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QUOTE OF THE DAY
‘Crisis makes it tempting to ignore the wise restraints that make men free’ — Former US Senator Frank Church
FRONT PAGES
CARTOON OF THE DAY
Morten Morland, Sunday Times
SNAP! Two weather fronts
SPOT THE DIFFERENCE: Whatever were they thinking of? Last weekend’s Saturday and Sunday editions of the Daily Star ran with the same splash. Can it be anything to do with the sacking of editor Jon Clarke? Denis Mann is now in charge of both papers, did he have a day off? Lord Drone thinks we should be told. It’s February for God’s sake.
How I blew the whistle on MI5’s spying — and escaped a jail term
Fleet Street went big following up ex-Daily Mail Manchester reporter GEOFFREY SEED’s TV investigation into MI5's domestic spying. Seed — whose last political thriller, Death in a Time of Conspiracy — drew on knowledge gained while driving a truck through the Official Secrets Act. Lawyers warned he and his key witness were headed to prison. That didn't happen, he says — and here's the reason why.
The cuttings have since gone yellow and my hair grey, but 40 years ago this month, my Channel 4 investigation into MI5's domestic spying on peaceniks, trades unionists and sundry dissident groups — revealed by my star witness, former intelligence officer, Cathy Massiter — led the news.
No-one from MI5 had ever before gone on camera and risked imprisonment under the Official Secrets act to set out such detailed and politically sensitive information.
The legal advice I had was simple; pack a bag and a toothbrush because you're headed to the Old Bailey and jail. But we weren't arrested.
Two previous OSA cases, against leaky civil servants Sarah Tisdall and Clive Ponting, both ended in court but with much hostile publicity directed at the authorities as a result.
My guess is that to prosecute Massiter and any programme-maker under an Act needing reform, would be a case too far. Besides, not a single allegation she made was ever found to be inaccurate. Her actions and motives would have had jury, public and media sympathy.
The experience of seeing the State, its spooks and their foot soldiers in Special Branch close up and in action was invaluable, not least when writing political thrillers much later on.
As for Cathy Massister, she moved near to us in Wales and later, even served in my wife's restaurant for a while. I often hoped that a customer might say "...excuse me, there's a spy in my soup" but they never did.
Death in a Time of Conspiracy has five stars on Amazon BUY IT HERE
Garth Pearce dies at 77
LAST PICTURE: Garth with his wife of 52 years, Davina, and other members of the family at his Berkshire home on Christmas Eve 2024
ONE of the great Daily Express Showbusiness Editors, Garth Pearce, has died at the age of 77 after a short illness.
His daughter Dulcie Pearce, Deputy Head of Features and Film Critic at The Sun revealed the shock news in an email to the Drone last night.
Dulcie said in the message also signed by her sister Gemma: “It is with deep sadness that we share the news that our darling dad, Garth, died yesterday.
“After a very short illness with cancer, he passed away at home on Wednesday, February 5th with his beloved family by his side.
“After only six nights in hospital — starting on January 16th — he came back to his home in Swallowfield, Berkshire, where he wanted to be surrounded by his family, his things, look out at the countryside and, most importantly, ‘watch Sky Sports on the telly’.
“With a lifetime of exceptional health, he’d only had one other night in hospital in his 77 years — in 1955 at the age of seven to have his tonsils out.
“So when told of the aggressive cancer, he was typically stoical about it. “Many might say ‘why me?’ But I just think ‘why not me?’”
“He spent the last weeks reflecting on his wonderfully exciting life — how he married his teenage sweetheart, travelled the world twice with rock stars and on film sets and said yes to every opportunity.
“‘I’ve lived the life of a celebrity without having the misfortune of being one,’ he said.
“Along with our mum Davina, his wife of 52 years, we had the opportunity to reminisce, laugh and hold on to him over the last few weeks, which has been such a blessing.
“As many of you can imagine, he remained the best storyteller until the very end. He will not be remembered for this terrible illness that has taken him from us, but instead for the incredibly generous, thoughtful man — and hilarious raconteur — he was.
“We would appreciate it if you could pass the news on to others we may have missed. And also share your stories of dad with each other; laugh at fond memories and raise a glass of good quality wine to him.”
GARTH’S DAILY EXPRESS MEMORIES
THE HONOURABLE MEMBER
Remember the Country Boys, the gay little column that ran in the Drone for years? Thought not.
