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The Gentlemen Ranters site is a brilliant compendium of reminiscences of the great days of Fleet Street. - The Times
Issue # 146
May 14, 2010
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 out there who might want to pass on the knowledge to their eager students.
Heys met the author when she wandered into the front office of the paper he was working for. 'Go and see the woman in the front hall' was the command we all dreaded, recalls Bill Greaves.
But he went, interviewed a reader, and changed the make-up of the Daily Mail Front Page - and his own career - for many years thereafter.
Of course, there were worse places than the front hall in which the olden day reporter could find himself. Like the Savoy Grill, with the proprietor, as Alan Whittaker reports.
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All you need to know
 By Harold Heys
It was about 20 years ago but I clearly remember the receptionist popping her nose round the door of the editorial department – she never ventured further – to announce: ‘Two giggly girls at the front. They want to be reporters.’
Manchester had fizzled out and I was back in the sticks helping to run a thriving group of weeklies. It was a busy day. ‘Tell ’em to ...’ She didn’t wait for the rest and disappeared. A few minutes later she was back: ‘They’re keen. And they’ve stopped giggling.’
I don’t know why, but I told her: ‘Go on, then. Throw ’em in.’
And that was Sharon Marshall’s first look inside a newspaper office. Many more were to follow as she carved a ten-year swathe through most of the national red-tops before finally, and reluctantly, falling out of love with the game. Now she has looked back to those hectic years of her youth in a new book Tabloid Girl. Piers Morgan describes it as ‘a hilarious and gossipy book’ and adds: ‘Thank God she never worked for me!’
Well, she did work for me and my pal Brian Caven, the former Express sub; not for long and only churning out work experience crap for a line of brandy and Babycham before we pointed her south, gave her a kick up the backside and told her: ‘Go get ’em girl!’
She did just that.
A few months ago I was glancing through lists of ‘required reading’ for students of journalism both here and the USA. God, give me strength. By the time ‘meeja’ kids have waded through most of them they would have been put off for life. Of course, it rather depends on what they want, one day, to specialise in. But for anyone fancying the cut and thrust of the tabloids – that’s every single one of them, I suppose – this book is probably all they need. And if they aren’t put off when they’ve finished it, well, Good Luck.
The publisher’s blurb reads like a standfirst for a Daily Dump three-pager:
In this true and hilariously honest memoir, the former tabloid hack confesses how she:
• Kidnapped Jade Goody’s mother.
• Went undercover at swinging parties.
• Broke into the Friends set – and accidentally landed a role.
• Dodged death threats from pop stars.
• Got bollocked by Bruce Forsyth.
• Hired hookers.
• Hassled the Hoff.
• And really, really pissed off Jeremy Paxman
How to make your excuses in S&M dungeons? Yes, that’s in there. How to capture a mythical beast with just a lamb shank? Yes, of course. How to rifle through A-listers’ undies drawers? Yes, yes. How to find belly dancers in strange countries in the dead of night? Yaaawn. How to survive a feature on colonic irrigation. Puh-leese! And the big one: How to get a start on the tabloids when you’ve little experience, the only name in your contacts book is Roland Rat whom you once interviewed for your college mag, and you don’t have much idea about How It All Works? Yes, yes, yes!
Sharon Marshall bombarded one news editor with phone calls and then rolled up lugging crates of lager as her calling card. Probably for a laugh he gave her a casual shift the next day. This, she explains for readers who may not be conversant with the odd ways of newspapers, is basically a legalised form of slave labour. ‘As a casual shifter you have no rights and absolutely no idea what Hell will be unleashed on you that day.’ Perhaps one shifter in a hundred will make it to a Staff Job. ‘You have to wait until the previous occupant either gets promoted, poached, fired, rehabbed, carried out in a wooden box or, and this happens only very occasionally, makes it through to a happy retirement.’ Oh, and the pay’s crap.
A few experienced hacks occasionally offered advice in gloomy corners of Fleet Street pubs. Here was one of them waxing lyrical: ‘Imagine that you are writing for a four-year-old with a shorter-than-average attention span, absolutely no memory recall and a total obsession with other people’s love lives and bra sizes, and you will get it about right.’ And never be afraid to give a tale a bit of ‘tabloid top-spin’. Or, as she explains for non-hacks: ‘Make it all up.’
How many ‘required reading’ hardback tomes on journalistic mores are as succinct as that?
Sharon Marshall has taken very few liberties with her book. The tabloids she worked on have been encapsulated into one and colleagues’ names and a few dates have been changed. But, as she says: ‘It’s all true!’ She gradually fell out of love with the game after ten exhausting years but, she says of the hacks she worked with and against: ‘I loved them all. Every single double-crossing, devious, scheming, cunning, ruthless, messed-up, brilliantly evil one of them.’ She’d promised she’d get me in there somewhere.
She has a nice line on the various editorial departments. Sports reporters are really quite jolly and get to go off to the football all the time. Showbiz desks are peopled by ‘a liver-hardened lot who lead a vampiric existence in darkened night-time bars,’ asking questions like: ‘Ere. What’s all this about Ulrika?’ Then there’s the Royal beat ‘full of nice toffs in three-piece suits and with three-piece names.’ Politics is also ‘jolly,’ with all those comfortable Commons sofas to crash out on and Fashion is nice, too. ‘Full of lots of lovely, thin girls in high heels and with bouncy, shiny hair.’
Being a columnist on Features looked particularly magical to the impressionable young wannabe. ‘You get paid stacks and get to have a never-ageing photograph of yourself printed at the top of your column – heavily airbrushed and wrinkle free. To make the point she adds: ‘The first time I saw Julie Burchill I thought it was her mother.’ Ouch!
