In the Frame by Alan Frame | DAILY DRONE | Alastair McIntyre

Tanks for the memory

Wed, 02 Mar 2022 18:25:14 +0000

A Russian tank outside Chernobyl power station, 24 February, 2022

By ALAN FRAME

As the dying embers of Soviet Communism flickered their last, I was in Ukraine bumping along in a Transit van en route to Chernobyl. At one point we passed several Russian tanks apparently parked in woodland bordering the road. Were we about to be escorted to that grim monument to nuclear power? The answer given by our world-weary translator was simple: the Evil Empire, as that old ham Ronald Reagan called it, was stony broke. The tanks had run out of fuel because they couldn’t afford to top up.

I was reminded of that utterly surreal moment 23 years later while watching coverage of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine this week. A farmer, unarmed except for a splendid sense of humour, offered to tow a Russian tank and its crew back to the border after, yes, you’re ahead of me here, it ran out of four-star.

It was one of the few images to lighten a grim week which has exposed exactly how deluded and mad Vladimir Putin really is and, happily, what a remarkable country and its 43 million people he has taken on. Not to mention an unlikely hero in its president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Salute Captain Fantastic!

Thu, 16 Apr 2020 19:55:45 +0100

By ALAN FRAME

Few things have lifted the spirits during this wretched time. Not the oafish, wholly ignorant, vile Trump, and not the bumbling performance of those responsible for the lack of proper protection for all health and care staff. But one man has: Step forward Captain Fantastic.

WW2 veteran Tom Moore, who is 100 years old, has raised more than £32million for Health Service charities by walking laps around his garden. He ended it with a much deserved guard of honour from the Yorkshire Regiment.

The fact that he set out with a target of £1,000 speaks volumes, not just of the generosity of the public, but for the great good will we have for all NHS and care people working tirelessly on our behalf. And for Tom himself.

So when the Queen, not far short of Tom’s age herself, dispatches the customary telegram marking his centenary on April 30, she should accompany it with a knighthood for great service to the nation in making us all feel that much more cheerful and hopeful about life. As his great nephew says, he has come to symbolise the spirit of the nation.

From Russia with a radioactive hangover

Thu, 14 Mar 2019 19:27:05 +0000

GLOOMY: Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport

By ALAN FRAME

In the good old days of so-called Soviet world dominance (still playing in the dreams of comrades Corbyn and McDonnell,) arriving at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport was the first sign that all was not well with Communism.

My father would have been at home there because he was blind; not ideologically, far from it, he was registered blind and thus a dab hand at feeling his way in the dark. The airport terminal, you see, was almost pitch black because some enterprising would-be capitalist had pinched most of the light bulbs and striplighting.

There was one plus, however: The only bar in the airport was a faux (but good) Irish pub straight out of a do-it-yourself kit from Guinness, proving yet again what enterprising lads the Paddies are.

Outside, cab drivers in plastic-leather jackets smoked their cabbage cigarettes leaning on ancient Ladas and the occasional Moskvitch, a slight cut above. The year was 1991. Welcome to Moskva Meester Frame. In particular, welcome to your dollars.

Victor Mizzi

Wed, 13 Mar 2019 16:15:46 +0000

By ALAN FRAME

When writing here recently about Mohamed al-Fayed’s generosity towards the child victims of Chernobyl I omitted to mention the man who did more than anyone to help the poor kids who lost their childhoods in the worst disaster of the nuclear age. His name was Victor Mizzi and he has just died at the age of 84.

Our first encounter was the day he rang me demanding money. Not exactly with menaces but certainly with great insistence. The Express had run several features by Kim Willsher and me on the appalling legacy of Chernobyl and that coverage attracted unsolicited and very welcome donations from readers.

Victor, who had made enough money to retire before he reached 50, was devoting his time to helping those victims. He had set up a charity, Chernobyl Children’s Lifeline, and he wanted some funds or coverage or preferably both. What Victor wanted, he usually got. And this was no exception.

In short, CCLL has brought more than 10,000 children from the contaminated areas of Belarus for two-month stays with host families in the UK, during which time they are checked over by volunteer doctors and dentists and given days out they never forget. The charity also supports an orphanage and children’s hospital in Belarus and is the largest Chernobyl-related charity in the world.

Disastrous farce of politics today

Fri, 08 Mar 2019 18:45:43 +0000

BRIAN ADCOCK, The Independent

ALAN FRAME despairs of Britain’s feeble and incompetent Government and yearns for the politics of old

Has politics in the UK ever been so broken? This is not a Daily Mail headline-type question to which there is never an answer. The answer is an emphatic No.

Consider this: The Government is led by a woman who is clearly incompetent and is now in such a hole that she cannot sack members of the Cabinet even more hopeless than her. Why else are Chris Grayling, Gavin Williamson and Karen Bradley still employed?

Failing Grayling (never was a moniker so justified) has cost us an estimated £600 million with his ‘reforms’ when Justice Secretary and the couldn’t-make-it-up deal with a ferry company that had no ships and whose contractual small print was cut and pasted from its local Chinese takeaway.