Well listen, luvs, Oliver is back! This time as a Labour MP. Ooh, just fancy that! And we all look forward to him standing erect in the Chamber for his maiden speech, don’t we? Oh, please yourselves. Interested? Read on … you know it makes sense! (It doesn’t — Ed)
A Remembrance of Newspapers Past by PAT PRENTICE, a new weekly memoir only in the Drone
ONLY IN THE DRONE
Our top columnists
The NHS is struggling and it cannot afford to treat people who have never contributed to the service
The Road to Perdition
By Helena Handcart
NEW
Trump’s plan for Gaza is ridiculed. Yet, Yair Rosenberg points out in The Atlantic, since Israel quit the territory nearly 20 years ago, the ‘international community’ has been involved in a perverse cycle: shovel cash in; watch Hamas steal it to wage war on Israel; tut when this provokes a hawkish Israeli response; send more aid to ‘rebuild Gaza’; then act appalled when the cycle inevitably repeats itself. Rosenberg says Trump’s proposal contains the semblance of a workable solution ‘a hell of a lot better than re-running the old playbook and expecting a different result.’
The vignette in Hermione wossname’s diary about John Prescott pursuing Jon Craig with a pork pie prompts another reminiscence involving Andrew Marr. The journo was approached by the deputy leader waving his arms and stabbing his finger ‘like a demented combine harvester’. Prescott said: ‘You bastard, you fucking bastard: I will fucking ‘ave you’ before storming off. Thirty seconds later he returned and said: ‘Sorry. Wrong bloke.’
A resurgence in the theatrical habit of audiences heckling thesps prompts a Philadelphia reader to remind The Economist of the time an actress (Pia Zadora, I recall — Ed) was making a right Horlicks of playing Anne Frank. Enter German soldiers: ‘She’s in the attic’, came the cry from the stalls.
You wonder about the Americans sometimes (Only sometimes? — Ed). It seems everyone wants to eat in their car. Around 43% of fast food orders are picked up at drive-through windows and 27% of them are scoffed before leaving the vehicle. Drones are employed to alert outlets of snarl-ups in delivery lanes and one new chicken franchise has no dining area: just a kitchen and four lanes serving 700 cars an hour.
Nigel Havers is touring in a one-man show, ‘Talking B*ll*cks’, this spring. Lord Drone denies that the thesp is auditioning for a seat at the World’s Greatest Lunch Club table.
A streamlined Formula 1 Mercedes, driven by Moss and Fangio in 1955, is sold to an unnamed buyer for €51.2 million at auction in Stuttgart. The W196 R Stromlinienwagen is one of only four in existence. Record price for a car: €135million for a Mercedes 300SLR Uhlenhaut coupé in 2022.
HyperboleCorner: ‘Kay Burley sent shockwaves through the nation when she announced her shock retirement yesterday.’ —Metro.
Good news that the Food and Drug Administration in the US has approved a new pain med without the addictive side effects of opioids. Presumably, hacks everywhere will approve of Journavx.
SportSpot: Tomorrow’s Super Bowl features the tallest and heaviest offensive line in history. Philadelphia Eagles’ starting linemen average 6ft 6ins and 338lbs; Kansas City Chiefs’ linemen are an inch and 26lb less. Incidentally, $1.5 billion is expected to be bet on the game.
Katie Price has just had a nose job to add to her six facelifts and 17 boob jobs, according to Popbitch
A review of the Beeb’s new Motherland spin-off, Amandaland (very good it is, too) refers to Chiswick as ‘a middle-class heaven’. Who knew?
The death at 92 of actor Brian Murphy, of George and Mildred, is an excuse for a re-run of a scene in which he enters sporting an obvious and very dodgy syrup. ‘Not bad for £12.50 including tax,’ he says. ‘What? You mean they tacked it on?’ says Mildred.
StatsLife: The Home Office employs a genuinely astonishing number of officials, advisers, special project workers and IT geeks plus some ministers and Pixie Cooper. How many? 43,000, believe it or not.
Proof that there’s no way back for Prince Andrew: a school named after him is to be re-branded to something less ‘controversial’. It’s the only secondary in… St Helena.
Joe Biden has signed with mega reps, the Creative Artists Agency to undertake speaking engagements. I can’t believe I’ve just written that, quoting The Hollywood Reporter
Humans have herded sheep for at least 11,000 years, say boffins after a genetic analysis. Samples taken from locations ranging from Ireland to Mongolia reveal the role domestication played in ancient societies.
LightsCameraCliché (a new thread on cinema’s oft-repeated lines): Are you sitting down? I was just getting started; You thinking what I’m thinking? Breathe, damn it, breathe. Don’t you die on me. Tell my wife and kids I love them. Cover me — I’m going in. You want me? Come and get me.
