
deep end from day one and nearly drowned on a number of occasions.
One
of my most spectacular blunders occurred when I came into the office
early one morning en route to the law courts. Unusually, the phone was
ringing. On answering an American accent said: ‘This is AP. Willie
Pastrano is fighting in Manchester tomorrow night and we need the tale
of the tape this morning.' Then put the phone down.
I had a look
in my morning copy of the Mirror
and read that Pastrano was defending his WBC and WBA World Championship
of the World titles, fighting Terry Downes at Belle Vue's King's Hall
the following night. I made a list of likely hotels where he might be
staying and hit the jackpot first time - the Midland.
I
rang the hotel and they put me through to Pastrano's room. His trainer
Angelo Dundee (who went on the train Mohammed Ali) came to the phone. I
explained I needed the ‘tale of the tape' for AP and he said, ‘come
right on over.'
I
wasn't a boxing fan and I had no idea what the ‘tale of the tape' was.
I'll figure it out, I thought. I knocked on Dundee's bedroom door. As
the door opened cigarette smoke seeped out, framing the biggest black
guy I had ever seen. I timidly announced who I was and a voice from
inside the room shouted: ‘Show him in.'
A
bunch of guys were sitting round a table in a fog of smoke playing
poker. I'd never smoked in my life so I was struggling to breathe. I'd
believed the myth that smoking stunted your growth. At 5ft 3in I
couldn't take the chance.
The
only guy who didn't look like a boxer, or ex-boxer, who, I figured was
Angelo Dundee, ushered me over and a chair was produced for me to sit
behind him. I was spellbound by the whole scene. I was still soaking it
all in and watching how Dundee was playing his hand when he started
speaking, without taking his eyes off his cards. ‘Height six feet,
biceps 14, expanded 16; chest 38, expanded 42.....'
He
continued for about five minutes and stopped speaking. The guy who had
shown me in took the chair from beneath me and opened the door for me
to leave.
So
there I was, standing in the hotel corridor, wondering what to do next.
It suddenly dawned on me what the ‘tale of the tape' meant. I knocked
bravely on the door. The giant opened the door and shouted, ‘What!'
‘Could I please speak to Mr. Dundee please?' I asked.
Immediately
the voice from inside commanded: ‘Bring him in.' The chair was
positioned again behind Angelo Dundee and I boldly explained: ‘When I
was watching you play your hand I thought you should have stacked your
six of clubs. I was so enthralled in the game, I wasn't listening to
your tale of the tape.'
This
brought laughter from around the table, including from Angelo, who
turned round and looked at me and said: ‘OK, let's take it slowly for
you... biceps... chest.... see you at the fight tomorrow night.'
I
got back to the office and jubilantly telephoned the tale of tape over
to AP. Gerry was in the office by this time checking the mail.
‘Where've you been, you should be at the courts.' I explained,
casually, where I'd been, to which Gerry said: ‘Hope you walked there.'
I
went to Belle Vue the following night and watched from a ringside seat
as Pastrano beat Downes in the 11th round then I interviewed both
Dundee and Pastrano after the fight.
They were
great days. Two years later I joined the Mirror.
They were even greater days. A number of well-known Manchester
journalists started their careers at Stewart and Hartleys, including
Peter Stringer, Hugh Ash and Stan Mellor.
#
The odd couple
 By
Harold Heys
Next time
you get into an argument over whose turn it is to get the brews in,
spare a thought for Shipton and Hoy of the Daily
Mail. That's just how their feud started. Their 15-year
silent feud.
Jim Shipton
and Joe Hoy were ageing sub-editors on the Mail's
northern racing desk in Manchester and they sat next to each other in
perpetual silence. Wars, major disasters, moon walks, sporting triumphs
and tragedies, Page Three birds. Nothing came anywhere near to sparking
a conversation. They lived in their own little worlds in which the
other didn't figure.
Phil
Smith recalled: ‘They used to sit there like Tweedledum and Tweedledee,
only a couple of feet apart, and in several years at the Mail
(Phil
was deputy sports editor until 1974) I don't think I ever heard them
exchange a word. I think it was over one not buying the other a cup of
tea off the tea trolley. It was funny to watch them when the trolley
came round. They'd sit and wait until the other was well clear of it
before venturing near. Day after day. Year after year.'
Daily Mail
sports sub John Newman recalled that Shipton, who was apparently higher
up the racing desk pecking order, had the job of handing out the
racecards and when there were five he would put three of them in Joe's
basket. If there were three he would give him two. When there was only
one card Joe Hoy would get it. There were never any arguments because
no words were ever exchanged. An occasional grunt was as good as it got.
