The Gentlemen Ranters site is a brilliant compendium of reminiscences of the great days of Fleet Street. – The Times

Issue # 149

June 4, 2010

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 say something, because then the story was based on the fact that they said it, even if everybody knew it was bollocks.

We, of course, would never do anything like that.

OK, then:Skiddy would, and the rest of the Liverpool press corps would. And if the newsdesk people suspected anybody was doing it, they were not daft enough to enquire.

Oh, and Andy Jackson did.

And Harold Heys did, but – as far as we know – the only people affected by the inventions were the mates from the office.

And if you are ready to believe – as Geoff Seed reports – that Ken Clarke, that last colourful character in politics, wandered off into the Colombian jungle in search of a rare bird when he was supposed to be watching a drugs bust… well, you’ll believe anything, I guess.

Follow the birdie by clicking on the links, or in the Contents column on the far left.

*Ah yes… there’s an old sub out there already reaching for his keyboard to tell us that you can’t get facts wrong because a fact, by definition, is true. The up-yours response to that, however, is that anybody who has ever been involved with what editors call fact-checking knows that you can have a wad of copy absolutely chock-full of facts… until you check ‘em, and discover that many are not actually true at all. Maybe we should put fact in quotes. But I’m not prepared to pander to the miserable moaner.

Them as can, write. Them as can’t, complain about what other people write.

Twas ever thus. And that’s a fact.

Get clicking.

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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 a cruise for health reasons: the ferry trip was the only one she could afford.

Then there was the dog we tied to the railings of the police Bridewell, a note attached to its collar ‘My daddy threatens to shoot my dog. Please Mr Policeman would you hide him somewhere safe?’ Which we signed ‘Simon 11’ after cleverly misspelling ‘threaten’.

Both stories were page leads in our newspapers and aroused much comment. Animal stories always caused comment.

I almost lost my job by suggesting the Daily Mirror motto should be ‘Every Day Has Its Dog’. In my defence I pointed out two stories that we had run the day before. One on page one told how stray dogs were moved from cages each day at the RSPCA kennels until they reached the one labelled ‘Tuesday’. When a dog reached the ‘Tuesday’ cage it was put down. The day that ‘Tuesday’s Dog’ appeared, the paper was snowed under with cheques and postal orders to pay for its continued life; our phone lines jammed with calls. One caller offered a thousand pounds to have the dog brought out to Italy and a life of luxury. In the same issue I’d written a story of some limbless ex-servicemen who after superhuman efforts got themselves a workshop to make things to sell. They were a month behind with their rent and their landlord threatened to evict them. Only five readers rang up about that story and not enough cheques arrived to meet the arrears.

Liverpool district reporters on national newspapers in those days would have got a ‘first’ on any Creative Writing course. Nor were we without help. We had to find a story a week for our sister Sunday papers. Bert Balmer, the city’s assistant chief constable and a Press Club member, used to make them up for us on request, over a convivial glass in the club bar.

So it might seem a bit odd that I have cancelled my subscription to Daily Mail newspapers in disgust at their treatment of Lord Triesman, the chairman of the Football Association. I think little of the FA and when I saw the photograph of the Lord and his lady (?) Melissa Jacobs I thought of the judgment of a commanding officer on one of his subalterns: ‘One would hesitate to breed from this officer’. But love is allowable, even among the unsightly. What is not allowable was for her to pass on an innocent remark he made about his fear of bribery of referees to the Mail on Sunday and for that paper to give her £75,000.

I wasn’t sorry to see the paper go. I had been reading the facsimile edition on-line and, though in bribery the Mail group is second to none, it has yet to turn out readable facsimiles. I see The Times is offering a similar service. I will try it without hope.

Certainly it is time our newspapers caught up with the computer world. As I sat at my news desk surrounded by the most modern gadgets, I used to reflect on the expense and labour involved in gathering, illustrating, printing and publishing the day’s news. Yet all depended on a small boy on a bicycle. If he slept in or forgot to deliver the morning paper, the whole costly process collapsed.

Now that news has been largely supplanted by the vapourings of celebrities one wonders whether my trade deserves to survive.

Ian Skidmore, former reporter, news editor, freelance, broadcaster, columnist and the author of 26 books including Forgive Us Our Press Passes, is marooned weekly on his own delightful and rantful beach on Skidmore’s Island.

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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 an audible and distinctive click as time went by.

The alarm was set, as it always was, for seven thirty. That particular Friday morning, publication day, I heard the click and a second or two later the voice of Jack de Manio reading the news headlines: ‘…and in Edgware…’

I froze. My story, that story, was being discussed on the Today programme. The game was up. Disgrace was inevitable. I’d be sacked within hours.

With a feeling of dread I washed, dressed and drove the few miles to the high-street office of the Edgware Times and the Edgware Post (identical in terms of copy but not format – the Times was broadsheet and the Post tabloid).

As with many local paper district offices the reporters’ room was at the back of a greetings card and stationery shop, a smoke-filled, window-less cuddy for two reporters, two sit-up-and-beg typewriters and one telephone.

I parked in the service road at the rear of the building and entered warily via the back door. Mr Harvey, who ran the shop, was waiting for me. ‘Ooh, now see what you’ve done,’ he scolded. ‘I’ve had to shut the shop and lock the door.’

A glance over his shoulder revealed a throng of men and women milling on the pavement outside, some of them bearing fully loaded Speed Graphics, one with an Arriflex news camera and tripod and another with a tape recorder slung over his shoulder. Most carried a copy of the paper.

‘You’d better sort it out,’ said Mr Harvey. ‘It’s all your fault.’

I gulped a lungful of air, lit my first Woodbine of the day and went out the door.

‘Did you write this?’ asked one of the group, pointing to the lead story. ‘Where can we find them?’ asked another. ‘Do you have their phone numbers?’

What could I say? How had it come to this?

To explain my predicament we must go back a few days to the start of a scenario that was now running out of control.

Aged 23 I ran the Edgware office of the Hendon Times series, assisted by my chum and colleague Brian Stratton. There was a similar set-up in Finchley but the senior reporter there, a woman, had fallen out with Alan Davies, editor of the group. We’ll call her Annette.

Alan had called a week earlier to say he was sending Annette to Edgware, where I was to ‘work her hard’ in the hope that she would foul up and he would have grounds to sack her, while Brian would switch to head office.

So, Annette turned up on the Monday and we got on with the chores – wedding reports, flower show results and so on – and agreed which of us would cover the jobs in the diary for that week.

Annette was much older than me and a tad prickly – she knew the pressure was on and wasn’t going to take any nonsense from a whippersnapper like me. For my part, my management style was more pleading than assertive but nevertheless we rubbed along without conflict.

The lead story that week was expected to come from a council meeting on the Wednesday evening. Annette’s shorthand was far superior to mine so we agreed that she would cover the council meeting and file her copy before covering the local magistrates’ court on Thursday morning.

Come the Thursday I did police and fire calls on the way in and pitched up around ten o’clock. The phone rang. Alan wanted to know when the lead would be coming over. I said I thought he had it already but I would check with Annette. Copy deadline for the issue was noon.

I took a look at Annette’s desk. No sign of any relevant copy there. Nothing on the spike, no blacks, nothing in the bin. I hurried over to the court building but there was no sign of her. Back in the office Alan was on the phone again. ‘Where’s that bloody lead boyo? You’ve only got an hour.’ I explained that Annette appeared to have gone AWOL, taking the lead with her. ‘Then use your initiative,’ said Alan. ‘The clock is ticking.’

What to do? Fear and the spectre of a white hole where the lead should be produced an adrenaline rush and a flash of inspiration.

The previous week we’d carried a letter from two women who wanted to warn others of the unreliability of au pairs. Theirs, they wrote, had run off without warning, taking items belonging to their employers with them.