OverheardInWaitrose: a new (Eh? — Ed) thread for our times: ‘Oh, bugger botch wagons, Felicity. Do mummy a favour and run and get the organic quinoa before it’s our turn to be served.’
HeadlineOfTheWeek: Girlfriend Harassed Partner’s Ex By Breaking Wind, Judge Rules - Telegraph.
ON OTHER PAGES
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Stand and Deliver
By Hermione Orliff
A gala reunion to mark the 44th anniversary of the iconic ‘And F For Fuck Off’ exchange of pleasantries between Kelvin MacKenzie and Felicity Green takes place on May 15 in a riverside meadow (beer tent; reasonable prices) near the Drone’s offices in Walton-on-America. Some 10,003 say they witnessed the confrontation in the DX newsroom in Fleet Street. First on the official list (entries closed in 1990) was Rick Watkins, two feet away in the Chief Sub’s seat; the 10,003rd was Roger McNeill from Features (late entry because he was in exile) hovering nearby with a damp page proof. I think I’ve got that right. (It’ll do — Ed).
John Prescott’s funeral was the time to remember old feuds and vendettas. One involved Sky’s Jon Craig, OTP. After reporting on a dispute between Prescott and Mandelson at the 1995 Labour conference, Hoss was pursued by the deputy leader brandishing a huge pork pie and shouting ‘lies, lies, porky pies’. Former Expressman Craig recalls: ‘Every time he saw me after that he said: ‘It’s the pie man. Porky pies’.
DearDrDrone (Unburden yourselves, share your concerns and ask questions to which there is probably no answer): My old school, founded in 1614, has been seriously impacted by this government’s spiteful decision to impose 20% VAT. That’s not all, though. The NI increase, above inflation rise in the Minimum Wage, plus removal of Business Rates relief means 25% has been added to independent schools’ costs. Most is passed on to luckless parents. But teaching redundancies are certain; courses will be cut back or dropped. For the first time in 411 years Classics will not be taught at my alma mater. De Labore, progressus, spes et doctrina — as Caesar didn’t say.
Russia has issued a warrant for the arrest of Sun Defence Ed Jerome Starkey, the first UK journo to report from inside occupied Russian territory since the Crimean War. Putin and Co have obviously been irked by Starkey’s reports from the Ukraine conflict. Sun Ed Victoria Newton has, according to Press Gazette, ‘issued a defiant response’. Or, to you and me, an invitation to the Kremlin to rearrange ‘you off just don’t fuck why Vlad’ into a well-known phrase or saying.
The pilot ejects to safety as a US Airforce F-35 fighter plunges to the ground in Alaska after an ‘inflight malfunction’. Ouch! Those bad boys cost between £66 million and £82 million. Each.
Lazy cops in Sheffield are captured on social media trying to apprehend a shoplifter in a wheelchair — without getting out of their patrol car. Twice they tried to pin her down and twice she evaded them, using feints and jinks reminiscent of Antoine Dupont against the hapless Welsh. ‘I don’t know why they tried to drive,’ said shop manager Loreto Valente, ‘you could run faster than that.’
London’s art galleries must be mighty relieved at the decision to build a third Heathrow runway, says Janice Turner in The Times. Presumably, all the tiresome eco warriors will set up camps in Middlesex so ‘fewer Old Masters will get covered in soup’.
Sign in my local M&S: ‘The all-day breakfast is served until 11.30am.’
OldJokesHome: A friend of mine says he’s having an affair with twins at the same time. How does he tell them apart? ‘Her brother’s the one with a moustache,’ he said.
The centenary of an historic lifesaving dog sled trek has just been marked in Alaska. Twenty mushers and 150 dogs transported an antitoxin across harsh terrain to quell a diphtheria outbreak in the remote town of Nome in 1925. They travelled 674 miles in 127 hours in temperatures as low as -65C.
NMPKT: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, a lung disease caused by inhaling silica from volcano ash, is, at 45 letters, the longest word in English.
When developers in China offered to buy a grouchy grandad’s house to build a two-lane highway he told them to 滚开. So they went ahead anyway and built the elevated road which surrounds and overshadows the two-storey property. Now Huang Ping (for it is he) acknowledges that he should have taken the £180,000 compo. ‘It feels like I lost a big bet,’ he says, wistfully.
Overture and beginners, please! A musical based on the scandals in the life of Wayne Rooney is said to be in the works. Don’t all rush now.