There is one more place in the editorial geography. Right, right back at the end of the reporters’ room, there’s a dimly-lit corner under a layer of grime. No one ever goes over there by choice, she explains. It’s peopled by odd, shadowy figures and is known as Investigations. And, yes, that’s where she was sent.
Sharon hung on, occasionally by her fingertips, and finally landed a coveted staff job. New shifters came wide-eyed through the doors of various offices. By this time her drinking was approaching Olympic proportions and they used to greet her in Oddbins ‘like family’. The new recruits always stood out, she recalled. ‘They look sort of shiny, new, thin and clean. After a few years we all looked a bit fuzzy round the edges and had gone a bit grey.’
Eventually, after numerous scrapes and a disastrous love-life, Sharon migrated to Showbiz where she immediately found her niche and now she happily chats away about the latest soap meanderings on ITV1’s popular This Morning show.
Why did she fall out of love with tabloid journalism after those ten wild years? The line between what was acceptable and what was not was being crossed too often. Why? Was it because of the looming deadlines, the desperation to keep the job or the desperation to pay the rent, or perhaps because it’s easy in the cascade of stories to lose sight of the impact those tales can have on the people involved. ‘Sometimes we bullied people. Sometimes we goaded them. Occasionally, just occasionally, Fleet Street just doesn’t know when to stop the spinning. Good men behave like total tossers.’
I haven’t recounted any of this book’s wonderful tales and have steered clear of the cutting pen-portraits which she paints so mischievously. I don’t want to spoil the fun. Experienced hacks should buy the book if only to bring back a few fond memories and see if they can recognise anyone in it. A variation on an old theme: Spot the Hack. Any ‘meeja’ students with wild delusions should buy it to see just what they’re up against as they try to break into what used to be The Greatest Game. Is it still? ’Fraid not, kids. Oh, and the pay’s still crap.
Sharon Marshall now lives in London and is engaged to Bruce Davidson, a great bloke who is a Squadron Corporal Major in the Life Guards. They marry in September. She was staff for the News of the World as TV editor, the Sunday People as a columnist and showbiz reporter, the Daily Express and Sunday Express (showbusiness reporter), the Daily Star (reporter), Daily Star Sunday (TV critic) and, after quitting reporting, she was a columnist for The Sun with the No Sex In the City column. Other papers she shifted on in the early days included the Evening Standard (Londoner's Diary) and The Times. She’s also had features in the Daily Mail and in various magazines. Tabloid Girl is published today by Sphere at £6.99 although there’s a special 30% offer at amazon, if you’re quick.
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I suppose you think that’s funny
 By William Greaves
It all started with the command we all dreaded: ‘Go and see a woman in the front hall.’
This meant that there was someone down there who wanted the Daily Mail to put the world to rights. Or someone who wanted us to write the story she didn’t have time to write herself. Or maybe even somebody who had just received a one-to-one tip off about the ending of the world.
Any road, as we used to say in Pontefract, there was a lady down there that the front reception desk didn’t know what to do with. And it bode ill.
Nor were the first words of the lady in the green felt hat particularly encouraging. ‘It’s about my gas oven,’ she began.
And from that moment it got steadily better.
Mrs Edna Freemantle, aged 43, had recently bought a cooker at the gas showrooms. Only the oven door kept coming open when it was meant to be shut. The Gas Board would send a man round. Which it did.
The man in the van explained that this particular cooker had two versions and Mrs Freemantle needed a different door, which he duly unloaded.
But the man in the van was not the fitter. The fitter would call that very afternoon.
The fitter turned up on a bicycle. It took him only a couple of minutes to discover that the new door exactly matched the defective door. It was again the wrong door. But he couldn’t take it away because he was on a bicycle. It went into Mrs Freemantle’s garage.
Next day, the man in the van delivered a third door. He had, however, no instruction to take away the previous two. And that afternoon the fitter again arrived on his bicycle...
Interval.
‘So how many doors do you now have in your garage, Mrs Freemantle?’ ‘Twelve.’
‘And they are all the wrong door?’ ‘Yes.’
‘And where now is your car?’ ‘On the street.’
The story next morning ran the length of the end column on the front page. That afternoon Mrs Freemantle received a whole new oven – and a new fridge to go with it. And from all over the country came letters of similarly unimaginable retail misfortunes.
The End Column of the Daily Mail became a permanent feature – with Greaves its apparently permanent author.
Great stories at home and abroad took my colleagues to distant parts of the globe – Basingstoke, Bridgewater or even Bahrain – but me, I went nowhere. ‘Best stay here, Bill,’ I was told, ‘in case something funny turns up.’
So began a couple of years at the sharp end of the irrelevant, the unimportant and the incontrovertibly trivial.
One by one, the intros followed each other into the library archives...
The mud of Southend seafront provided an ideal opportunity for the Army to get stuck in. Which it duly did. And that provided entertainment yesterday for a large crowd watching a £130,000 Army tank trying to pull out a £40,000 Army bulldozer which had been trying to pull out a £21,000 Army recovery vehicle which in turn had been trying to pull out a garage truck which never meant to be there in the first place.
Or again
It was just a little embarrassing, but old Joe Lee, 56, took over his new duties without any real misgivings. After all, if you’ve been a men’s lavatory attendant for four years the problems of taking over the ‘ladies’ as well are not too great. The broadening of Joe’s interest was not, however, taken nearly so readily by the 200 women at the Bangor, North Wales, factory of Denis Ferranti (Meters) Ltd, and they voted yesterday for strike action if the matter was not put right...