This week, I decided, the au pairs would hit back.

I quickly knocked out a completely fictitious story about how au pairs were exploited, made to do work they shouldn’t and how their lives were made a misery by thoughtless and uncaring employers. To help stand it up I quoted ‘Heidi from Switzerland’, ‘Lotte from Germany’, ‘Isabella from Italy’ and their friends.

I phoned it over to Hendon and within minutes Alan was back on the phone. ‘Bloody brilliant, boyo, but why couldn’t you have sent it earlier?’ I mumbled something about waiting for a quote and breathed a sigh of relief.

Now, here I was on Friday morning facing a Fleet Street pack intent on following up the story. I had no alternative but to brazen it out. I told them that I couldn’t reveal my sources as Heidi and her chums had spoken to me in confidence – but said that au pairs tended to hang out at a local coffee bar further up the high street. Off they went in pursuit of their quarry.

Readers of Ranters will not be surprised to learn that most of the nationals carried their versions of the story the following day, duly quoting ‘Ingrid from Norway’, ‘Anna from Austria’, and so on. Then, of course, the employers hit back and the story ran for another two or three days. There was even a question in the House.

We sold a lot more papers that week and Alan told me what we needed were ‘more stories like that’.

And Annette? She’d done a runner and was not heard of again. Brian Stratton returned from head office and life went on. You couldn’t make it up, eh…?

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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 here’s a quickie about getting one over on Andy Rosthorn, Daily Mail and Mirror Group hack, contributor to Private Eye, Lobster and most everything else, raconteur of strange and lengthy tales – and world authority on Rudolf Hess.

For years Andy played in my pub quiz team which can best be described as an odd, but successful, mix. Gordon Taylor the PFA supremo played with us. Martin Samuel had a few games. We were once a man short and the pub dog sat in to make us up. His first question: What’s another name for rabies? The poor mutt just sat there and dribbled. Useless. Andy Rosthorn was a regular and often managed to get the round-the-bar chat on to his pet subject of Hitler’s deputy.

It was never boring but there’s not a lot of general interest in the disputed trajectory of the bullet Hess took through his chest in the Great War. No one dared to mention the mysterious ME fighter-bomber he flew over or we’d have been there all night. Was it really Hess or a doppelganger? How many years have you got to chew that one?

Anyhow, after a few years on the quiz circuit and late night discussions with assorted hacks in dingy dives, it was finally time for The Wind-Up. At the quiz interval, as Andy was trying to interest the barman in a map of Spandau, hastily drawn on a beermat, I gave the question master a piece of paper. ‘This is Andy’s question,’ I told him. ‘And whatever he says he’s wrong. Ok?’

Off we went for the second half and the first question went to Andy. ‘Where was Rudolf Hess imprisoned immediately after his war-time flight to Scotland?’

Andy spread his arms in amazement. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he smirked. ‘I know exactly where it was!’

He took a deep breath, we all sat back and off he went (I recall it almost word for word):

‘Well… I suppose the strict answer to this excellent question would be the Scout hut at Busby. He had landed in a nearby field and the local Home Guard marched him to the hut for the night. (Pausing to scan the rapt attention of assembled company, he pressed on cheerily).

‘He was then taken to Maryhill barracks in Glasgow where he was under the guard of a drunken Scottish regiment for a couple of days and then he was taken by train to Euston and on to the Tower of London. (Mouths of assembled company suitably agape with awe at this point.)

‘Psychiatrists looked him over closely at some place in south London and eventually he was taken to an old hospital in south Wales, near Abergavenny – he used to go walking over the hills with a little dog – and when the war ended he was hauled off to Luxemburg, to a place called Ashcan, under the command of a strange American colonel, prior to Nuremberg. So, to recap: Scout hut at Busby.’ (At this point Andy sat back to receive the acclaim of his peers after probably the most exhaustive answer to any question in the long history of pub quizzes.)

Instead, the question master, keeping a very straight face, told him: ‘Nah. Bollocks.’ Warming quickly to his theme, he told Andy: ‘Says here: Cardiff Castle.’

Andy went purple. He was spluttering even more than he was on the night he threatened to fire-bomb the sponsoring brewery over a regular cock-up question about what a sea captain means when he flies a yellow flag. The penny finally dropped as everyone roared with laughter.

‘Bastards,’ muttered the World Authority on Rudolf Hess…

A long wind-up… Wind-ups were a regular occurrence in the days of yore. Everybody was fair game – and the longer a plot took the more the satisfaction. Hacks, comps, even copy-takers and young messengers copped for it. I remember we convinced one kid that Clint Eastwood was Stan Laurel’s nephew with some elaborate deceptions. The clincher came when he was persuaded to ring the British Film Institute in London for a final check before his money went down. The poor sap didn’t know that he was actually phoning a friend of Martin Samuel who was expecting the call and who happily confirmed the daft story. The lad was lucky. Norman Wynne only took a tenner off him.

A short wind-up… Bill Bradshaw had an awful time with traffic wardens when he was in Manchester. We were ready for him one day. As soon as he pulled up at the front of the Sunday People office one of the lads shot down with a neatly-produced yellow ‘fine’ in a plastic envelope and stuck it under his wipers – as Bill raced upstairs. ‘Keep an eye on the car lads,’ he pleaded. ‘Too late,’ someone shouted. He took one horrified look, raced back down and grabbed the ‘fine.’ It was one of those moments… you know that when you look up there’s going to be a gang of newspaper men at the windows, waving and smiling. Bill had the grace to smile and wave back. At least with a couple of fingers.

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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 bullet proof vest and bounding through a murderous cocaine baron’s prize crop in search of that rarest of creatures… the Great Crested Colombian Screech Owl.

Forget Mash. Think Carry On Up The Cartel.

Clarke’s Huey – the war horses of Vietnam – had just put down in a clearing in the Andean jungle planted with acres of coca bushes when our hero, the jazz-loving Gray’s Inn bencher and amateur ornithologist, felt sure he saw… The Bird.

With little or no regard for his safety, the then Home Secretary strode off into the perilous unknown followed by (1) a bewildered mob of SAS-trained, cammed up Colombian para-militaries labouring under massive bandoliers of bullets and assorted heavy weaponry (2) a Scotland Yard protection officer pouring sweat in his dark suit, white shirt, brogues and tie and carrying what appeared to be a water pistol (3) Tom Mangold, another bird-spotter and legendary BBC correspondent and (4) myself and Panorama cameraman Mike Spooner, who thought we there to ruin a bad guy’s day by filming his cocaine kitchen being fire-bombed.

I suppose I should confess that I might have mis-remembered our feathered friend’s actual moniker, Latin or otherwise, but the nearness of all that Colombian marching powder has played hell with my faculties ever since.

Anyway, however hard Clarke and Mangold stared into the steamy claustrophobic jungle canopy, the bird had flown. All we could hear was the second Huey, circling, watching, machine-guns primed and ready for serious trouble.

The Colombian security team on the ground were growing ever more nervous at Clarke’s unfathomable interest in the local flora and fauna. They had good reason. This was a battleground being fought over by shifting alliances of leftist guerrillas and the psychotic billionaires who ran the region’s cartels. That year’s drug-related homicides alone would top 27,000 so Clarke was ordered back into the chopper – no arguments – and we took off for the high Andes and another anti-drugs operation.

Spooner and I sat either side of the starboard gunner, breathing in pure testosterone and suddenly aware of a wonderful terror… that of being in the crosshairs of some bloke down there with a missile launcher who was on wages if he ruined our day.

In the end, we got great pictures despite a Home Office press department drone trying to restrict our access to Clarke donating some Amstrads in an office in Bogotá. Mangold, a brilliant veteran of Fleet Street and one of the most astute and insightful reporters the BBC has ever had, handed out a few words of advice.

