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THE THINGS THEY SAY
The right to ridicule is far more important to society than any right not to be ridiculed, because one represents openness and the other oppression — Rowan Atkinson
TODAY’S PAPERS
CARTOON OF THE DAY
KEVIN KALLAUGHER
Lord Bothermore not bothered over losing fight for Telegraph
There’s been a lot of schadenfreude in the media in the last couple weeks over The Telegraph’s sale to Axel Springer rather than the Daily Mail, writes Popbitch.
Despite months of pursuit, we’re told DMGT proprietor Lord Rothermere is pretty sanguine about the loss.
But all those brutal cuts to the Mail to make enough cash to buy their rival might not be wasted, as rumour suggests he’s set for a divorce and fears being taken to the cleaners.
While Claudia (Lady Rothermere) has been on a personal journey backing Reform with a fair bit of dosh, Lord R has been heading in what appears to be another direction, as photos of him attending Rupert Murdoch’s 95th birthday with a different blonde on his arm can attest.
FYI: Their DMGT heir apparent son Vere is getting married this summer, which might make the family circus a tad awkward.
Wislon signs a book what he wrote
SPOTTED ONLINE: Our chum Christopher Wilson signs his book The Riviera Express at a bookshop in Torbay, Devon back in 2017. He headlined the pic: Portrait of the author burnishing his ego. The book —Wislon writes under the name TP Fielden — is still available and is warmly recommended by His Lordship, who advises: ‘Get your man to read it to you.’ BUY IT HERE
Another fine mess as Mail ends up with
two Chief Reporters
STOP PRESS: Arguably there are three
THERE’S a battle of egos taking place among the chief reporter(s) at the Daily Mail, writes Popbitch, Gossip Editor.
The unhappy marriage between The Daily Mail (the newspaper) and The Daily Mail (the website formerly known as MailOnline) has seen the joint publication end up with two 'chief reporters': Sam Greenhill (paper) and Martin Robinson (website).
And, since this story was published, it appears there are actually THREE.
Michael Hellicar reports: “Inderdeep Bains, until last week bylined as the paper’s deputy chief reporter has been promoted to Chief News Correspondent — thus chief reporter by another name.”
But who's really chief? The apparent solution, since the paper's reporters continue to look dismissively upon their online counterparts: make Sam Greenhill 'THE Chief Reporter' by title, so everyone knows he's the main one.
We’re sure that makes Martin Robinson feel very good about his status — which is presumably half the point...
Elsewhere, former Daily Mail exec Gerard Greaves has fled to the countryside and is apparently pissing off his stuck-up Cotswolds neighbours. Namely, about his huge parties, where everyone gets hammered on champagne. Particularly as Gerard occasionally attends the local church and works as a bell ringer. Gosh, the horror!
Fleet Street in the mist
Looks eerily quiet, doesn’t it? This slightly moist pic of Ludgate Circus taken from the foot of Fleet Street dates from 1972 and found by Terry Manners in his dusty drawers.
The photo was snapped by City copper PC Lew Tassle walking home after his beat in EC4.
He would have been standing outside the Albion so one can’t help wondering whether he had slipped into the pub for an out-of-hours snifter. Just about everyone else did.
PC Tassle often displays his pictures in the wonderful Spitalfields Life website which opens a window to how London used to be.
NEW TODAY
Even as his acclaimed forensic filleting of the sexual and financial incontinence of Andrew
M-W and his ex-wife, is flying off the shelves, Andrew Lownie is said to be turning his attention to the late Prince Philip. Can’t wait. Some of the revelations in Entitled, his exposure of the Yorks, are truly astonishing. The disgraced duke and his chaotic partner spent (other people’s) money like water. Their profligacy was obscene. Yet, as an executive on another Fleet Street paper points out, little was done to highlight it. He tells me: ‘Apart from references to Airmiles Andy and to Fergie’s endless struggles with debt, we were strangely restrained. I, as a fairly senior exec at the time, was complicit in this failure to skewer them. Why were we so toothless?’ He said that reading Entitled made it clear: ‘Lownie writes of one occasion when the great and good were partying with the Yorks at a Mediterranean villa, no doubt sipping something cool and effervescent in the mimosa-scented gloaming: the guest list included my editor and his wife.’ Pequeño mundo, ¿No?