Or
There are 170,000 other ranks in the British Army. So could the Ministry of Defence please explain how it managed to come by 800,000 surplus pairs of boots?
‘I feel very strongly about this,’ Mr Harry Howarth, Labour MP for Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, said yesterday. ‘I represent a constituency prominently concerned with boot and shoe manufacture and the sudden appearance on the market of 800,000 Army surplus boots would seriously damage the prospects of an industry already suffering serious competition from Eastern European imports.’
Or
The landlords of 43a, Ovington Square, Chelsea, have fairly fixed ideas as to who should live in 43a, Ovington Square, Chelsea. And notable absentees from the list of acceptable residents are ducks. Now Australian actor Rod Taylor, one of the current occupiers of 43a, Ovington Square, has received a letter stating in admirably simple terms ‘Your duck must go.’ Mr Taylor, still dressed for action as a Congo mercenary in MGM’s Dark of the Sun, took a suitably belligerent line. ‘If Duck goes, I go,’ he said yesterday.
Or yet again
Four baboons and a black ape were having a swinging time in Margate last night after a mass walk out from the monkey house in Safari Wild Animal Park. It could have been worse. Three more baboons, four pigtail monkeys and another black ape also escaped – but after a brief look at the outside world decided to stick with the devil they knew.
The very last edition before I finally sought a new life elsewhere (probably assisted by men in white coats) contained on its front page my spectacular swansong – accompanied by a picture of a car sinking into the River Derwent, with its lady learner driver and gentlemen test examiner clutching each other for balance on the roof.
The epic began, as nearly as I can remember, with the words: Mrs (name and age supplied) was forced to abandon her driving test in midstream yesterday. Because midstream was precisely where she happened to be at the time.
But even a life dedicated to the pursuit of the unquestionably inconsequential can contain anguished hours spent bemoaning The Ones that Got Away.
Try as I might, there were just two merry moments that never saw the light of day.
In its early years. Emmerdale Farm was filmed on location in the remote valley of Littondale in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. But when the national hobby of snatching photographs of the fictional homes of fictional TV characters finally drove the besieged real life residents to open revolt, Yorkshire Television moved the soap’s backdrop to the unlikely Aire Valley village of Esholt, a mere stone’s throw from the bustling streets of Leeds.
When, after a longish period of time, the secret finally got out and the coaches started pouring in, the natives were this time philosophically welcoming. The landlord of the Commercial Inn, which once a week changed its sign to The Woolpack, enjoyed a heaven-sent boost to his takings. The village shop did a roaring trade in Emmerdale pencils, Emmerdale diaries and Emmerdale just-about-everything-else and the villagers themselves seemed to enjoy saying goodbye to years of anonymity.
Esholt, however, contains only one farm – and here alone the welcome was less than enthusiastic. Half way up the driveway my photographer colleague and I were overjoyed to come across a sign which proclaimed in large and unambiguous letters: THIS IS NOT EMMERDALE FARM – F*** OFF! (Or it would have thus proclaimed if the farmer had managed to lay his hands on any asterisks.)
No matter how eloquently I beseeched the back bench, how many asterisks I offered or however blurred the sign appeared on the picture, Daily Mail readers never got to share in the wonders of this particular feature of the Esholt landscape.
On another occasion, the office powers-that-be were fascinated to learn from some source or other how playground jokes were somehow able to transmit themselves around the country so that whatever had the kids in stitches in Southampton on Monday was cracking them up in Cleethorpes by Tuesday morning.
Your fearless correspondent, armed with map and notebook, was sent the length and breadth of the land to investigate. Several days of faithfully recording primary and prep school humour were beginning to wear decidedly thin when the moment of joy struck without warning.
A small band of volunteer children had been assembled in the dining room of a North London primary school. With two teachers in loco parentis, one by one they delivered their less-than-rib-tickling jests.
Until:
‘What’s the difference between a pregnant woman and a lamp bulb?’ demanded 9-year-old Fiona. ‘I don’t know, Fiona,’ I said unsuspectingly, while scribbling the question into my notebook. ‘You can unscrew a lamp bulb,’ announced Fiona with a satanic giggle.
One teacher coughed loudly, the other just saved herself from falling off her stool, I manfully tried not to burst out laughing and – you’ve guessed it – that one never got into the paper either.
Ah well, you’ve got to lose a few...
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Silenced knight
 By Alan Whittaker
They assembled around 6pm shortly after the Falstaff, the cavernous Fleet Street hostelry which served as the News of the World annexe, opened for the evening stampede.
Sir William Carr, the chairman of the Screws, occupied his usual position by the entrance from where he could scrutinise new arrivals with the baleful stare that a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label invariably induced. A basilisk-like look it had all the frivolity of a mediaeval death mask. Ranged alongside was the towering figure of Mark Chapman-Walker, the saturnine managing director of the Bouverie Street circus, in his long black overcoat with the cunningly concealed pockets his hands could never quite locate when a barmaid priced a round.
Stafford Somerfield, the paper’s rotund editor, stood next to Graham Stanford, columnist and conviviality convenor and Noyes Thomas the globetrotting reporter who had been on the staff of the Screws since the 1930s completed the discussion group. During the Second World War Tommy – as he was always known – served with the Ghurkhas and became the youngest Lieutenant Colonel in the Army a fact that rather rankled the outranked but ennobled chairman of the NoW who somehow managed to make captain.