More than six million people watched our Panorama investigation into cocaine smuggling. Clarke knew the political value of being seen on it and played his part like the old pro he is. The election has now delivered him back into premiership politics and the sketch writers should rejoice. If nothing else, Ken Clarke is a highly colourful, combative and unflappable operator – in fact, not unlike his fellow twitcher, Tom Mangold.

Former Daily Mail reporter Geoffrey Seed worked for every leading TV current affairs programme – Granada’s World in Action, BBC Panorama and the ITV series Real Crime – and is the author of A Place Of Strangers, his first novel, about an investigative TV journalist who finds himself embroiled in the ultimate investigation… into his own life.

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The Gentlemen Ranters site is a brilliant compendium of reminiscences of the great days of Fleet Street. – The Times

Issue # 150

11 June 2010

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. It seems quite a lot.

It might be interesting to report how many stories we have carried since starting in July (Friday the 13th) 2007, but we don’t really care. Some weeks we have carried 12 pieces; on quiet weeks, like this one, only two.

What we know is that most people who log on every week (between 20,000 and 40,000 on a typical Friday) are along for the free ride.

Free, because there’s no subscription. Also free because they don’t contribute to it in any other way.

And that’s sad, because all they can do – most of the people reading this – is write. But then they are used to getting things for nothing, I guess.

Less than one per cent of the people reading this have written anything for the website; fewer than 10 per cent have even visited the books page, which was created to ensure that books that mattered to the trade we are (or were) in would be preserved for posterity. (If it had been created to make money either for the authors or the publisher, it would have been a total failure.)

It’s sometimes tempting to wonder whether, in the last three years, we might have exhausted all known stories from the great days of journalism. But we know that not to be the case. We have bookloads of them in the pipeline, upcoming shortly. And we have hundreds of our own. It would be nice, though, if some of the permanently idle readers would write a bit.

Meanwhile, as proof that there are some people out there who can both read and write, sometimes prompted by pieces in the current rant, back to this week.

Frank Corless follows Skiddy’s piece last week about stories that might have been made up.

And Alasdair Buchan follows Harold Heys (last week) and Mark Howard (the week before) about people who were wound up.

That’s the statistic, then: 22,769 people read this site last Friday, and around 7,000 every day this week. Two of them were minded to write.

(That’s enough ranting. – Ed.)

Scroll down to read on. Then write on.

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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 is, when it came to the Grand National.

In the mid 60s, when circulations were huge, we were all under starter’s orders to help prompt even bigger sales on the day of the big race by coming up with a Page 1 ‘shocker’.

Year after year, the tall stories just got bigger – all based on the (correct) assumption that by the time was race over everyone would have forgotten about the perils we had suggested might befall horses, jockeys, and Joe Public, but not all at the same time, of course.

The long list ranged from fixers and dopers to betting rings, animal rights activists and, worst of all, the dreaded Cough. The slightest hint of a horse coming down with The Cough was enough to send news desks into a spin.

One year, I was despatched to Aintree at midnight to see if I could blag my way into the stables to listen out for a coughing horse. Instead, I found Les Poole (Daily Express), and Norman Dickson (the old Sun), doing the same. We didn’t get in – and we didn’t hear a single cough.

In those days, the herd instinct applied. We all had to be as near each other as possible to pick up on the slightest hint that the opposition might have come up with a decent splash or – dare I say it – had invented one. And that’s where the Liverpool Press Club’s phone booths had a role to play.

Despite so-called sound proofing, every single word spoken in either of the two booths could be heard by the scribe next door and – on quiet days, or nights – even as far away as the bar. Usually, one or two of us ‘loitered’ as closely as it was possible to get without it looking obvious that we were deliberately ear-wigging.

After a long eve-of-National day at the course, and having filed what we thought would be the most sensational splash, we had to lounge around the club until midnight at the earliest, waiting for the likely, dreaded call from the news desk that someone else had come up with an ‘exclusive’ no one else had thought of.

Trying to convince the night desk that the story – even the most outrageous one – was drivel didn’t wash. So, it was a case of (a) getting them to read to you the opposition ‘exclusive’; (b) waiting 20 minutes while you did a re-write of it and filed it; or (c) getting back to the desk to tell them you had managed to get hold of a ‘very good contact’ who had confirmed it was ‘rubbish’. Usually, a & b held sway.

I was lucky enough to see the race more than 40 times. I say ‘see’ advisedly. I usually watched it on TV from the Aintree press box because, being right above the weighing room, it was the perfect spot to rush downstairs as soon as the race finished and bag a front row seat in the adjoining press tent. To be honest, I didn’t miss any of the drama or the excitement because I was still close enough to hear it, and almost to touch it.

One of my last assignments there involved doing a news stint for the Sunday Mirror who sent along a staffer to help me out. No names, no pack drill, but he was well known in the job for ‘stretching,’ or ‘bending’ stories and, yes, even – would you believe it? – making them up. Always with a chuckle, of course.

So it proved with the big race, the one sports event in the world that didn’t need any top spin. Drama? The National was always a fantastic drama. But that didn’t stop Mr X.

I felt the first hint of unease when I sat down to wait for the winning jockey, trainer, owner and hangers on to be delivered to the press tent for after-race interviews. My helper was nowhere to be seen.

Minutes later, as I dashed upstairs to the Mirror’s designated phone, there he was. Chuckling. ‘Don’t panic, I’ve sent it,’ he said. ‘Sent what?’ I replied, as a cold shiver ran down my back.

‘The jockey, the owner, all that stuff,’ he said. ‘But, you weren’t there,’ I protested. ‘No, but they always say the same things, don’t they? Nobody’s going to care tomorrow.’

Gobsmacked wasn’t the word. If the National horses had been within earshot of my rant, they probably would have bolted and gone round the course for a third time. Calming down, I thought ‘Sod it’, and quickly wrote, and filed, a different version. The true one.

Next day, the Mirror used their racing correspondent’s version, so it didn’t matter after all. But, every time the race comes round, I think of the reporter who beat everyone else to the post.

Away from Aintree, the story that I was never sure was true or false came courtesy of Arthur Redford, the Daily Mail Liverpool district man. For a while, I was Arthur’s sidekick (Santa’s little helper, they called me) before I got the Daily Mirror staff job in the city.

The story ranks, at best, as highly dubious.

It happened during yet another of the Mersey dock strikes. At that time, in the 60s, they were so frequent, and many of them staged for the flimsiest of reasons, that they spawned their own books of ‘jokes’. Typical was the one about two dockers enjoying an egg and bacon sarnie in a waterfront cafe before starting work on a spring morning.

‘See the daffs are out,’ said one.

‘Will it affect us?’ his mate replied.

One strike went on for so long, totally paralysing the port, that ships waiting to berth had to ride anchor at the Mersey Bar. Among them was a Russian freighter with a cargo of timber bound for Garston docks.

The gist of Arthur’s yarn was that the crew had so much time on their hands that they had started to become fluent English speakers, simply by watching TV for hours on end.

According to Arthur’s piece, the programme they watched most was… Pinky and Perky.

‘Why didn’t we have this?’ I was asked when I checked in with the desk that morning. ‘I can’t find anyone who says it’s true,’ I said. And I was being honest. Honest.

Back came the reply: ‘Well, we should have it.’

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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 the lad was given the job of doing a Glorious Twelfth round up.

Before the days of Nouveau Beaujolais, it was an annual standby of the Herald to run a story about who got the first grouse from the moors to the dinner plate. So the news editor told him to phone around to see what price they were charging for that night’s grouse. He was newly arrived from an Inverness paper and not yet Glasgow-aware so the reporters told him to call Roganos, the Malmaison, the Grand and the Great Eastern hotels.