What a shambles is the House of Lords, a haven for hasbeens and neverwases. Every new government promises root and branch reform and then every new prime minister realises it’s both a dumping ground for useless herberts and a useful lure for a spot of arse-licking. Under Lords rules, peers must attend at least one sitting in each year-long parliamentary session to keep their seat. Two of them have just managed to do that. Boris Johnson appointees, newspaper proprietor Evgeny Lebedev and former cricketer Ian Botham each managed to make it to seven of the 625 sessions of the upper house that took place from the start of 2022 to the end of 2025. That’s an attendance rate of 1.12%. They’re having a giraffe, aren’t they?
While Trump is causing mayhem throughout the world you may wonder where is the opposition — the Democrats — in all this. Maybe it’s the Biden legacy but, as Noah Smith points out on Substack, a recent NBC poll put the party’s net favourability rating at -22%, below that of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (-18%), the Republican Party (-14%) and even Trump himself (-12%).
A so-called columnist bewails the increasing traffic jeopardy in London. He tells of pausing, tremulously, at traffic lights while walking amid the maelstrom of bikes, scooters, delivery vans, cabs and outriders from Papa Johns. I sympathise: I’d be just like a skittish fawn hesitantly deciding whether to risk entering the Deep Dark Wood. Contrast with sylvan meadows, an odd tractor, the hourly bus, the tinkling laughter of the girl grooms from the village livery riding out, a red kite circling overhead and my nearest visible man-made object, a church steeple, four miles away. Green and pleasant, indeed (the land not the steeple).
Chuck Norris, who has died aged 86, deserved his hard-man image, says The Times. It was said that he was once bitten by a snake and ‘after 10 minutes of agony the snake died’. But his reputation was actually well-earned. When two men tried to mug him, police arrived to find the pair with ‘broken arms, knives on the ground and Norris, then 54, waiting quietly nearby’. Didn’t you know who he was, they asked the muggers, trying not to laugh. ‘We knew,’ they said. ‘We just figured all that stuff on TV was fake.’
Actors do like to live the part. Immerse yourself in the rôle, luv, feel it, feel it. Martin Clunes’s turn in the Huw Edwards biopic has received praise and so it should. It even went as far as the mummer having his rather, er, prominent ears temporarily pinned back while the cameras rolled, according to those scamps at Popbitch. Trouble was, by the time he came to promoting the show on morning telly, they were unleashed, flapping as usual.
That Zack Polanski, he’s a right caution. The boob-whispering Greens leader has boasted he can enhance ladies’ mammeries through hypnotherapy. But now the claim is slapping him in the face, so to speak. According to the Currant Bun, when pollsters More in Common asked voters whether they would consider backing the Greens, 33% said they would. When they told the respondents about Polanski’s boob-boosting gig, that figure more than halved to 16%.
Trust those zany, laugh a minute Aussies. A YouTube team Down Under called How Ridiculous has had nearly 700,000 views testing how many rubber bands it takes to destroy various items. They include a paint tin (98 bands), a mirror (150) and a printer (340). They gave up on a big bottle of Coke, which is nigh-on invincible, after 6,386. Check it out on Exploding Random Items With ONLY Rubber Bands.
You understand that this is not really my field but the sharp fall in page views across regional newsbrands continued last month with an overall 31% reduction. This follows a 25% drop in January, according to IPSOS. There were a total of 531.6million views compared to 772.4million in February, 2025. The figures concealed a mixed picture throughout the different regional publishing groups, with several Newsquest titles posting significant year-on-year increases. But Reach’s biggest titles, including the Manchester Evening News, Liverpool Echo, Wales Online and Birmingham Mail, all saw decreases in excess of 30%.
Let’s try to forget the bonkers Beeb’s latest stupidity — censoring a Bob Monkhouse joke book on The Repair Shop — and enjoy some of the quips: Wife asks: ‘Can my mother come down for the weekend?’ Husband: ‘Why?’ ‘Well, she’s been on the roof for two weeks.’ Or: ‘People say marriage is like a prison sentence. Not true! In prison you get regular sex, whether you want it or not.’ And: ‘My wife went off with my next door neighbour. I don’t half miss him!’
A sign of the times, perhaps, but car park operator NCP, in administration because of reduced demand, was originally a clever wheeze, says Megan Smith in the FT: buying up World War Two bomb sites in central London cheaply and converting them into car parks. When the company was sold to a US firm for £800million in 1998, the deal almost broke down because of the strange condition insisted on by one of the two owners. He asked to keep a single parking space for himself, just off Oxford Street. He wanted to maintain his weekend habit of driving there in his Bentley with a flask of tea and trying to predict where people would park.