Private Pike Williamson, the former fireplace salesman permanently on manoeuvres had such a nice line in gunboat diplomacy that the Chinese cancelled what might have been much-needed lucrative trade talks with Philip Hammond.

Stalker, a good man who was treated disgracefully

Thu, 21 Feb 2019 19:59:25 +0000

TRUMPED UP CHARGES: John Stalker, who has died aged 79

BY ALAN FRAME

I have reached that age when I am writing obituaries of friends. Victor Mizzi is a case in point as readers of this fine organ will know. Another is John Stalker, the former Deputy Chief Constable of Greater Manchester who died two days before Victor.

I got to know John well after I bought serialisation rights of his book on the shoot-to-kill affair in Northern Ireland and liked him as a thoroughly decent and truthful cop who had been, to use Fleet Street parlance, done up like a kipper by the Establishment.

Stalker had wanted to be a journalist after leaving his grammar school but the Oldham Chronicle’s loss was the Greater Manchester Police’s gain until, that is, he trod on too many nasty toes in the Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch.

He was deputy to the God-bothering GMP Chief Constable Sir James Anderton when he was begrudgingly commissioned by the then Chief Constable of the RUC to investigate the deaths of six IRA men over a five-week period of 1982. All men were unarmed (though that is not to say innocent of paramilitary crimes or intent) when they were shot dead by RUC officers.

Mohamed the hero of Chernobyl

Thu, 31 Jan 2019 15:01:46 +0000

Chernobyl in 2016, 30 years after the tragedy

By ALAN FRAME

I have recounted here Mohamed Al-Fayed's thwarted ambition to join the ranks of media tycoons. I have little doubt that, had he succeeded in buying either Today or LBC or launched a new Sunday paper, the novelty would have worn off quickly and he would have been away on the next big thing.

Mohamed, you see, possesses a butterfly-like concentration — except when it comes to waging a vendetta. We first met in the late '80s at the polo at Windsor at a time when he was on a major smarm offensive towards the royals, doubtless with his quest for UK citizenship to the forefront of his mind.

Not long afterwards I was in the office after returning from a few days in Chernobyl following the 1986 nuclear disaster. I had written a couple of spreads which I'm pleased to say provoked readers into sending money for the poor buggers who had lost everything, in some cases their lives and their future health, because of the attempted cover-up and resultant delays of the Soviet hierarchy.

Mohamed was of similar mind; he was, he said, moved by what I had described when visiting babies and children born with a variety of cancers, thyroid problems and in some cases missing or malformed limbs. I was duly summoned to the chairman's office at Harrods. 'You get me a big star to open the January sale,' he ordered, 'and I will give these kids a percentage of the first day's sales.’

Just a Mo, there’s radio silence

Tue, 15 Jan 2019 19:09:42 +0000

Following Mohamed Al-Fayed’s failure to start a Sunday newspaper, the Harrods boss tried to get into radio … and ended up with Punch, writes ALAN FRAME

Life working for Mohamed Al-Fayed was never dull. A mix of the unpredictable, the surreal and high-wire balancing act. After the thrill of producing the dummy edition for a new (sadly stillborn) mid-market Sunday newspaper, it was back to the drawing board for Liberty Media, as the publishing arm of Harrods Holdings was known.

We had tried to buy the Today newspaper from Rupert Murdoch only to be thwarted at the last moment; and then Fayed himself had decided – understandably — that launching a new product against the wealthy and combative Associated was, financially, too risky. Safer sticking to selling top-priced goods to dowagers, tourists and ladies in burkhas.

So we turned our attention to the London Broadcasting Company, LBC, at the time owned by a consortium of companies including DMGT, GWR media and Reuters.

The good news was that those three were willing to talk to us. By great fortune I managed to secure the services of a founder of Crown Communications, former owner of LBC, who knew where all the bodies were buried. He was a brilliant consultant.

Mohamed’s dummy

Mon, 14 Jan 2019 16:35:28 +0000

ALAN FRAME reminds us of the
al-Fayed Sunday paper that never quite made it

My old chum Christopher Wilson (better known, Guardian style, as Wislon or more probably these days as TP Fielden, author of the splendid Miss DImont series of whodunits on the English Riviera) has been taking me on a trip down Memory Lane, a byway I am frequenting with alarming regularity these days. To explain: I had found a picture of the Great Man in faux actorly pose and wondered where it had been taken.

His reply that the location was Cavendish Square brought happy memories flooding back. When I left the Express in 1995 I was offered a job by Mohamed al-Fayed, pictured. Not in surgical appliances at Harrods but to establish a publishing arm for his considerable empire. I had known the controversial shopkeeper for some years and he gave generously to the Express’ Chernobyl children’s fund I had set up after the 1986 nuclear disaster.

The first target we identified was the old Today newspaper, then owned by Murdoch who had bought it from its founder Eddy Shah. Approaches were made and Rupert was interested. The basis of a deal was agreed until, as I was leaving for the funeral of the great Tim Holder, the phone rang and Les Hinton, heading negotiations for News Group, announced that his boss had changed his mind. I never found out why and I’m not sure Les did either.