Tommy was the nephew of the poet Alfred Noyes whose imaginative mastery of words delighted thousands of children who read his most popular narrative composition, The Highwayman. As a contender for a literary prize Tommy’s latest contribution to the News of the World was not quite in that category, but nevertheless it was eagerly devoured by millions. His assignment had been to chronicle the life story of sex swap model April Ashley, born George Jamieson. The paper’s readers were not only told about the life style of the former mode, which included a bit part in the Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour film The Road to Hong Kong, but given a lurid cut and stitch description of the operation in Casablanca which made the transformation possible.
Women had always found Tommy attractive and to his undisguised alarm his languid charm seemed to have worked on the newly reconstituted Miss Ashley. He created such a favourable impression that when it was announced that she planned to ‘marry’ into the aristocracy, Tommy, as a friend of the bride, was detailed to cover the ceremony.
He flew to Gibraltar where he was introduced to the bridegroom, the Hon Arthur Corbett, the sexually indeterminate offspring of Lord Rowallan who was World Chief Scout from 1945 to 1959. The Rowallan money came from custard powder and the Hon Arthur, later to become the 3rd Baron Rowallan, was a nephew of Jo Grimond, leader of the Liberal Party. Because the guest list for the ceremony was somewhat sparse Tommy found his services were required. Not only did he act as the best man but he also gave away the ‘bride’. (Forget talking dogs, Colin Dunne would have loved this one)
Unsurprisingly Tommy was rather anxious to conceal this, and similar episodes in his journalistic career. He had recently been appointed political editor of the News of the World and he reckoned his credentials in the Palace of Westminster might not be enhanced if such matters came to light.
Indeed it was in his new capacity that he had been ‘invited’, much to his dismay, to join the coterie in the Falstaff where politics and Britain’s role on the world stage were being discussed and Sir William was well into his second bottle of Red Label, the first having been demolished during the lunchtime ‘conference’. Sir William was of the opinion that the Prime Minister, the former14th Earl of Home, he of the Hirsel, was a country bumpkin. Or something phonetically similar but a few syllables shorter.
One thing was transparently obvious; the fellow was an idiot. There were times when it was diplomatically wise to agree with Sir William and his view was readily accepted by the courtiers. The Falstaff began to fill with inferior, garrulous groups and it was time to vacate the annex.
Next stop the News of the World ‘canteen’. Otherwise known as the Savoy Grill. They were conducted to ‘the usual table’ and as if my magic a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label appeared.
Around 9.30 Graham Stanford had the misfortune, while fumbling in his jacket pocket, to ignite a box of matches and the acrid smell of smouldering wool gradually mingled with the aroma of grilled steaks. Diners coughed and cast irritated glances at the NoW party as black smoke wreathed their table. Amid the coughing and frantic hand waving prompt action with a soda siphon by the editor saved the situation from becoming undignified. Stanford’s drenched jacket was rigorously checked before he was curtly dismissed and despatched home in disgrace.
Around 10.30 as the third bottle of Red Label arrived Sir William’s mood was approaching the Belligerent mark on his behavioural barometer. He thought the idiot Prime Minister should be told how to run the country. “Get him on the phone’ he instructed his new political editor. Tommy left the table and went for a long piss hoping that by the time he returned the command would have been forgotten. He was wrong.
Around 11 – by which time the barometer had left Belligerent, sailed past the Menacing mark and was now touching Maniacal – Sir William demanded to know what had happened to the phone call to Downing Street. A thoroughly disconsolate Tommy realised action was called for and rang the duty Press officer. He explained the situation and was told – rather aptly – ‘Stay tight and I’ll phone back.’
Tommy returned to the fray to find a telephone had been placed on the table and another bottle of Red Label had been added to the tab. Sir William was now in his Henry VIII mode and at his most unpredictable. All he lacked was a pen and a pile of death warrants awaiting his signature. Tommy stared at the phone as if in a hypnotic trance waiting for the call from Downing Street. Sod politics and Westminster, an evening with April Ashley was preferable to this.
On ploughed Sir William.
The chirp-chirp of the phone stopped him in mid sentence. The silence was broken by another chirp. All eyes were focussed on the phone and then on Tommy as he took the call. ‘The Prime Minister will see your delegation at Number Ten at 9.30 in the morning. That’s today,’ said the Press officer.
‘About time too,’ snorted Sir William when informed of the arrangement.
Around 9.25 am they met in Downing Street. A strangely subdued quartet who conversed sparingly in mumbles and sighs. More like strangers at a funeral. Their leader, so vociferous a few hours earlier, was now William the Silent. He brought up the rear as they were led, a line of shuffling sacrificial lambs, through a labyrinth of corridors into a large room where four hard backed chairs had been placed, interrogation style, in a row before a table.
A shell-shocked reflective Noyes Thomas shuddered as he painted the scene for me over a couple of pints that lunchtime.
A phalanx of stern faced civil servants faced them. Some had notebooks and poised ballpoints ready to make notes of any scandal the News of the World had uncovered that was likely to bring down the Government. Profumo and Vassall were all too recent.
At the table looking like a perplexed tortoise sat the PM, the former 14th Earl of Home, now disinterred as Sir Alex Douglas-Home. He peered at his guests through half-moon spectacles and said, very politely: ‘Gentlemen I understand you were rather anxious to get in touch with me during the early hours of this morning. Now how can I help you?’
Not a cheep.
Stafford Somerfield and Tommy exchanged resigned glances. ‘This was Carr’s idea let him do the talking,’ seemed to be the unspoken pact.