Although English is the world’s most important language, it’s good to see the mother tongues of other nations in our islands are also in rude health. The Irish language, for example, has made a remarkable comeback, says The Economist. A century ago just 18% of Ireland’s population spoke it; today it’s around 40%, up 71% from 1991. This linguistic renaissance is in part because of exam reforms but also because of pop culture. Cillian Murphy and Paul Mescal both casually using the language on the red carpet prove Irish has ‘become cool’. In both Ireland and Wales study of the native lingo is a compulsory subject in all schools while some teach in it entirely. Poor Scotland, though: centuries of oppression by the pesky English has hit Scots Gaelic badly.
Old salts’ tales of Moby Dicks ramming ships have long been dismissed as rum-fuelled fantasies. But no longer, says Jake Currie in Nautilus. Using new drone cameras, researchers have, for the first time, witnessed sperm whales head-butting each other at high speed. The force of the impact in one case was estimated at 200 kilonewtons. No, me neither but they say it does make those sea stories credible.
Run out of butter? Don’t worry - just run away and churn some. The latest fitness trend, says Natalie Stechyson in CBC News, is ‘churning and burning’. It involves strapping a bag of heavy cream and salt to the torso and then heading out for around an hour’s jog. This mimics the typical churning movement that thickens the ingredients into a pat of the yellow stuff.
UntouchedByHumanSub: ‘We don’t seem anywhere near crossing Is and dotting Ts.’ — the BBC’s Gary O’Donoghue on the prospect of an Iran peace deal.
TheThingsTheySay: ‘Surely one of the great comforts of getting older is knowing that you won’t need your liver for much longer.’ — the Marvellous Ms Midgley in The Times.
HeadlineOfTheWeek: Woman Has Sex With Tram And Marries It Despite Already Having A Boyfriend —Star.
It’sOnlyMoney: The chief constable of Police Scotland, Jo Farrell, will pocket a salary of £281,000 from next month. That’s a hearty 3.5 per cent increase. Crime in Scotland is soaring by five per cent
OLD JOKES HOME
When the hospital asked me for a stool sample, I sent them a leg off my kitchen chair. The trouble is now my wife keeps falling off it.
There are 11 groups of people in the world.-- those who understand Roman numerals, and those who don't.
I filled my car up with £110 worth of petrol then drove off without paying. I was taken to court and fined £75. Watch this column for more money-saving tips.
talian journalists are striking because their industry-wide contract hasn’t been renewed in ten years, with salaries losing 20% of purchasing power to inflation. (Wanted in Rome)
CNN is preparing to cut employees as part of Mark Thompson’s digital overhaul, with a reported push for “more employees fluent in product, streaming, audience development, and digital storytelling”.
Future has expanded its Future Collab project with "Editors in Residence" at Who What Wear and "Masters" at Marie Claire. The schemes embed social media creators into the titles’ editorial output.
Australia's ABC has switched to BBC programming as more than 1,000 staff at the national broadcaster began 24-hour strike action over pay and conditions. (ABC)
NIBS
ONLY IN THE DRONE
Our great columnists
Stand and Deliver
By Hermione Orliff
NEW TODAY
It’s a bit of a laugh Starmer saying that fuel duty has been frozen until September. As if it’s Labour doing the freezing. The fact is that the duty hasn’t risen (ie has been ‘frozen’) for 15 years. What with Iran and all that, our hapless Chancer of the Exchequer is in a quandary whether to go ahead with a planned increase in September. The Taxpayers’ Alliance warns that if the rise isn’t cancelled, an extra 5p will mean the typical household will pay a whopping £39,708 in fuel duty over its lifetime. As things stand, the bill is already £36,285 and that’s before VAT. According to the latest figures, the poorest 10 per cent of households are hardest hit, spending 2.7 per cent of their annual income on the duty every year. Meanwhile, pensioners also find themselves in the government’s crosshairs. Retired households are handing over 1.3 per cent of their gross income compared with 0.9 per cent for average working households.
