Rantings

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

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

Short arms, deep pockets By William Greaves There is one familiar expression in the English language which appears in no international phrasebook – for the simple reason that foreigners would be able to make neither head nor tail of it. The phrase is: ‘It’s my round.’ It has a number

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

Great truths of our time By Donald Walker ‘Don, you don’t understand what I’m trying to do with this newspaper, do you?’ Anne Robinson said to me one afternoon. ‘No, Anne,’ I replied (though these may not have been my exact words), ‘I don’t understand. Does anyone understand? Do you

Dab hand at murder By Stan Solomons Detectives probing the brutal killing of a kind old lady who ran a tiny corner shop thought it was only a matter of time before they tracked down the killer. They had found a vital clue at the murder scene – a set

Sticky situation By Derek Roylance Reading Tom Brown’s piece on intros in Ranters last week reminded me of one of the best I have seen… and it was on a media release! To set the scene. I and my good mate the late Bob Cornish were operating as captains in

This Week The intro-writing thread continues this week with a short from Derek Roylance, who started work on the old Rhyl Leader and was on the Rugeley Times, Staffordshire Advertiser, Express & Star and Lincolnshire Echo before emigrating to Oz where he became a PR for the army – a

Like the plague… By Geoffrey Mather As any writer knows, falling foul of a cliché is easy as pie. Annoying, too, which means that you tend to flip your lid, let the fur fly for Pete’s sake, go through the roof, get your knickers in a twist, climb walls while

Piece of cake By Ken Ashton Half-time in a World Cup soccer match, the crowd is going bananas, one team is smiling to the gods, the other looks shell-shocked. And my mother, bless her, is sitting in the stand and wondering whether to patent her fruit cake… created during World