Sir William, head bowed, was clearly more interested in the pattern of the carpet. After glancing at his companions and seeing nothing but abject discomfort Mark Chapman-Walker gallantly stood up. At some stage in his career he had been an influential figure at Conservative Central Office and he was acquainted with the Prime Minister. ‘First of all may I say how grateful we are that you could spare the time to grant us this audience’ he lied.
The PM nodded. ‘What precisely concerns the News of the World that is so important its proprietor and editor wish to converse with me around midnight?’
Chapman-Walker’s nudge on Sir William’s shoulder went unheeded. The noble knight’s attention was firmly focussed on his shoes.
‘It’s the international situation.’ Chapman-Walker’s reply was drenched in desperation.
A flourish of ballpoints as the question was duly noted by the squad of suits behind the PM.
‘Rather an extensive subject’ mused Sir Alec. ‘Any particular aspect of the international situation?’
Chapman-Walker was drowning. And his companions were not going to throw a lifeline. ’The Middle East’ he croaked. ‘We understand there have been extensive troop movements in the last 24 hours.’
Behind the PM the pens were busy. Middle East, troop movements, what have these bastards got on the Government?
Sir Alec then gave a succinct outline of British policy in the Middle East for a couple of minutes before pausing and removing his glasses. The penny had tumbled. ‘Have I been able to allay your fears?’ he smiled. ‘Are there any other points you wish to raise?’
Chapman-Walker leaned across Sir William who shook his head. His only question was an unspoken ‘How the hell do we get out of here?’ Stafford Somerfield and Tommy shook their heads in unison.
It was a brisker, relieved Chapman-Walker who stood up and said ‘No Prime Minister. We are completely satisfied.’
The Prime Minister glanced at the clock. The meeting had lasted less than 20 minutes. ‘In that case gentlemen would you care for a drink before you depart?’
The mention of drink had a galvanising Lazarus-like effect on Sir William the instigator of the meeting. He transferred his attention from the floor and spoke for the first time. ‘A large Scotch’ he said,
They re-assembled at l0.30 am shortly after the Falstaff opened for the lunchtime stampede. Sir William occupied his usual position by the entrance. He began: ‘I like the Prime Minister, he seems to be a splendid fellow…’
Alan Whittaker (Darwen Advertiser, Darwen News and the Blackburn-based Northern Daily Telegraph) was a News of the World staffman for 37 years as reporter, sub, columnist,TV critic…
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The Gentlemen Ranters site is a brilliant compendium of reminiscences of the great days of Fleet Street. – The Times
Issue # 147
21 may 2010
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 matter of fact, we think that ‘rat-like cunning’ was actually coined by our old friend Murray Sayle, but the rest is Tomalin’s.
And there was more to it than that, of course.
There were other, less-essential, qualities, he said: ‘A knack with telephones, trains and petty officials; a good digestion and a steady head; total recall; enough idealism to inspire indignant prose…
‘…a paranoid temperament; an ability to believe passionately in second-rate projects; well-placed relatives; good luck; the willingness to betray, if not friends, acquaintances; a reluctance to understand too much too well (because tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner and tout pardonner makes dull copy);…’
‘…an implacable hatred of spokesmen, administrators, lawyers, public-relations men, politicians and all those who would rather purvey words than policies; and the strength of character to lead a disrupted personal life…’
The ‘knack with telephones’ may have changed, but has much else?
In a thoughtful piece in The Times this week, Ed Caesar reports that there are still thousands of kids every year desperate to stop those presses and crash in.
Crash in, not cash in. The average journalist’s salary, he says, is £24,500. You wonder whey they bother (or you may read their stuff and think they're overpaid). Click on the link to read the full piece.
Will they find anything resembling a free lunch? Mike Gallemore did. At least… it was always free for somebody.
Talking of which, whose round is it? Bill Greaves has been mooching around Fleet Street for long enough to know that there are no rules. So, wisely, he wrote some.
Cheers.
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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 the boat out on his behalf as we swapped sordid tales of negotiating skulduggery with Percy and his management colleagues.
At the end of the festivities Percy made a heartfelt thank you speech which ended with: ‘I’ve never questioned your generosity or integrity but I’m sure the cost of this binge will appear somewhere on your exes over the next couple of weeks and I’ll end up paying for my own farewell.’
To which, fairly predictably, somebody (Louis Yaffa, I think) retorted: ‘It’ll be there but I bet you can’t find it.’
When I was talking about Harry Conroy with an old friend recently we had a laugh about another notable ‘free lunch’ back in the seventies. But this one went horribly wrong.
It was at an NUJ ADM at Ilkley in Yorkshire. Most ADMs, as far as I could see, were little more than an excuse for a piss-up. Harry was one of only two or three people who took them seriously and he was in good form at Ilkley.
There was a restaurant in town called the Box Tree, which had just found fame by being awarded a rare second Michelin star. One of the guys from the Glasgow branch who worked on the Record came up with a great idea: On behalf of all the Mirror Group NUJ delegates he would invite the Mirror management team who were attending the ADM to dinner at the Box Tree. He reckoned that he’d got the nod from Hugh Curry, the editorial manager at the Record and Mail in Glasgow, that the MGN management would pick up the tab.
Our Glasgow brother put the word around that it was freebies at the Box Tree from 8.0pm until fall-over time. Around 20 of us from London, Manchester and Glasgow, nicely suited and booted, duly assembled at the bar. We immediately launched ourselves at the most expensive of whatever was going, as was the form in such cases.