Amid all the understandable apprehension over the effect of the Iran war on the economy —soaring fuel prices, inflation in general and interest rates — spare a thought for the man on the Tehran omnibus. If we’re suffering, how is he faring? It’s worth remembering why this all started, says Jim Geraghty in The Washington Post: the mass protests in January, largely triggered by the collapse of Iran’s economy. Annual inflation rose to 42.2% in December, the Iranian rial is the least valuable currency in the world, with a five-million note worth just $3.10. However this conflict ends, those same economic problems are waiting on the other side. Only then, they will be even worse.
Huzzah to brainy boffin Gerd Faltings, just awarded this year’s Abel Prize — the mathematics’ equivalent of the Nobel. The 71-year-old German gave the first proof for the ‘Mordell conjecture,’ a 1922 theorem suggesting increasingly complex equations produce fewer rational solutions. The theorem was once considered unsolvable. However, Faltings found that if a curve’s equation has a variable raised to a power higher than three, it will contain a finite number of integer or fraction coordinates. He did so by combining number theory and geometry as opposed to relying on the more traditional effort known as the Diophantine approximation approach. Got it? Do try to keep up at the back there!
The pesky fiddle-faddle of charging electric vehicles is set to be a whole lot easier. China’s BYD, the world’s largest EV maker, is releasing a premium model that can be almost fully charged in under 10 minutes, says Steve Fowler in The Independent. The Denza Z9GT, which has a range of about 500 miles will be launched in the UK later this year. It can reach 97% battery in nine minutes, and top up from 10% to 70% in just five.
Isn’t it heartening that the K-pop band BTS is back boogieing on down, or whatever they do, after a three-year hiatus during which the lads enlisted for mandatory military service in their native South Korea? The popsters are the first since the Beatles to have three albums reach No. 1 in the US within a year. BTS is short for Bangtan Sonyeondan which means Bulletproof Boy Scouts in Korean. Not many people know that but a few more do now.
GlobalWarmingHotline: Half a million acres of England must be covered in solar panels and wind turbines by 2050 to hit net zero targets, the Government announces. The plans will hit farms particularly hard, with tens of thousands of acres of arable land ‘repurposed’ for energy generation. Environment Minister Emma Reynolds said the targets were necessary to ‘build clean, home-grown power’. A further 1.9 million acres, representing 9% of farmland, will be given over to rewilding, creating heathland and restoring peatland habitats to capture carbon from the atmosphere. The minister says that Labour would ensure there was enough farmland left to maintain domestic food production. Well that’s all right then.
The café in my local garden centre has got a robot to take used plates and trays to the kitchen. Very well behaved he is, too, gliding decorously between tables. Not so the one employed by an eaterie in California. It performed its ‘dance’ routine at a table but wouldn’t stop and sent food and dishes flying until staff ‘pacified’ it.
People living in English-speaking countries are not feeling too chipper these days according to the World Happiness Report, just released. For the second year the UK (No. 29), Canada (No. 25), US (No. 23), Australia (No. 15), and New Zealand (No. 11) each failed to make the Top 10. Finland, Denmark, and Iceland topped the happiness ranking of 140 countries. Bottom of the list? War-torn and poverty-stricken countries such as Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, and Yemen.
I can’t see Drone readers going for it myself but the Editor has asked me to form a team to take part in the annual ‘gently competitive’ egg-rolling contest down Fleet Street organised by St Bride’s on Easter Day, April 5. All very jolly, I’m sure but at six in the morning, FFS? Anyone interested, though, should gather outside the black Lubyanka at 5.50 am. Don’t forget to bring (decorated) hard-boiled eggs to roll! And, as Tallulah Bankhead told a besotted fan she agreed to meet in an hotel room for a spot of horizontal interaction: ‘If I’m not there, please start without me.’
As the ‘Special Relationship’ between Britain and the US is looking decidedly frayed, it’s as well to remember that this week in 1865 Parliament passed the Stamp Act, the first direct tax on American colonists, ending decades of a mostly hands-off stance that had allowed the colonies to prosper. It was a key stepping stone towards the American Revolution that unfolded a decade later.
A 42-year-old man in Derbyshire was rushed to hospital (cliché alert) when he woke from a long sleep to find his skin had turned blue. Tommy Lynch said he looked like something from the film Avatar and feared the worst. Doctors, however, deduced that it was only dye from his new bed sheets. Tommy’s advice: ‘Always wash new sheets before you sleep in them — unless you want to jump the queue at A&E.’ These handy tips have an ameliorating effect on life, don’t you think?