You can’t blame them for wanting something to do. Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, NASA astronauts stuck on the International Space Station since June, have gone on their first walk in space together. All together now…
LeftInACab: Alpine grass scythe with 60cm blade in protective LeatherLike sheath; three jute balls of twine in green, ochre and cobalt blue; L’Oreal Paris Color Riche Satin Smooth Lipstick in Greggs paper bag; Well, Am I Or Aren’t I? Pink Paper readers’ survey hard copy; fencing epée wrapped in a table cloth (stained).
Fact: Calamity Lammy says climate change ‘is one of the biggest dangers facing the world.’ Fact: The useless Herbert has taken flights worth an astonishing £916,177 since assuming ‘office’, says Guido Fawkes.
HeadlinesOfTheWeek: My Date Pulled Egregious Stunt At Restaurant — Then Dumped Me With 4-word Excuse — Mirror. Blue Sky Syncing — Mail on marvellous pic of Red Arrows rehearsing on a clear, crisp winter morning.
Royal monikers are out of favour with modern parents, according to BabyCenter which analyses hundreds of thousands of names currently being registered. Anne, Philip, Albert and Edward dropped more than 100 places; Catherine was down 221. On the up? Ellie and Liam.
UntouchedByHumanSub: ‘As for the hoi polloi…’ — Anna Murphy, The Times.
Cocklecarrot and Co get elbow from Jim
Boss cuts out night lawyers and leaves legal matters to the few subs who haven’t been sacked
By LIFTON DUST
FORMER bookie Jim Mullen, boss of newspaper behemoth Reach, is taking perhaps his biggest gamble yet with cuts to the company's legal department that have the potential to cost it considerably more than they save, according to the latest issue of Private Eye.
The magazine reports: “Due to a change in operating processes in England and Wales, the staff lawyer or night lawyer on duty will no longer be proactively reading the whole of the print edition each night,” staff have been informed. The number of lawyers on duty both in the day and on call overnight has been cut, and hacks are expected to make their own call on what might. or might not, be problematic.
“If an article needs legal review, you must send this to the editorial legal team as early in the day as possible,” they have been instructed. “You must set out at the top of email what legal issue you are concerned about.”
The problem with this — as the Eye can testify from some experience — is that it is seldom the sentences hacks expect might cause a problem that end up actually doing so.
Legal complaints, and writs, often come out of left-field and these days tend to focus on (and attempt to exploit) obscure points of privacy and data protection, areas of the law which continue to evolve.
Retch staff are at least getting some extra training. “We've all been summoned to a series of hastily arranged and idiot-proof sessions covering issues like defamation, contempt and the Ipso code, in the hope the company doesn't get taken to court," one hack told the Eye.
Experienced pairs of eyes who might spot problems are also being dispensed with as Reach's paper and digital operations are cut-and-shut together; the Daily Express's night news editor Liz Perkins is one of the latest out of the door. "We've all been warned that potentially no one will see what you have written before it's published," one hack trembles.
Daily Star editor to quit as big jobs cull
planned at the Mail
Bell tolls for print editions
YET another Reach national editor has been given his marching orders as fears grow of huge jobs cuts at the Mail.
The latest editor to fall on his sword is the Daily Star’s Jon Clark which follows the departures of Alison Phillips at the Mirror and Gary Jones at the Express.
Reach announced that a new digital editor would be in the driving seat at the title and Clark’s number two, Denis Mann would be running the daily and Sunday print editions, raising doubts over their long-term future. He will report to the Star’s new online editor-in-chief, former Mirror online editor Ben Rankin.
Clark, a talented and experienced editor, brought much-needed joy to tabloid front pages and generally adding to the gaiety of the nation.
During his time in charge the price of the Daily Star has nearly quadrupled from 30p to £1.10 and circulation has fallen from 395,362 to 114,261.
Clark, the genius behind the Lizzy the Lettuce campaign, is reported to be happy at leaving Reach. He said: ‘It’s been a lot of fun.’
🔴 The Daily Mail is planning to make around 100 redundancies in what is believed to be the final stage of merging its print and digital teams. Staff at the London office were told that all reporters and editors will produce stories for both print and online from the middle of March.
A memo from DMG Media chief executive and publisher Danny Groom and Mail editor-in-chief Ted Verity said there will also be changes in areas where there is still unnecessary duplication and where the newsroom can be more efficient.
“The aim is to target resources where they’re needed most – producing the superb-quality journalism and world-leading long-form features the Mail is famous for.”
Press Gazette understands a double-digit number of jobs are expected to go as a result at the end of a 30-day consultation period. Whatever happens, the cuts are bad news for the future of print editions.
Shag night on the Express
THAT caught your eye, didn’t it? Actually the shag referred to here is the tobacco variety and there was a distinct cloud of it in the Daily Express subs room when this pic was taken back in the day.