Tony Boram, Hugh Curry, Peter Moorhead and I think Duncan Lamont represented the management and the evening developed into a really good do. Naturally, we all went for the most exotic and expensive items on the menu, except for Keith Meadows, who had his usual waiter dispute when he ordered double egg and chips. I’ve dined with Keith at some of the best restaurants in Britain over the years and I’ve seldom seen him order anything that a five-year-old wouldn’t eat.
Double egg and chips for Keith is quite adventurous for him. When the waiter explained that they didn’t have that dish on the menu, Keith protested, ‘Call yourself a Michelin two-star restaurant and you can’t cook double egg and chips?’
Eventually, Keith got his dinner and demolished it in a matter of seconds, while the rest of us were still working our way through the second of four or five courses, quaffing merrily away at the dearest wines they had. (Keith was on the wagon at the time for health reasons.)
At the end of the evening a smiling Hugh Curry tapped his glass with a spoon, stood up, and said something like: ‘The great thing about Mirror Group is that we can have the most ferocious disputes and negotiations but, underneath, we remain good friends. The fact that you have collectively invited the four of us here to this wonderful dinner is an excellent example of that overall friendship and goodwill, and, on behalf of the management I’d like to say thank you.’
You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. All eyes turned to our brother from Glasgow, who got up out of his seat and headed for the bar, quickly followed by the rest of us.
A heated discussion followed, while the brother totted up the bill. With an apologetic but straight face he said: ‘OK lads, sorry that didn’t work. I make that around forty-seven quid apiece – but I’ll get them to break it up into individual bills for your exes.’ Which the Box Tree refused to do.
Suddenly, an angry voice shouted out: ‘Forty-seven quid for double egg and chips? – It’s a disgrace!’
#
Short arms, deep pockets
 By William Greaves
There is one familiar expression in the English language which appears in no international phrase book – 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 of variations: the assertive ‘No, no, it’s definitely my round’, the quizzically aggrieved ‘Whose round is it?’ and even the faintly aggressive ‘It can’t be my round again, surely.’
When two or more people assemble to quench their thirst in a public place anywhere east of Dover or west of the Scillies, a bill is pushed under the saucer each time a new batch of drinks arrives. Or a beer mat is marked, slate chalked or spike spiked. Upon departure, the final tally is then added up and divided among all present. Fair – but unsporting.
No nation which invented cricket could seriously be expected to comply with a code of conduct so morosely bereft of complication that all the niceties of lifemanship and etiquette are swamped by simple arithmetic. So the difference between the British pub and every other kind of alien bar is that, here, we pay before we sip. Correction: one person pays before everyone sips.
So the British pub – and the atmosphere which prevails within – is unique in so much as every new order is a personal gift by one patron to all his or her friends or colleagues.
But who is that one patron? Here is the nub around which the very British game of ‘pubbing’ revolves. For not only is the ‘round’ (defined in my Collins Concise as ‘a number of drinks bought at one time for a number of people’) deeply engrained in the national ethos, it is also deliciously ill-defined in the matter of whose turn it is to dig deep.
There was a time, before bitter gave way to Budweiser, when such a question would never have had to be asked. Tyro drinkers would be so overawed by their surroundings – and the dangers that lurked within – that they would nervously ape their experienced elders. In other words, they would learn by natural instinct when it was their turn to put hand in pocket.
Some years ago, in the days when newspapers lived in Fleet Street and the round often assumed titanic dimensions, I became aware that standards were falling. Appalling laxities like tossing a coin or engaging in a game of spoof in order to determine who should pay were creeping in to replace the proper order of things. Some players even sank to the unpardonable depths of ‘round avoidance,’ arriving late, enjoying several drinks and then, in the nick of time, spotting someone across the room with whom they ‘must just grab a word.’
It was not entirely the young students’ fault. A new and impetuous generation may well have sprung, improperly dressed, upon the scene – but who can learn when the teachers have forgotten how to teach? In those darkest hours, I realised that The Word had to be spread before a glorious national heritage was allowed to wither on the vine.
The result of this initiative became known throughout the pubs in that street of shame as Greaves’s Rules. Under their auspices not only were rounds ordered but tribunals commissioned and even sentences passed. Once-respected men today walk shoeless down Oxford Street for having transgressed against them.
It was a fragile claim to eponymous immortality – and certainly not one I sought to patent in documentary form – but this website has now invited me to publish those same edicts as a reminder that nothing in our history is so sacred that it cannot be forgotten.
And so, for whom it might concern, here are Greaves’s Rules. Pin them up above or near the bar counter. Then even foreign visitors might stumble across some thinly understood enlightenment.
GREAVES’ RULES
- When two or more enter the pub together, one - usually the first through the door - will begin proceedings with the words "Now then, what are we having?" He or she will then order and pay. This purchase is known as "the first round".
- This player, or "opener", will remain "in the chair" while other friends or colleagues come through the door to join the round. He will remain in this benefactory role until either (a) his own glass sinks to beneath the half way mark or (b) another drinker finds himself almost bereft of his original refreshment and volunteers to "start a new round".
- In the absence of new arrivals, any player other than the opener may at any time inquire whether it is "the same again?" On receiving his instructions, he will then order and pay for "the second round". (N.B. The second round is the last one to be specifically numbered. Beyond that point, nobody wishes to be reminded how many they have had and, anyway, no-one should be counting.)
- The round acknowledges no discrimination. All players, regardless of sex, age or social status, are expected to "stand their corner". (Pedants might like to note that we are talking here of the only "round" in the English language that also contains a "corner".