With the first three the answers were fairly predictable but when he called the Great Eastern he got quite excited. The conversation went like this: ‘Are you serving grouse tonight?’

‘Oh, aye, we always have it on the menu on the 12th.’

‘Great, how much will it be?’

‘Two bob a plate.’

‘As cheap as that. Really?’

‘Aye, really. Our residents are no made of money.’

He had his lead and started battering the typewriter.

At this point I should reveal that despite its grand name the Great Eastern Hotel on Duke Street was Glasgow’s biggest ‘model lodging house’. These were large institutions where each night, for 3d, the homeless could get a bed for the night in large dormitories and a cup of tea and soup from the Sally Army before being evicted promptly the next morning.

They were foul, smelly, infested places and the inmates’ idea of a grouse related to bedbugs not birdies.

The only ‘switchboard’ was the doorkeeper’s phone and clearly the man had assumed the call was a wind-up and had been answering with heavy sarcasm.

By curious coincidence the news desk weren’t paying proper attention and the story got through to a sub who, again, was an out-of-towner. It was set and heading for the presses before a proof reader (please explain what they were to the younger readers) saved the day.

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The Gentlemen Ranters site is a brilliant compendium of reminiscences of the great days of Fleet Street. – The Times

Issue # 151

June 18, 2010

This Week

There was clearly more winding-up going on in newspaper offices in the old days than in the window of H Samuels. Some of the wind-ups, says Ian Skidmore, involved ‘a cast of thousands’. They were meant to be jolly japes, never (or rarely) motivated by malice. Does anything similar happen these days? Why does one doubt it?

Those were also the days when on-the-road people (but also desk-men) dressed in a manner that would be appropriate for an interview with ‘a duke or a dustman’. I remember a young reporter being sent home by the regular Assizes reporter to change into something more appropriate than a blazer and grey flannels, and many years later a sub who’d turned up at the Mirror in shorts (it was a scorcher) being sent home ‘to get dressed’. Paul Callan remembers some snappy dressers and recalls how it sometimes helped to be turned out more elegantly than the kids of today, most of whom look as if they’ve arrived at the office by skateboard.

There was always a bit of a rush for ‘early doors’ when the pubs didn’t open for the evening until five o’clock. But imagine if last orders had been at six… Phil Harrison doesn’t need to imagine it. He can remember when it used to happen.

And Geoffrey Mather remembers a Prodnose, with affection. We’ll pause there, while somebody explains it to the children.

SCROLL DOWN to read the bits...

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Jump to it

By Ian Skidmore

Reporters are great players of cruel practical jokes and Michael Gabbert, news editor of the People, was a master of the art.

Probably his greatest prank concerned a very hard-nosed People reporter, Ken Graham, who looked in the news desk diary one morning and found that he was down to make a parachute jump.

‘A joke?’ he said.

‘No joke,’ said Gabbert. ‘Not chicken, are you?’

‘Course I’m not,’ said Graham, though he had paled visibly.

Gabbert’s pranks always had a cast of thousands. This one included an RAF PRO who rang a few moments later and asked Graham if he was insured because Air Ministry regulations demanded that civilians travelling by military aircraft and jumping out of them while they were moving be insured for £500,000.

What really started Graham pondering was the next call. It came from Neville Stack, news editor of the People’s sister paper, the Daily Herald. Stack said that he had heard Graham was going to do a jump for charity and wondered if he would mind doing a piece for the Herald, too. Possibly taking a few pictures as he came down.

By this time Graham was giving little yelps and smoking heavily.

‘How can I do that?’ he wanted to know. ‘I’ll need my hands to pull the parachute strings.’

Stack said he had thought of that. They were going to strap a camera to his chest and fit a remote control, which would reach his mouth. All he had to do was press it with his tongue as he left the aircraft.

When Gabbert heard of the plan he said if the Herald was to have photographs so must the People. He didn’t suppose Graham would go for the idea of two cameras on the chest and two remote controls.

‘How about,’ he said, ‘if we had a cameraman on the ground? He could photograph you as you came out of the plane.’

‘But there always are other parachutists in the stick,’ protested Graham (picking up the lingo). ‘How will he know which one is me?’

‘That’s easy,’ said Gabbert. ‘As you jump out of the aircraft just shout, “It’s me, it’s me".’

‘He’ll never hear me.’

‘He will if you have a megaphone round your neck,’ said Gabbert slyly. Graham said was it all right if he went out for a drink?

To this day I do not know if it was by accident or design that when Graham got to our local, the Chicken Inn, the only other customer at the bar was a sub-editor who had been a corporal in the 6th Airborne.

‘Eh,’ said Graham, ‘is parachute jumping dangerous?’

‘Parachute jumping?’ said the man. ‘Easy as falling off a log. Jumping isn’t dangerous.’

Graham looked relieved.

‘Jumping’s fine. It’s landing that is dangerous. That’s when the leg breaks. Snaps like a match if you land wrong.’

‘How do you land properly?’ Graham asked.

‘It’s sort of twisting and kind of bending really.’

‘Like this?’ said Graham, and tried.

‘No,’ said the sub-editor, ‘not like that. Like that, a busted pelvis is about five to one on. The trouble is, you couldn’t really learn how to do it, not from a standing position.’

In the Airborne, the sub-editor explained, they had learnt by falling off the back of moving trucks. Would Graham like him to get his car out? ‘You could practise falling out of the passenger seat but you would have to be careful not to be hit by the door.’

Graham said wasn’t there some other way and the sub-editor said, ‘Well…’

Which explains why, when we came over to the pub, Graham was standing on a table, jumping off it, bending his knees gracefully on impact. And rolling along the carpet until brought to a halt by the foot rail at the bar.

This is an edited version of an extract from Ian Skidmore’s hilarious memoir, Forgive Us Our Trespasses, available on-line from amazon, Waterstones and (with free postage worldwide) the Book Depository. Or on order from any half-decent bookshop.

#

Dressing the part

By Paul Callan

Sartorially speaking, the Hacks Britannicus have 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 who, if they could not afford a tailor-made suit, still managed to look smart in Montague Burton’s best (that dates me).

But back in the 1960s, when I embarked on the inky voyage, I was instructed, even before I started jotting in my first reporter’s notebook, how I should dress.

The older Ranters will doubtless recall the advice themselves: news editors wanted to see you in a dark suit, white shirt (preferably clean), neat tie and black, well-polished shoes. The idea was that you might be sent to cover a funeral or even a visit by royalty. You always had to look respectable, even if you were not. After all you were representing the paper.

But there were always a few who scaled higher up the tailored ladder. I recall the dapper Brian Baxter on the old Norwood News who sported extremely elegant suits of a raffish cut. He stood out, particularly with the rolled-back cuffs.

And, later, with the Croydon Advertiser group, there was the very well-turned out Iain Murray, neat in his well-cut dark suit and who would later become The Times man in Israel.

I managed to persuade a sympathetic parent to buy me a couple of decent suits – one dark and the other pin striped. But I had also inherited my father’s style of bow-tie wearing, which I have continued.

For years I would be followed down a street by young oiks shouting ‘Oy! Robin Day’ But the look has served me well – although when I started wearing suede brogues while on the Evening Standard I was sent home to change by the paper’s fierce editor, Charles Wintour. ‘I do not expect my staff to dress like second hand Bentley salesmen,’ he said coldly.

But a few years ago the way I dressed proved useful when a well-known soap star brought a libel action against the Sun after the paper alleged she was providing, er, comfort for her husband in a motorway layby.

She lost the High Court case after some brilliant cross-examining by the late George Carman QC. I had been sent by the Daily Express to write some colour – always a pleasure when Carman (who was a drinking friend) was in court.

