The Dunleavy scoops By Philip Harrison I was working in Hong Kong on the South China Morning Post when Steve Dunleavy arrived in 1959. He was seeking new pastures after having worked on and been fired from three of the four Sydney dailies. Not, I hasten to add, for

To find the individual articles, please scroll down the page… This Week Did anybody – I mean anybody apart from former Mail man Paul Bannister who now lives in Oregon – remember that last Sunday was a memorial day for the sainted Vincent Mulchrone and celebrate the fact? If you

Prodnostication By Geoffrey Mather Name: Prodnose, a pedantic and interfering character in the humorous columns of J B Morton. The final column appeared on  November 29, 1975, and contained the headline ‘Lawnmower Used on Vet’s Whiskers’. I suppose Mr. Gabb was the first genuine Prodnose I ever met, though I

Six o’clock swill By Phil Harrison I have drunk in many journalists’ pubs in many countries over the past 55 years, but nothing has ever been like the six o’clock swill in Sydney during the mid-fifties. I was working in the Sydney office of the Brisbane Telegraph, housed in the

Dressing the part By Paul Callan Sartorially speaking, the Hacks Britannicus has long been a mixed bunch. There were always a few in the newsroom, mostly younger subs, who looked as though they had slept in their clothes (and probably had). They contrasted with the snappy dressers among the reporters

This Week Edition number 150… and they said it wouldn’t last. Nearly three million people have clicked on the site in the past 12 months – or, to be accurate, in the past year an unknown number of readers has clicked on the site nearly three million times, in total.

Got a grouse? By Alasdair Buchan I can’t now remember the name of the young reporter on the Glasgow Herald but he’s quite entitled to still bear a grouse about the wind-up he suffered on the 12th of August, 1968. How can I be so exact about the date? Because

National story By Frank Corless My old mate Ian Skidmore reckoned (last week) that once upon a time in Liverpool you could ‘make it up’ and get away with it, and – to a point – he’s right, although I don’t remember outrageously invented stories being the norm. Except, that

Not so grim fairy tales By Ian Skidmore There was the girl for whom we bought fifty tickets on the Liverpool ferry and then photographed plying across the Mersey to New Brighton and back. The story we sold our news editors was that her doctor had ordered her to take

Feathered friends By Geoffrey Seed Imagine the scene – the Rt Hon Kenneth Clarke QC, MP, portly, cigar-smoking bon viveur and our newly be-wigged Lord Chancellor, leaping from a helicopter gunship in a bulletproof vest and bounding through a murderous cocaine baron’s prize crop in search of that rarest of

This Week What was that saying? Oh yes: you couldn’t make it up. It was a funny old world, was it not, where you could be fired for getting a fact* wrong, but applauded for inventing an entire story… where a story stood up if you could persuade somebody to

Heidi Hi By Andrew Jackson In those days, long before the digital era, the thing to have was a particular Sony radio-alarm clock. Instead of a dial and hands this much-prized cutting-edge device used a Rolodex-like system, with the hours and minutes displayed on plastic wafers that flipped over with

Winding-up motions By Harold Heys It was an excellent wind-up of Lou Yaffa, that Mark Howard recalled last week. I remember you had to be pretty wide to get one past Big Lou in the Good Old Days. It was a tale that must draw out other wind-up recollections and

Nobody called me William By John Waddell Back in April in Ranters, I discover, Anthony Peagam made what, for him, was a most unusual porridge of his facts. He credited me with having given the first half of my name to a column he described as ‘John London of the

This Week Last week’s piece by Mike Gallemoregot Mark Howard’s memory turning which – as we keep saying – is what’s supposed to happen. That is, not getting Mark thinking (which is never a bad thing) but one piece jogging somebody else’s memory, in this case about Big Lou Yaffa,

Black and white By Mark Howard The mention of Lou Yaffa in Ranters last week reminded me of the best ever wind-up. Lou, a fanatical Newcastle supporter, was in the chief sub’s chair at the NoW on the last day of the 1992-93 season. His team was certain to go up.

Meet the misses By Mark Day When old journos gather in bars they tend to tell stories of their greatest hits: how they solved a particularly puzzling murder; how they saved the British Empire or brought down a government. Rarely do we hear of their greatest misses. But we’ve all

Gives good headline By Ian Bradshaw With the news that Lindsay Lohan is to play Linda Lovelace in a remake of Deep Throat I fondly recall my encounter with the original in London. It was soon after the release of the notorious film that Linda turned up in London and

This Week In an essay written in 1969 called Stop The Press I Want To Get On, Nicholas Tomalin (you’ve read it here several times before) wrote that ‘The only qualities essential for real success in journalism are rat-like cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability.’ As a

No such thing… By Michael Gallemore Whoever coined the phrase, ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’ couldn’t have worked in national newspapers. I remember when we lowly chapel officials invited Percy Roberts out for a long lunch in Manchester to celebrate his retirement as chairman. We certainly pushed

This week All you need to know about getting into newspapers and becoming a successful tabloid hack is available in one racy new autobiography, says Harold Heys. So (even though it’s written by somebody we’ve never actually heard of) we offer it for the enlightenment of all those media lecturers