- Any new entrant, joining the session after its inception, is not expected to "buy himself in" but should be invited to join the round by whoever is in the chair (see Rule 2). If, however, he is greeted by silence he may either (a) buy a drink just for himself or (b) attempt to buy a round for all present. If (a) or, worse still, (b) is not acceptable to the congregation then the new entrant has been snubbed and should in future seek out more appreciative company. There is one important exception...
- For reasons of haste or poverty, a new arrival may insist on buying his own with the words "Thanks, but I'm only popping in for one". If he is then seen to buy more than three drinks, he will be deemed a skinflint, neither broke nor in a hurry to get home, and will be penalised for his duplicity by being ordered to buy the next round.
- Although everyone in the group is normally required to buy at least one round before leaving, the advent of either drunkenness or closing time sometimes renders this ideal unattainable. In such circumstances, any non-paying participant will (a) have "got away with it" and (b) appoint himself "opener" at the next forgathering. However, any player who notices on arrival that the round has "got out of hand" and has no chance of reaching his turn before "the last bell", may start a "breakaway round" by buying a drink for himself and all subsequent arrivals. This stratagem breaks the round in two, keeps the cost within manageable proportions and is the only acceptable alternative to Rule 5.
- When a pressing engagement elsewhere precludes further involvement, it is wholly unacceptable for any player who has not yet been in the chair to buy a round in which he cannot himself be included. In such circumstances Rule 7 (a) and (b) therefore apply.
- In the event of any one glass becoming empty, a new round must be called immediately. This should not necessarily be called by the owner of the empty glass, however, because this place the slower drinker at an unfair fund-saving advantage. (N.B. Whereas it is permissible for any member of the round to decrease the capacity of his individual order - "just a half for me, please" - the opposite does not hold good. A large whisky, for instance, may be offered by the chair but never demanded of it.)
- Regional variations. In various parts of the country, a particular establishment will impose its own individual codicil. In one Yorkshire pub, for example, the landlord's Jack Russell terrier expects to be included in every round. Where such amendments exist, and are properly advertised, they must be piously observed. We are, after all, talking about a religion.
###
The Gentlemen Ranters site is a brilliant compendium of reminiscences of the great days of Fleet Street. – The Times
Issue # 148
May 28, 2010
This Week
Last week’s piece by Mike Gallemore got 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, Daily Mirror sub and Newcastle Utd supporter, moonlighting on the News of the Screws.
Then, going through the back numbers, John Waddell discovered that he’d been written about, and wanted to get the facts right.
Mark Day remembers that sometimes some newspapers didn’t get the facts at all, and when they did, they weren’t sure what to do with them – as in Britain declares war, see page 10…
And Linda Lovelace – there’s a name from the past – goes down, to Ascot, with Ian Bradshaw.
And if any of this stuff jogs YOUR memory, let’s hear about it. The address is up there, top right.
###
Black and white
By Mark Howard
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. No-one across the entire newsroom could be in any doubt – Lou saw to that.
I’m not sure who hatched the plan. Certainly Bob Warren and Bill Bateson were ringleaders with Alex Marunchak and Greg Miskiw heavily involved.
At the time we had a fore-runner of email: a messaging service that also ran the wire services straight to your screen. It didn’t take long before everyone learned to spoof it. Simply delete an existing message and you could over-write it convincingly. Headers, footers, the lot.
As Lou left for The Old Rose once the first edition was off stone, the first of a series of PA Snaps was forged. ‘Newcastle player fails post-match drugs test… mfl.’
On his return, with the entire paper on board, from Patsy Chapman downwards, the forged ‘snap’ hit the screens. Lou’s reaction was predicable. But still worse was to come. As reporters hit the phones (to the speaking clock, a well-honed skills in those NoW days) further bad news for Magpie supporters came thick and fast.
Snap after snap, take after take, the sorry saga of a club riddled with illegal performance-enhancing substances unfolded. The backbench solemnly debated ripping the book apart. At least five front-of-the-book pages, the splash and most of sports were binned.
Fresh pages came from the art desk with headlines that were more like darts to Lou’s soul. But, true pro that he always was, the only visible sign of his agitation was that his already phenomenal smoking rate increased to roughly 40 an hour from its usual 20.
By the time the night team came in to take over and for Lou to be chauffeured back to Manchester by Geoff Kuhillow, he was a near broken man. Keegan had quit, the FA was stripping his club of its title and no fewer than five players were exposed as drugs cheats. The great and the good of football were united in condemnation.
In the car, for the long journey home, Geoff asked if he’d like to hear the radio. Lou demurred. Just as well, really; none of us could work out which fuse was the radio’s and Geoff was unwilling to risk us deactivating something else like the lights by taking out fuses at random.
After a largely silent drive, Lou was deposited at his front gate. And as he turned to go up the path Geoff wound down the window. ‘Lou!’ he shouted. ‘That drugs story. It was all a wind-up. See you next week.’
Quite what Lou must have registered on the Richter Scale no-one witnessed. But as the most minor of irritations led to violently profane eruptions with Lou – one can but imagine it would have been truly seismic.
#
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 Evening News’. True there was a John London column and for a couple of years I ran it but it was in the dear old News Chronicle not the Evening News. Moreover it was started while I was still slithering around on the paper's political staff failing to mimic my masters Douglas Brown and Ian Trethowan so I have no idea who dreamed up the column's name.
I later did a similar stint running the William Hickey column in the Daily Express but sadly nobody called me William which I would have rather enjoyed.
One of the interesting things about gossip columns then was that far from being deb’s delights we proved to be rather a serious bunch. On my News Chronicle team I had Patricia Rowan who finished up as the long-time editor of the Times Educational Supplement and Corinna Ascherson, at the time married to Neal Ascherson and who still pops up from time to time in the New Statesman.Then there was Mike Andrews who pioneered legal PR.