When the star lost and huge damages were announced, she promptly collapsed and was removed from the High Court, screaming.

The shattered actress was taken upstairs to be given first aid. But all entrances were blocked by burly security men and attempts by other reporters to talk to the actress were barred.

Then one of our number suddenly looked me up and down – I was wearing a pin-striped suit and usual polka dot bow tie – pointing out that I didn’t actually look like a journo and looked more like (as he put it) ‘a bleedin’ barrister’.

He had a point. So, with a borrowed briefcase, I walked upstairs to the banned area. The two muscular security men, much to my delight, thought I was someone’s counsel and immediately stepped aside.

There sat the crying star being comforted by friends. I strolled languidly over – in the manner of bleeding barristers – and gently asked if she was all right. She then unwittingly gave me a splendid interview – until one of her minders became suspicious and asked if I was a reporter. I confessed – and made a fast exit.

We all shared the copy afterwards in The George and there was satisfaction all round.

There have been other occasions when the pinstripe-bow tie look has helped. I recall the time I was able to walk unquestioned into a flat that was to be used by the Queen when visiting the Cayman Islands.

But, on that occasion, I was finally rumbled – by the Queen’s secretary, just I was ‘testing’ the Royal bed.

Then there was the time a very well-known glamorous film star removed my bow time and… but that’s another story.

#

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 then Sydney Morning Herald building. The Sydney bureau comprised a senior journalist and a cadet (me). We would get the blacks of all Herald or Sydney Sun copy and rewrite them for Brisbane and cover events of Brisbane interest. Even in sleepy old Brisbane at the time, pubs closed at 8 pm, but I was surprised that in sin-city, Sydney, all pubs shut at 6 pm. From 1916 till 1955, that was the final drink time.

By the time I got to Sydney, the law – introduced after strong campaigns by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in a vain attempt to improve public morals and get men home to their wives earlier – had been amended so that pubs were able to close at 6, then reopen at 7 pm. It made no difference: men still vomited from the windows of trams, trains and buses on their way home, after sinking as many drinks as they could after work. Talk about speed-dating; it has nothing on speed-drinking.

Anyway, on my second day there, my boss and I attended the daily editorial conference of the various interstate newspapers which had bureaus in the Herald building. Ten people usually attended, so I made it 11. The conference started at 4 pm. It was just after 5 pm when the senior interstate newspaper representative, who chaired the conference, suddenly looked at his watch and said: ‘Jesus Christ, we’d better get down there quickly.’

‘There’ was the nearest pub, the Volunteer. We piled out the door and ran down the road to the Vollo, as it was called. We just managed to make it before the after-work rush started in earnest. We were all drinking beer apart from one journalist who was on Scotch and water. I had assumed each would pay for his own drink. However, a round was clearly expected. Fair enough, except that everyone paid for their whole round at once. Which is why the head-high shelf which lined the pub wall had 100 schooners (three-quarters of a pint) of beer and 10 Scotches lined up. All to be drunk in 45 minutes (and possibly a 10-minute drinking-up period after 6 pm if the landlord was feeling generous).

Unfortunately, my lowly status in the gathering was such that I could not make an excuse and leave. Not that I wanted to. The next day, I wished I had.

Sydney pubs must have been the most efficient beer-dispensing establishments in the world at that time. The barmaids were equipped with beer-guns attached to tubes, allowing them to fill a long row of glasses in record time.

The celebrated Sun cartoonist Emile Mercier arrived at the Vollo one evening to find the bar-serving area 15 people deep. Unfazed, he rolled up the newspaper he carried under his arm, lit the end with his cigarette lighter, and held it up to the fire sprinklers. This cleared the bar quickly, so Emile commandeered the beer gun for himself and drank on, oblivious to the sprinklers.

#

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 would never describe him as either pedantic or interfering.

Competent. That’s the word for him. A gent we might grandly refer to as being ‘of the old school’. We came together daily at around 3pm when I was sorting out the London flonged pages for the Daily Express in Manchester and he was doing ditto. Manchester, you understand, served Ireland.

We sat within five yards of each other with the lawyer, who smoked foul herbal cigarettes. in-between. Twin saints, in a way, dedicated to the sanctity and virtue of Southern Ireland, and sorely tried by that pungent weed. When animated, or overcome, Mr Gabb would go out with his teapot and bring back a brew. He was the only man in the office with a teapot. It was sheer class.

He wore dark suits and black boots and was older than most of us by quite a bit. His Christian name was never in use. A bit like TV’s Morse, really: always on the trail of wrong-doing; always a bit reticent in pursuit.

There we would be, then, time 3pm, office quiet, pubs busy, when – regularly – the worst happened: Mr Gabb would leap from his seat waving a wet broadsheet page proof, head for my desk with it swirling around him, like Pavlova in Swan Lake, and say, with awful finality, ‘You can’t run this in Ireland.’

Normally, Mr Gabb spoke in restrained fashion, sort of 10pt Cheltenham. On warning occasions, you understand, he spoke only in 84pt Cheltenham Bold capitals.

We would have perhaps a dozen flong pages, or more, up from London on the train, and what we could use in Ireland dictated the quality of his and my existences. No flibbertigibbets, sirens, uncovered limbs, unguarded phrases of an immoral nature, no tarts or sluts, no bordellos or lap-dancing, no corrupt politicians or unpriestly priests, that kind of thing. We felt quite humbled by our regard for matters of the mortal soul.

It meant, in more earthly terms, that we required a flat cast of the offending page or, more likely, pages. Then, according to our instructions, chunks of metal would be carved out ready to be filled with unoffending loose type, and occasionally a big illustration would be supplanted by one much more modest.

Limbs were an abomination in our world. An example. As soon as I spotted Marilyn Monroe’s legs sprawled across five columns I knew that Mr Gabb would erupt and I would whinny my support. I could anticipate him, and was equal to him: I would probably print only her head five columns wide.

There was nothing at all offensive about Marilyn’s head but anything below her adam’s apple was a minefield. We had some odd-looking pages, the only ones with heads bigger than the human originals. I supposed. in my ignorance, that Dublin had no idea what women’s legs were like and that all their own women were sort of prosthetic.

What the more enlightened thought of this form of head-hunting in Ireland, I never dared guess. But we remained unscathed, professionally, Mr Gabb and me. Not always easy. We lost A Very Senior Editorial Person after an indiscretion with a picture. Not one of mine, I am glad to say. Something to do with visual identification in a court case. Exit, stage left. Could have been either of us after an indiscretion with Marilyn.

‘Will it be a single?’ the news editor asked as the man prepared to head for the train and face his London seniors. Sadly, it was.

That kind of thing made us very careful.

So there you are: Mr Gabb and me enhanced the moral principles of southern Ireland at 3pm five days a week. At least I liked to think that. I was not new to caution. I had some prior warning of Prodnosism on my previous newspaper where they banned the word ‘rape.’ It had to be ‘committed misconduct.’ So there I was describing events in an overseas war in a page one lead where ‘they ran into the village pillaging, burning, and committing misconduct.’

I really was the man for the job.

A photographer, bound up with the Irish frenzy himself – by proxy as it were – heard that the Irish were in need of Pac-a-macs, so, the story has it, he took a suitcase full of them with the intention of penetrating a ready market, whereupon he found that the name was used by his informants in place of ‘condoms’. Mr Gabb would have known that, had he been asked. None of us, so far as I recall, bought a Pac-a-mac of the genuine variety from this erring and sinful snapper.

My second Prodnose was a Roman Catholic himself so he was well versed in Southern Irish morality. He did not have his own teapot, but he was earnest in his task. On one occasion he and the lawyer visited Dublin to sort out some awkward matter and because the hotel was busy they shared a twin-bedded room.

