By CHRISTOPHER WILSON

We've all been there. A furious row with a work colleague and next morning, what? Bitter enemies for life, or is it all smiles, beer under the bridge?

In this case it was Kelvin, colossus of the back bench as Express night editor. So a knock-down drag-out fight was never going to end well for yours truly.

It was 1980. From my wife's ITN contacts I learned that Selina Scott was to replace Anna Ford as News At Ten's token woman – at the time Page One splashworthy. So my story was hoiked out of the Hickey page, destined for greater things.

Trouble was, Kelvin didn't like it.

ITN were jealously guarding their secret appointment prior to a press conference, but I'd managed to find Selina on some remote Scottish island and got her to the phone. In the split second after revealing my true identity I managed to get a quote out of her before she slammed down the receiver.

“What did she say?” barked Kelvin.

“'I'm over the moon'.”

“What else?”

“Nothing else, Kelvin. Just, 'I'm over the moon'.”

“Whaddya call that? Bollocks is what I call that! Go away and get something more.” [ie, go away and make it up].

“There won't be any more, Kelvin, I was lucky to get that.”

There followed, in full view of the back bench, a sharp review of my journalistic credentials, my right to a place on the Express staff let alone on Earth, plus a big question mark over whether my parents were married at the time of my birth.

Regular Drone readers may recall my encounter with Jocelyn Stevens, adorned with many a Fuck Off on both sides — and here we were again, Fahrenheit 451 revisited.

So to my point. Next day, after a barney like that, is it all forgive and forget – or non-speakers for ever more?

Fair play to Kelvin, he was a night editor who was back in the office first thing in the morning, a glutton for punishment. It was still early in the day when our eyes met across the deserted newsroom floor.

Kissee-kissee, or triple fuckoffs all round?

He beckoned me over. There was a pause. Then he said, “Mother sends her love.”

Yes indeed, I knew Kelvin's mum, though many in their time have questioned whether he ever had one. She was Mary MacKenzie, a highly gifted communicator who'd worked at the GLC for Sir Horace Cutler, but after that institution was abolished was looking elsewhere to apply her remarkable talent.

A few years before I joined the Express I was working in telly and arranged for her to come to Hampshire to advise the county council chairman Lord Porchester, a lickspittle figure alleged to be Prince Andrew's father [but wasn't].

Mary and I had lunch to celebrate her appointment and she told me she had three sons – Kelvin, Craig and Drew – who worked in journalism. I'd never heard of them.

A word here for the curious who may wish to know something of a person who could produce such extraordinary characters. Mrs MacKenzie was a head-turning, elegantly-groomed blonde who spoke with a posh accent and about as far removed in character from those brothers we know and love (.)

So there we were on the news floor, Kelvin and me. Best mates.

Until he went over to The Sun and stiffed me out of a highly lucrative book deal. But that's another story.

15 August 2025