The Hickey crowd of my day spawned two of the Daily Mail’s top brass , the late Brian Vine (who had also been on the Chronicle dairy) and Robin Esser. Not a bad result.
Ranting away about the group Walter Hayes pulled from Fleet Street in the sixties to help strike-bedevilled Ford of Britain present a more cheerful face, Anthony could have added a few more names. As well as myself there was photographer Ken Denyer from the Daily Express and , a bit later, Alan Gardner (formerly editor of the Daily Mail Paul Tanfield column) and Peagam himself as well as a whole host of irregulars, Dennis Hackett and John Goldsmith among them.
Walter Hayes could at the time claim to have been the youngest ever editor of a national newspaper, the Sunday Dispatch, and his impact on Ford was immediate and lasting, helped by the fact that he became a close confidante of Henry Ford. As Walter moved up through the organisation, eventually becoming the European vice chairman, I inherited several of the jobs he vacated. He proved a very hard act to follow but the umbilical chord to Fleet Street and its progeny was a great help.
#
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 had ’em.
Ben Hills, an investigative reporter who cut his teeth at The Age in Melbourne under editor Graham Perkin, has written a biography of his mentor, Breaking News: The golden age of Graham Perkin (Scribe). In it he recalls the Dickensian days of a moribund paper in the 1950s and 60s before Perkin began its modernisation.
He recounts some tales of The Age’s better misses.
Take the story of Russell Hill, a late-stop sub editor on The Age in 1956. The paper had gone to bed, as had Russ. Well, he had nodded off, as you do in the wee small hours while the presses roll and you wait until near dawn in case something important happens.
Russ was suddenly woken by the clang of teleprinter bells – they had an alert system in those days of ringing five bells for a big breaking news story – and tore a snap off the printer. Egypt’s Colonel Nasser had ‘annexed’ the Suez Canal – a move that would take the world to the brink of World War III.
‘So what?’ Hill thought. ‘It’s already in Egypt, isn’t it?’ And he went back to sleep.
That is almost as big a miss as The Age front page in 1939. True, the front page was filled with advertisements in those days, but still, a small pointer to ‘Britain Declares War – See Page 10’ does seem to be a trifle underdone.
Missing stories was not unusual for The Age in its sad old days. Hills tells how a country correspondent’s hopeful filler alerted editors to a rather big story happening overseas. The story said that flags in Mildura were flying at half-mast as a mark of respect for the king.
‘The king?’ Hills writes. ‘Dead? Burrowing frantically through a file of overlooked cables one of the subs discovered that, while they had been knocking back beers down at the pub, George VI had died.’
I was chortling over these tales, and more, with Frank Crook, the Sydney newspaper and radio man on the day the Exile on Main Street documentary on the Rolling Stones was on TV.
‘Ah,’ said Frank. ‘London, 1964; the decade of Swinging London was just about to begin. Gerry and the Pacemakers topped the charts, The Beatles were about to rocket on to the scene and slowly making their mark was a group called the Rolling Stones.
‘I was sharing a flat in Willesden with a Daily Express photographer called Russell McPhedran, when we noticed from our front window a regular parade of young girls gathering daily outside a house directly opposite.
‘What was it all about, we wondered. Perhaps we had stumbled on a half-way house for wayward girls. We should be so lucky.
‘One day McPhedran and I drove to a local service station to check his car in for servicing. When he offered our address to the girl behind the counter she cried “Eek! You must live opposite the Rolling Stones!”
‘After we drove away, McPhedran turned to me and said: Who are the Rolling Stones? I replied, Oh they’re some kind of pop group, like The Beatles.
‘McPhedran, always on the lookout for newsworthy snaps, wondered whether it might be worth his while to stroll across the road and get the boys to pose for a couple of candids.
’I don’t know whether it would be worth the bother,’ I replied. ‘Pop groups come and go. Hardly anyone has even heard of this mob and they’ll probably sink without trace.’
‘Good call. McPhedran put his camera away and never thought about it again – except that for the past 40 years he has never let me forget it.’
#
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 I was asked by John Knight’s wife Gloria if I would be interested in doing photographs for a feature on Lovelace for the News of the World. The idea was to photograph Linda and then she was to go to Royal Ascot in men’s morning dress and top hat though with just a shirt front and cravat under the coat which would pop open to reveal her topless.
I was pleasantly surprised when I met her. She was tall, quiet and not at all the raving sex maniac that many colleagues who heard about my assignment imagined. She had a great sense of humour and we got on very well.
I photographed her at her hotel (the Dorchester, I believe; memories of hotel rooms fade quickly) in various glamour situations which, as I recall, were made difficult because of numerous scars from surgery on her torso. Then on Ladies Day at Royal Ascot her Rolls Royce, registration plate PEN 15 whisked her off to the races where we let the press corps masses take over the news publicity for the daily papers. She naturally got barred from the Royal Enclosure, which was what it was all about, of course, and the publicity machine got their coverage.
I met her afterwards and she seemed quite unfazed by it all. Beneath all of the notoriety there seemed to be a very nice lady who just wanted to settle down, which she eventually did in Montauk on Long Island, NY until her death.
She did, however, return to Ascot the next day – in a Bentley this time –the registration plate? 130 LOX [Bollocks] and that, I think, is what she thought of Royal Ascot and its archaic traditions.
### | 
By Geoffrey Mather
By Ken Ashton
By Stan Solomons
By Donald Walker