When darkness cloaked all, one of the two found himself tormented by resounding snoring. This continued for some time, and it was interfering in his virtuous thoughts, so he shoved cotton wool in his ears. Deeply, for the snore was horrendous.

Then, since it was ink-black in the room, he got the idea that the cotton wool was too far into his head for comfort. It might, in his heightened imagination, even be a mortal danger. He attempted to remove it. He couldn’t. Panic set in. The cotton wool seemed to be disappearing further into his head. The light went on. The two sat on a bed trying to retrieve the cotton wool and couldn’t. So they ended in a hospital where the problem was resolved to the high relief of both.

The things we all did, the sacrifices we all made, for Irish morality.

When Mr Gabb retired, affable and uncommunicable as ever, I prepared a presentation album for him, with pictures of colleagues and captions, all fit to be seen in the Republic. It was a touching moment. I watched his black suit disappearing into the stairwell as he clumped off the editorial floor for the last time, without looking back, and I realised that I knew nothing of him, beyond his courtesy, his tea pot, and his commitment.

Bizarre stories were told of him, of course, for those on newspapers always exaggerate their own. They said he had been editor of the Sunday Express in Scotland and was running round his office with a big net chasing a butterfly when Lord Beaverbrook walked in.

Journalistic license, I would think. I could never imagine Mr Gabb in pursuit of a butterfly. Or anything else for that matter. But rumour-mongers persisted: they said that Beaverbrook made a time-honoured remark: ‘There will always be a place on the Express for Mr Gabb.’

He just didn’t explain, it was said, what it was or where it was.

Anyway, something moved Mr Gabb in my direction and we were not, I think, a bad little team, all in all. Our challenges were met one way or the other without fuss, without anyone else being unduly concerned, and the below-the-neck part of Ireland was left unsullied, cleansed by our joint efforts.

Though one Irishman did, in more recent times, spoil it for me. He said, ‘You could have left in the stuff you took out and nobody in Ireland would have bothered.’

Bert and me, martyred, in 15 cruel, cruel throw-away words!

You will note that I used his first name for the very first time in my life. It was emotion at the thought of that terrible sentence. It just welled up, in 84pt Cheltenham Bold.

###

The Gentlemen Ranters site is a brilliant compendium of reminiscences of the great days of Fleet Street. – The Times

Issue # 152

25 June 2010

This Week

A new book out this week, by Justin Stares, son of Judith and Mike Stares who many Ranters will remember – Stroud, Blackpool, Leamington, Doncaster, Swindon…

It’s called The Moon At The Bottom of the Well and is a (slightly) romanticised biography of two journalists and star-crossed lovers – one a top-notch BBC foreign correspondent, the other a Pulitzer nominated war photographer.

Revel Barker, who worked with Mike as a teenager, has published the book – it’s out this weekend, and explains what it’s about. Justin Stares writes about how he came to write it.

If you’re looking for something to read over the holidays, pack this one in your suitcase. (There are other suggestions, of course, on the Books Page.)

Then in a follow-up (and you all know how much we like follow-ups) to Phil Harrison’s recollections in last week’s Ranters, David Baird recalls moments of madness in pubs from Down Under to Doncaster.

But if it’s madness you’re after, it’s probably difficult to beat Fleet Street’s pre-occupation with animals. David Webb followed the finest’s dealing with donkey dropping from the safety of the office library.

First, though, a plea for support from that great snapper, Ken Lennox, who will shortly be seen walking (there’s a first). Hoping to be able to appeal to the better and kinder nature of Ranters, he explains his quest for sponsorship below. (Please note that we haven’t carried this sort of thing before, and don’t intend to do it again, but… well, if you want to sponsor Ken by the mile, or in any other way, get in touch with him by clicking on his name.)

#

Up the wall

By Ken Lennox

I am sorry to be boring by asking for contributions but I am looking for a small (or large) donation for a very special school. Sue and I are walking a chunk of Hadrian's Wall next month.

The kids involved are amazing and have been dealt a lousy hand. They have a fully working good brain in their heads but because of their physical problems they can't communicate. They need talking computers, better wheelchairs and a host of other things.

You are all brilliant communicators writers, photographers, PRs, editors and old gits watching day time TV. I am past my sell by date and will attempt to cover 50 miles of the Wall. I have done 22 miles in one go, so far.

I have never asked for anything before and certainly never covered 50 miles without first strapping myself into a taxi.

I will of course have an immense back up team from Age Concern, St John's Ambulance and the makers of Sultan's Wonder Muscle Restorer.

Any sized donation from the price of a pint to the cost of one of Brian Hitchen's bottles of well-travelled red will be generous and gratefully received. (My first donation was from my local chemist for £15. I have been buying my blister plasters in his pharmacy. )

Sue will send progress reports from Carlisle's accident and emergency. More about the walk here. And find more about the school by clicking here.

Thanks.

###

Moon launch

By Revel Barker

It takes balls to tell a world-travelled, world-weary, cantankerous foreign correspondent that he’s missed the point of the story he’s writing.

But Justin Stares didn’t shirk from the task.

He put it straight to Derek Wilson (Reuters, AFP, BBC) that his book could – not to put too fine a point on it – be better.

‘OK,’ said Wilson, eventually. ‘You write it.’

So he did.

Justin, son of two greatly experienced journalists, collected the notes, diaries, letters and draft autobiographies and sat down to write the proper book.

It’s out this weekend, called The Moon At The Bottom Of The Well.

That’s an Italian expression to describe something that appears reachable, but isn’t.

And it’s the story of the life – not of Derek Wilson (which had been the original plan) – but of his mainly unwilling lover, Ennio Iacobucci, a former swineherd who became a celebrated war photographer, nominated for a Pulitzer for his work from Vietnam.

It’s a rags-to-riches tale with a dark twist, set in seven countries and covering the three-and-a-half decades of Ennio’s short but exceptional life.

‘Ennio’s sensitivity showed through in the photos he sent back from Vietnam and Cambodia,’ said Justin. ‘The first exhibition of his work took place recently in Rome, and I’m sure that in time he will be considered a towering figure in the field. Unfortunately for him, this sensitivity meant he suffered.’

Justin wrote the book while freelancing for national newspapers in the UK, covering the European Union from his current home, Brussels. Before arriving in Belgium he was the Lloyd’s List correspondent in Rome, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires.

‘The sexual incompatibility made the story for me,’ said Justin, who teased the details of the relationship out of Wilson over many years of wining and dining, mostly in Rome. ‘Derek’s sexual antics were legend in Italy. I was impressed that his appetite never faded; he was propositioning prostitutes right up until the day he died. But when he admitted that Ennio was not gay, that he was in fact a rampant heterosexual, I was taken aback. Just think how desperate Ennio must have been to throw himself into a gay relationship…’

Justin merged Derek’s firsthand accounts, including his recollections of Paris in the 1960s, homophobia in London, the Vietnam Tet offensive and the razing of Cambodia, with Ennio’s own autobiography: a chilling account of childhood abandonment and depression, written at the age of twenty.

The result is a poignant tale that, in all probability, only an impartial observer could tell.

The Moon at the Bottom of the Well is published this weekend by Revel Barker Publishing at £9.99 and is available on-line from amazon, Waterstones, and (with free postage worldwide) the Book Depository. Or on order from any half-decent bookshop.

#

Over the moon

By Justin Stares

Telling Derek Wilson he had missed the story was going to be a delicate exercise. He had been working on his autobiography for the ten years I had known him; he was a hardened former BBC war correspondent who had been everywhere and done everything; and he was twice my age. To a large extent he was my mentor and an avuncular figure.

‘I'm going to flatter you,’ he had said, handing me the completed draft. I was the first person to read it.

I decided to break it to him over the main course, after the first litre of Frascati.