The Land Rover, truly an iconic workhorse of the Army for more than 70 years, has started to be phased out. All versions of the Landy, as it is affectionately known, are expected to have left service by 2030. A commemorative event has been held at the Armoured Fighting Vehicle School at Bovington, Dorset, to honour its legacy. Defence Minister Luke Pollard, who was there, said: ‘As we look ahead to the future of light mobility vehicles, I'm firing the starting gun (SWHJDT?) on the replacement vehicle competition, seeking to put a modern vehicle in the hands of our personnel.’
Several commuters complained of nausea when Magnum pumped the smell of chocolate into Kings Cross station (gateway to Sunny Lincs!) as part of an advertising campaign for its ice creams. It could have been worse, says Andy Silvester in The Times. The almond-based spirit brand Disaronno wanted to waft almond smells through the Tube for a similar campaign in 2002. Then someone pointed out that the scent was worryingly similar to cyanide gas.
TheThingsTheySay: ‘It will take me a year to recover and that’s an understatement.’ - The notoriously grumpy former Smiths frontman Morrisey, 66, who complained he was left in a ‘catatonic’ state when noise from a fiesta in Valencia deprived him of sleep,
ThisSportingStrife: The Iran war could disrupt the start of the English cricket season. For God’s sake: is nothing safe? Dukes, which supplies all the red balls for top games in England and Wales, is considering rationing its provision for each team because of supply-chain issues stemming from the conflict.
StatsAFact: If you work for the Department of Transport you are 12 times as likely to die in your job than be sacked for poor performance. — Telegraph.
HeadlineOfTheWeek: Bond Girls Now from ‘Ruined’ Face To Sex Ban, Bankruptcy And Life As A Recluse — Mirror. (Eh? — Ed)
It’sOnlyMoney: At least 3,906 council employees received total remuneration of £100,000 or more in 2023-24. This is 801, or 26 per cent, more compared to 2022-23. Of these, 1,092 received at least £150,000 in total remuneration, 264, or 32 per cent, more than 2022-23.
Paddy Clancy dies at 82
ANOTHER big figure from old Fleet Street, former Daily Express reporter Paddy Clancy, has died aged 82.
Clancy, who was well known in his native Ireland for his broadcasting work, died on Friday, 23 January at Sligo University Hospital surrounded by his family.
He is survived by his wife Bernie, two daughters and a son.
The Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin said Clancy was "an enormous presence in Irish journalism for over six decades. His distinctive take on RTÉ's morning paper round up was essential listening.
"His reporting and columns were essential reading for many years in the Sligo Champion, Donegal People’s Press, Irish Sun and Mirror."
Retro Rambleshanks, author of the acclaimed Drone series Yesterday Once More, writes: Ashley Walton, LOTP, used to tell of the time when, as a new reporter, he was sent by Night News Editor Mike Steemson to fetch Paddy Clancy and fellow Irishman Mike O’Flaherty back to the office from The Cartoonist where they were ‘resting’.
‘How will I know them?’ he asked. ‘Easy,’ says Steemson, ‘they’ll be standing at the bar wearing just their underpants.’ And so it came to pass. When Ashley returned to the office Steemson asked what the response had been. ‘They said to tell you to go fuck yourself,’ reported Ash. ‘Oh, good,’ said Mike, ‘they’re coming back, then.’ And so, fully clothed, they were.
James Mossop
One of the great sports writers, James Mossop of the Sunday Express, has died aged 89.
Jim covered ten World Cups, eight Olympic games, dozens of world title fights, major golf tournaments and Formula One races.
He started his career on the North West Evening Mail and developed a passion for journalism that never waned. He spent most of his career on the Sunday Express before joining the Sunday Telegraph.
Alex Montgomery, former chairman of the Football Writers’ Association, said: ‘He was the very best of journalists, an outstanding football writer who had to be read and who was on so many occasions in a class of his own.’
The family, who are having a private funeral, have set up a tributes page.
CONTRIBUTE HERE
Gaiety at Eighty for Tony
IT was nosebags all round for the Class of 1970 when former Expressman Tony Boullemier took his old friends out to dinner to celebrate his upcoming 80th birthday.
Adding to the entertainment was Kelvin MacKenzie, who got married for the third time earlier this year. He confided that each time he marries he moves a junction or two of the M25. He is currently at Junction 11 and he confessed that he is currently considering Junction 16.