Terry Manners, who unearthed the photo during his history researches, is trying to date it. The pic shows a reporter giving his copy to the Chief Sub who is polluting the atmosphere with his shag-filled pipe.
Rory’s new spy thriller
OUR friend and colleague Rory Clements has a new book out, A Cold Wind Wind From Moscow, a wartime spy thriller.
The synopsis reads: Winter, 1947. Britain's secret services have been penetrated. The country is more vulnerable than ever — and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin knows it. He decides it is time to send his master of 'Special Tasks' to create extra chaos.
But Stalin has a more important motive than mere disruption. He has a man on the inside who must be protected at all costs — a communist super-spy who has the secrets of the atomic bomb at his fingertips.
Freya Bentall, a senior MI5 officer, no longer knows who to trust and is left with one option: to bring in an outsider whose loyalty is beyond question - Cambridge professor Tom Wilde. His task: to find the traitor in MI5.
Barty’s having a party
Barty, right, surrenders to another glass of pinot grigiot with Tony
WE sought him here we sought him there, we’ve sought that damned elusive Barty Compton everywhere.
Now, thanks to ‘Monsewer’ Tony Boullemier, we’ve found him.
Monsewer reports: ‘Geoff 'Barty' Compton, who now lives near Nimes, en France, has been visiting the home his family recently bought in Worcestershire.
‘When I called in on him, it was a chance to swap multiple anecdotes from our days together at the DX in the early 1970s.’
They're pictured during a typical long lunch. And later on a canal bridge, which the Compton family now owns as part of their land.
Geoff regrets he wasn't well enough to attend Phil Durrant's recent wake but says he'll try and make future Express reunions.
Pictures: Ben Compton
Problem of migration and a culture clash that is swept under the carpet
THE clash of Britain’s permissive society with the alien cultures of immigrants has been a problem for years but is seldom discussed.
Many people fear to tread in the sensitive area of race which can be a problem in itself.
In his latest dispatch PAT PRENTICE tells of a relative’s shock when on a visit to London from a Northern city she spotted miniskirted girls standing at bus stops, conflating these respectable girls with prostitution.
Our British liberal attitude is clearly at odds with those who, having been brought up in different cultures, must have thought they had arrived in Sodom and Gomorrah.
The Daily Drone is published, financed and edited by Alastair ‘Bingo’ McIntyre with contributions from the veteran journalists of old Fleet Street, Manchester, Glasgow, Welsh Wales and the worldwide diaspora. Dedicated to scribblers everywhere.
©Lord Drone, Whom God Preserve 2005-2025
Fleet Street in the 1930s, note the barber named Sweeney Todd … just the place for a close shave
THEN NOW
Yes, we get the connection, but quite why you would name a hairdressers after the Demon Barber of Fleet Street is anyone’s guess. Close shave, sir?
Back in the 1930s no one seemed to be worried about a salon in the Boulevard of Broken Dreams named Sweeney Todd but maybe they didn’t make the connection.
Next door on the right at 153 Fleet Street was Alderton & Sons, tailors, with Bouverie House to the left. The building on the right was Edgley’s which sold secondhand office furniture, above were the London offices of the Eastern Daily News.
The two buildings on the left no longer exist but the one on the right is still there, now occupied by Wrap It Up which sells salads and wraps. It would have been meat pies back in the day.
The adverts on Sweeney Todd’s were less healthy and more in keeping with the character of Fleet Street — Guinness and Combe’s Brown Ale. The shop below was Prosperity Kandy Store displaying placards for The Jockey racing paper.
VICTOR WATERS writes: The building next door is 151 Fleet Street, not 153. I know this because my office in the 1960s was at the top, behind those distinctive round windows. (The mighty Presswise Ltd and London Picture Service Ltd were my businesses, housed in four scruffy old rooms.)
Access to those upper floors is only possible now from a side door in Wine Office Court and I think all of the upper floors are part of an ad agency. In the 60s King magazine began up top of 151, before Conor Walsh and Ted Simon (both of the Sketch) moved it to Salisbury Square, and I took over their rooms and their press relations business.
Some readers might remember the Sunday Mirror's Matt White and Ronnie Maxwell (dec.) who rented one of our rooms for their freelance work on the US rags, Midnight and National Enquirer!
ONLY ON DRONE TV
Fleet St in the Blitz, plus a cameo by legendary Daily Express editor
A DRONE DISCOVERY! A fascinating film of how newspapers were distributed during the Blitz in London — with a cameo performance by legendary Daily Express editor Arthur Christiansen at the end.
Runtime 6 minutes
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