‘I think that instead of writing about yourself, you should write about Ennio,’ I said as gently as possible. ‘The real story here is Ennio's life: the illiterate monastery slave who became a famous war photographer. It's a Dick Whittington-style tale with a dark, depressing twist.’

At first, Derek took it well. ‘Dick Whittington...’ I saw him write in his notepad.

Then he took it badly. Who was I to pass judgment on his news sense, he no doubt thought. He didn't say as much, but I felt him bristle with pride and indignation whenever the subject was mentioned. He was determined to write a traditional set of memoirs based on the diaries he kept over decades. It was to be his swan song, all of it fact.

He did indeed have a story to tell. The late BBC heavyweight Brian Barron, a close friend, listed his achievements in the obituary he wrote for The Times.

‘For 20 years Derek Wilson was a frontline reporter who covered the disintegration of Aden, the Vietnam War and the Argentine junta,’ Barron wrote. After spending his national service ‘debriefing suspected communist spies and former Nazi officials in occupied Germany’, Wilson joined Reuters, then AFP. The French agency posted him first to Aden, then to Saigon.

‘He came into his own in 1975 when South Vietnam collapsed to an armoured column from Hanoi,’ recalled Barron. ‘By then he was the South-East Asia correspondent of the BBC World Service and, like the handful of BBC journalists still in Saigon, he ignored instructions from the BBC governors in London that everyone had to evacuate.

‘His coverage was near-legendary, filing a mix of the straightforwardly dramatic and political analysis of America’s lost crusade. He saw the lead North Vietnamese tanks sweep into Saigon and smash through the gates of the presidential palace.’

After Saigon came Buenos Aires and a six-year stint as the BBC Latin America correspondent. Derek was then posted to Madrid, where he chronicled Spain's post-Franco resurgence. It was, all told, a star-studded career, but upon retirement, in Rome, Derek was wracked with loneliness and guilt.

Ennio's suicide (a reference to which was mysteriously subbed out of the obituary) obsessed him to the day he died. For long periods you would find him in his rooftop apartment near Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore hunched over his diaries in a fruitless attempt to unearth a clue, an explanation, for Ennio's decision. His favourite theory was based on class; one should not look to lift people above their natural station, he concluded. Ennio was a poor humble boy; it was wrong to seek to create a sophisticated photographer out of him.

But there was more to it than that. Journalists can get too close to their story. Derek could deconstruct world events and explain them to the man on the street, but he struggled to make sense of his own life.

He was in reality living an Italian version of Pygmalion with a sinister sexual backdrop. He had transformed Ennio, the shoeshine boy he met at a bus shelter in Rome, into a Pulitzer-prize-nominated photo-reporter. But he did not fully understand that Ennio carried psychological baggage he could never overcome.

Derek was gay but Ennio wasn't. It was only out of desperation that Ennio agreed to a gay relationship. When the two met Ennio was a male prostitute. But given half a chance he was chasing skirt like a stereotypical Italian. This contradiction was bound to ruin their relationship.

Around two years later, shortly before he died, Derek came around to my idea.

‘If you think it's such a good story, you do it,’ he said, sending me both his own work and another autobiography – Ennio's.

Amazingly, at the age of 20, Ennio had typed up the chilling story of his childhood using Reuters stationery while living here in Brussels. It was, Derek explained, a ‘lobotomy job’. By putting down his tale of neglect and abandonment Ennio hoped never to have to think about it again. He showed it to no-one. Derek only read it many years later.

‘I feel duty-bound to get the story read in any way,’ Derek told me after sending me his package.

‘OK,’ I replied, ‘I'll give it a go…’

Justin Stares is a freelance journalist based in Brussels. His book, The Moon at the Bottom of the Well, is published this weekend by Revel Barker Publishing at £9.99 and is available on-line from amazon, Waterstones, and (with free postage worldwide) the Book Depository. Or on order from any decent bookshop.

#

Thirst with the news

By David Baird

Phil Harrison's recollections about Australia's ludicrous drinking laws and the Six-o-clock Swill brought it all up... or, rather, back.

Down Under, the simple business of quenching one's thirst could be a tricky matter thanks to the outdated puritanical customs that operated until recently. Probably it was the influx of New Australians from continental Europe that finally brought a touch of civilisation to the country's drinking laws.

When I worked on an Outback newspaper, the North-West Star in the mining boom town of Mount Isa, lost amid the red rock desert of North Queensland, where men were men and women were in short supply, the local drinking habits were decidedly exotic.

When we journos had a party, the first priority was to invite the local plainclothes cops. Everybody else was in shorts and flip-flops but they arrived incognito: snappy suits, white shirts, sharp-looking trilbies. The trilbies they deposited on top of the fridge, around which they then formed an impregnable phalanx.

The fridge was packed with ice-cold ‘stubbies’ (bottles to you) and thanks to our police guard no bleeding gate-crasher could get near it. This was a vital precaution. Usually it worked, although one night when gate-crashers arrived en masse the party dissolved into an almighty brawl, with bodies rolling in the dust all along the street.

They take their beer seriously in the Outback. In one local trial I attended, a kangaroo-hunter was cleared of murder when he explained: ‘I had to do something. I thought he was going to steal my grog.’

For a while subs and printers were working most of the night. By the time we finished it was 6am and we were desperately in need of a little refreshment. Pubs in the Isa were massive affairs, to cater for the extraordinary thirst of the miners who worked around the clock hewing out copper, zinc, silver and other valuable minerals.

The temperature had an influence too, up to 120 degrees F some days. But at 6am it was delightfully cool, around 90 degrees. Fortunately the pubs had back entrances, which never closed. No matter what the hour, the bar would be packed with a remarkably homogenous crowd — muscles bulging out of sweaty singlets, glasses and bottles grasped in grizzled hands. Conversation was naturally of a highly intellectual nature and in about 10 different languages.

All went swimmingly until about 10 minutes to 10 in the morning. Then the barmaid — with more muscles than most of the drinkers — would yell out: ‘All right, you bastards. Get into the toilet.’ To make her point, she would swing a wet towel around her head, driving the rabble out of sight. She would then wipe down the counter, mop the floor and at the stroke of 10 open the street door.

As dazzling sunlight flooded in, the bleary-eyed drinkers would emerge from the toilet and order another round. Now it was legal.

Of course, in Aussie's sophisticated cities things are different. Well, up to a point. My first job on the Brisbane Evening Telegraph was an eye-opener.

‘This is the first time that they have ever allowed the pubs to open on Anzac Day,’ said the news editor. ‘Find a pub with some war veterans and see what they have to say.’

With a photographer I approached a city hostelry just before the official midday opening time. No veterans in sight. We hammered on the locked door. No response.

Finally, the door was edged open a fraction. We explained our mission and were allowed in.

The bar was packed to the walls with old-timers who had obviously been celebrating for many hours, as apparently they always did on Anzac Day. It took a mighty effort to persuade them to leave their drinks on the counter for a moment and stagger out into the street.

Then, exactly at noon, the doors of the bar were ceremonially opened and the snapper got his historic shot — our war heroes entering to order their first drinks for the first time ever on Anzac Day. Who would begrudge them that first taste?

Yes, you only have to mention the war and patriotic sentiment takes over, whether in Aussie or the Old Country.

Which brings us to Doncaster in the era when Bill Anderson, having split from his partners Leo White and Ron Cookson at the Eastmid Agency, was seeking an honest crust…

Let's face it: freelances have to make a living. And that requires a certain ingenuity. Bill could certainly claim a fertile imagination, as he demonstrated on more than one occasion.

Armistice Sunday comes around every year but how do you sell it to Fleet Street?

Bill noted one year that extensive roadworks were taking place outside a Doncaster pub. His grey matter went into top gear and soon he was chatting up the more elderly pub regulars. After a few rounds they were all in amenable mood.