Phil,
long retired and now living in Spain, says: ‘They would give the chief
sub a list of runners for each racecard and it was up to him to do the
make-up and get the words subbed on the desk. I don't think either of
them were ever deemed capable of subbing Robin Goodfellow or Northerner.
‘They
very occasionally slipped notes to each other and sometimes one would
ask anybody who happened to be passing to hand the other a curt verbal
message along the lines of: “Tell 'im (over-the-shoulder
jerk of thumb)
I haven't got Sandown yet.” Of course, the rot should have been stopped
at the outset but it never was and these two clowns turned it all into
a bit of a circus. You could see the steam coming out of their ears at
times with the sheer frustration of it all. Quite bizarre really.'
I'd
always understood that in newspapers, after a blazing row, it was off
to the pub where the aggro would be quickly forgotten. I've had some
stormers over the years. I remember one boss calling me into his office
and ordering me: ‘Shut that door!' I turned, took two rapid steps and
hit the door halfway up with an excellent (if I say so myself)
fly-kick. The whole room shook as it crashed into the frame and I
landed, God knows how, smartly on two feet. ‘Jammy twat,' said the
boss. We both cracked out laughing and that was that. Another boss was
giving me a bollocking while I was trying to eat a banana and smoke a
fag at the same time. I was trying to give him a gobful back but I
almost choked to death over his desk and when I recovered we were both
laughing.
Jim
Shipton and Joe Hoy never saw life that way. And then came the day of
Joe's retirement... He was heading off that evening into honourable
retirement. But there was still no sign of a thaw.
John
Newman remembers: ‘I was given the job of organising the collection and
in the interests of perhaps letting bygones be bygones I approached Jim
Shipton for a donation. To my surprise, he obliged - with a smile and a
quid. But like all good feuds, it wasn't to be put to bed that easily.'
Everyone
knew that this was going to be the last opportunity anyone would ever
have of effecting any sort of rapprochement between the grizzled
grafters. John was determined to get it sorted. And, after a fashion,
he did. ‘Everybody's weighed in,' he told Joe late that afternoon. With
a meaningful glance at Jim he added: ‘Everybody.'
It
was the perfect moment for peace to finally break out. John waited,
expectantly. A nervous office was stilled to mere whispers. Even the
news editor stopped shouting.
Joe
looked up, quickly grasping the point John was making about Jim's
generous quid into the tub. Looking over to his old colleague with some
warmth, he finally broke the glacial ice of some 15 years. ‘Thanks,
Jim,' he said.
The
moment might not have had the grandeur of the Cuban Missile Crisis
which drew ‘Day the earth stood still' headlines, but it was close. The
office waited. There was a breathless hush.
Jim
Shipton, no doubt thinking that his old colleague was seeking an
opportunity of having a final, smug dig; perhaps one last chance to
take the piss, responded magnificently:
‘Fuck off,
Joe.'
#
Precision timing
 By
Mark Day
Phil
Harrison's recollections of loony management decrees (Ranters,
last
week) reminded me of the looniest of them all - Kroegertime.
In the early
1970s John Kroeger was promoted from his position as news editor of The News, Adelaide, to News Limited's
head office in Sydney, where he became general manager of the Daily Mirror and The
Australian.
He
was in charge of everything from pencils to paper clips. He was blessed
with a precise Germanic mind and cursed by a need to have everything in
precise Germanic order.
He
was constantly annoyed by the apparent inability of the journalists,
subs and editors - as well as recalcitrant comps - to get the paper off
the stone on time.
As in
Britain, the Sydney Mirror was
locked in a head-to-head battle with The Sun
and an essential part of the mythology of the time was that the first
paper to get on the stands at Wynyard Station in Sydney's CBD (Central
Business District) would win the sales race on that day.
Kroeger
believed if the subs could shift copy faster the presses would run on
time and the Mirror would regularly
be first to Wynyard.
When
Kroeger learnt that all the clocks in the building were linked to a
central chronometer a little light bulb lit up above his head.
It
was pure genius. He would secretly advance the time on the clocks by
ten minutes. The last copy time for the first edition was 9.30 am so,
when the subs sent the last slips down the chute the annoying five or
ten minutes late it would actually be 9.30 or slightly earlier and the
edition would be on time.
...Except
that reporters and subs would arrive at work on what we called the dawn
patrol, glance at the clock, check their wrist watches and note that it
was ten minutes fast. They were not concerned that their copy was ten
minutes late by Kroegertime because their watches told them they were
on time according to real time. The subs ignored the wall clocks in
favour of their watches, and last copy continued to run late.
When
the day was done, though, it was a different matter. Everybody left the
office and headed for the pub according to Kroegertime. Well, for an
extra ten minutes of drinking time you would, wouldn't you?
Kroegertime
lasted three days. Soon afterwards John Kroeger left newspapers and set
up a party hire company.
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