They readily agreed to a photograph. ‘Please bring your drinks outside,’ instructed Bill.

The story made several of the nationals. A bunch of old soldiers, some wearing their medals, were pictured lined up in a deep hole in the road while swigging pints and ‘reliving their time in the trenches’.

A good story is always worth a follow-up. So Bill then called up assorted organisations, from the British Legion to Alcoholics Anonymous, asking how they felt about poor old war veterans being manipulated and exploited by the press.

That made for a few more headlines…

#

Pick up the dead donkey

By David J Webb

What were the big stories of 1987? Well we had a general election. British Airways was privatised. Black Monday on the Stock Exchange. The Enniskellen bombing. Illegal share dealing at Guinness. And we were still waiting for Crystal Palace to become ‘the team of the eighties’.

All this however is faded into insignificance by one story. A four legged burro made an ass of the tabloid press. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you… Blackie.

It all began when ladies of the Spanish animal rights association ran an advertisement campaigning against the alleged horrors of the Villanueva fiestas.

When interviewed they claimed that each year a donkey was crushed to death by the fat men of the village during a drunken orgy of savagery.

On February 27 the Daily Mail wrote:

This time next week Blackie the donkey will be dead. It is his misfortune to have been selected for sacrifice from hundreds of other humble burros by the men of the Spanish village of Villanueva de la Vera.

On fiesta day – next Tuesday – he will be dragged through the streets echoing to the cheers of crowds of men, women and children, with the fattest man in the village on his back.

When his legs buckle beneath him, others will leap on. Finally the gentle, patient creature will die under a ton of pounding ‘humanity’.

Next to weigh in was the Sunday Express on the March 1 with the headline POOR EL CONDENADO (The condemned one) WAITS FOR HIS FAT KILLER…

A British woman flew to Madrid last night and will drive here today in a last attempt to save a helpless donkey from being crushed to death in this remote Spanish village. RSPCA committee member Mrs Vicki Moore will try single-handedly to prevent the horrific ritual slaughter due to take place in the cobbled streets of the mediaeval village on Tuesday.

Now the ball was really rolling. The burro pack was heading for Spain in droves.

The Daily Star on March 3:

VILLAGERS TAUNT OUR RESCUE TEAM.

Animal welfare worker Vicki Moore broke down and wept last night as she despaired for the life of Blackie the donkey.

Vicki had come to this remote Spanish village to try to help save Blackie from being crushed to death in a barbaric fiesta ritual.

Reporter Don Mackay offered to buy the donkey but all his bids were rejected.

Confusion now followed. On March 4 both the Sun and the Star were claiming victory.

The Sun. –

WE SAVE BLACKIE.
Tortured donkey is bought by The Sun.

The Sun has saved Blackie the donkey from a barbaric ritual death in Spain. Savage peasants planned to crush the helpless animal to death in a bizarre ceremony hundreds of years old.

But we snatched Blackie to safety in the nick of time as a 50-strong mob of drunken Spaniards chased him through their village streets.

Inside the paper there were pictures of Sun man Hugh Whittow paying a farmer to care for Blackie. Another showed club-wielding peasants surrounding frightened Blackie and a third had smiling Sun man Hugh cuddling the now-saved Blackie along with two Spanish children.

Under another heading from the same issue –

GIVE HIM A LIFE IN BRITAIN!

RSPCA officer Vicky Moore was trying desperately last night to bring Blackie to England.

She wants the poor donkey to have a peaceful new life at a Sanctuary in Sidmouth Devon. But the people of Villa Nueva de la Vera want Blackie to stay in Spain. One villager said ‘The animal is perfectly all right. It would be stupid to move it.’

Why was the Sun calling the villagers ‘club-wielding peasants’ in one sentence and in another trusting them to give Blackie a long and happy life?

The Star:

GOTCHA! THE STAR SAVES BLACKIE
And here is the proof.

The Star carried a picture of their man (Don Mackay) with Blackie and the donkey dealer handing over the cash, along with a copy of the bill of sale.

So who was the victor?

The real winner was a British journalist working in Spain named Edward Owen. After the story was filed to Britain Fleet Street journalists arrived in Madrid.

Along with Mr Owen – the only other journalist who could speak Spanish – they all set off for Villanueva dressed as peasants. One hack who was very partial to a drop of the hard stuff was christened Juan Over The Eight.

They were terrified of a lynching because it had already transpired the villagers did not kill donkeys and the ladies of the animal lovers’ had got it wrong… and the village planned to sue the Madrid ladies.

In the event, Blackie was released unharmed and not too bothered. But the intrepid Fleet Street pack continued in hot pursuit.

It later transpired – to the relief of the hacks – that the owner of Blackie ran a bar. During the rush for drinks Edward Owen bought Blackie for the Star for £225.00.

Horrified, the Sun man – who could not speak Spanish – thrust even more money into the dealer’s hand telling him to ‘look after the donkey’.

The dealer allegedly pocketed the notes but later denied receiving the money from the Sun.

Back at the hotel both the Sun and the Star telephoned home saying Blackie was theirs.

Kelvin McKenzie, editor of the Sun, was not happy at the news that their instructions were only to ‘look after’ Blackie.

The Sun then offered Edward Owen £6,000 for Blackie. Apparently he declined.

It was reported later that the Sun, having failed to buy Blackie, were caught skulking through an olive grove looking for a similar donkey…

The following day the Star had the headline:

ON HIS WAY
Adios you cruel senors.

The Sun gave

10 REASONS WHY BLACKIE MUST STAY IN SPAIN

Number 7 stated:

Blackie speaks Spanish. All his life he has been used to instructions in that language, not English. The change could be deeply confusing.

On its front page the Sun explained that as Blackie did not speak English he knew only the Spanish word for carrot.

A Sun campaign offered readers a badge in the shape of a horse shoe inscribed KEEP BLACKIE IN SPAIN.

It said that it did not want Blackie to come to Britain, but if he came they had the perfect answer… Coco. They had lined Blackie up with a mate.

Good idea. Only one small snag – well quite a big snag actually – because Blackie was not a HE in the strict sense of the word. He had been given the snip.

And so on April 24 Blackie arrived in Devon and spent the rest of his days there.

Shortly after the hacks returned a member of the expedition walked into the reference library. A librarian picked up a cutting with his byline – Hugh Whittow. And read to him an extract:

And when I called out his name and tickled his chin, his ears popped up and he gave a little whinny…

He was not amused. Kicking a waste paper basket three feet in the air he screamed: ‘If anyone else takes the piss out of me regarding that scabby f***ing donkey I’ll f***ing well swing for ‘em.’

Blackie died in 1993. If nothing else he had inspired the title of the TV comedy programme Drop the Dead Donkey.

As for Hugh Whittow. He left the Sun for another paper… The Star.

David Webb worked in the Sun/NoW reference library for 37 years. Older readers may need to explain to the modern generation what a newspaper library was. – Ed.

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Alan Cooper

As we went to press we heard of the death at the
Huddersfield Royal Infirmary, of Alan Cooper.

He was 82.

Alan, who was born in Bradford and educated at
Bradford Grammar School started on the Shipley Times when he left school,
then joined the Yorkshire Post and then the Daily Mirror where he worked in Manchester.

In February 1954 he and the late Stanley Vaughan, who was also a
reporter on the Mirror in Manchester, left to set up West Riding News
Service in Huddersfield. Six months later Stanley decided to return to the
Mirror and Alan was joined by Stan Solomons from the Dorking Advertiser.

The agency later expanded to take in sport and pictures and the couple stayed working together until 1996 when they both retired.
The funeral is at 10.30 at Huddersfield Crematorium on Wednesday, June 30 and then at the Outlane Golf Club,Huddersfield.

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