Pictured at the Queen’s Head in Weybridge, Surrey, are Kelvin MacKenzie, Julia Boullemier (Tony’s daughter-in-law), Alastair ‘Bingo’ McIntyre (appearing by kind permission of Lord Drone), Chris ‘Lady Bingo’ McIntyre, Craig Mackenzie, Lesley MacKenzie (Kelvin’s wife), Tony ‘Monsewer’ Boullemier, and his son Richard ‘Ric’ Boullemier.
The Drone is particularly sad to announce the death of one of the funniest men in Fleet Street, Express sub-editor John Mulcock.
Mullers, as everyone called him, died on 18 October at the age of 81.
Drone editor Alastair McIntyre said: ‘Mullers was a great and dear friend and our joint insanity helped to keep us both sane during crazy and stressful days on the Express in the Noughties. I grieve for him.’
Tony Boullemier said: ‘A top sub and an extremely funny man. If he wasn't firing off a quip, he was saying something that you just knew was leading up to one.
‘And when political correctness spread over newsrooms in the 90s, he was one of the last journos to ignore it.’
John Mulcock
TIMES READERS’ LIVES TRIBUTE
CRICKETERS IN THE FRAME
DAVID RICHARDSON, pictured above in sunglasses, has been clearing out his loft and come up with a few sporting pix involving Daily Express journalists. But who are they?
Lord Drone is honoured for 20 years of his Fleet Street organ
LORDING IT: Drone as imagined by Scott Clissold of the Sunday Express
THE Daily Drone is 20 years old? Shurely shome mistake. Believe it or not it is true and to mark the anniversary His Worship Lord (Bingo) Drone was presented with a magnificent caricature hand-tooled by Scott Clissold, talented cartoonist of the Sunday Express.
The ceremony took place in front of disinterested diners at the Boulevard Brasserie in London’s Covent Garden, the venue for numerous drink-sodden gatherings of the World’s Greatest Lunch Club.
The brasserie is a favourite with WGLC members not just for the excellent cuisine but also for the fact that Le Patron provides old-age pensioners with half-price food.
Lord Drone gave a long address of thanks to gently sleeping members which can be summed up as “thanks awfully chums”. He left shortly afterwards in a sedan chair after proffering his fondest thanks to Roger Watkins (chairman), Terry Manners, Dick Dismore, Alan Frame and Pat Pilton for their generous gesture. (Will that do M’Lud? — Ed)
Death of a Mirror great
DAILY MIRROR news sub Peter Lewis, one of the great caption writers of old Fleet Street, has died at the age of 83.
His colleague PAT WELLAND told the Drone: “Peter, an enigmatic and singular man, was a caption writer of genius who could spin 200 words or so of drollery from hardly any info on the back of a pic showing, say, a warthog eating a Mars bar or a celeb scratching his balls.
“In its own way it was a minor art form, long vanished as our old trade goes down the tubes to the Decomposing Room.”
DRONE SUBBING WORKSHOP
The golden rule is: Always ensure the headline matches the picture
Spotted by MARGARET ASHWORTH who commented:
‘Mail Online, obviously.’
Stand aside le Carré, Seed’s written another spy thriller
"Where The Past Lies" is the fifth political thriller from ex-Daily Mail and TV journalist, Geoffrey Seed.
Former Mirror executive, the late Revel Barker, published Seed’s debut novel which led an Amazon best-seller list for three months.
Seed's wife says writing books is just his way of pretending he's no longer on the road. This is his side of the slur.
A MONOCLE-POPPING MOMENT AT THE EXPRESS
Do you mean us, Annie?
WHAT-HO! Express subs Alastair ‘Bingo’ McIntyre, Bob ‘Algy’ Smith and John ‘Bertie’ Brooks enjoying a refreshing glass of supper some time in the 1980s
MUCH has been written on these pages about the madcap Dronery on the Daily Express during the 1980s and 90s and our man TERRY MANNERS has found more evidence.
He writes: While browsing yet more publishing archives I came across this revealing quote from an interview with a local councillor for Salisbury, named Annie Riddle, pictured, in the December issue of the digital magazine Inside Salisbury.
Sounds fascinating, eh?
Talking about her time as a sub-editor in Fleet Street, she says: “When I was at the Express. There were a bunch of young lads there, four of them, they were very good, but they used to push it.
“They had this thing called the Drones Club and would pretend to be characters out of Bertie Wooster with the monocles and this would go on for the whole shift…
“Fleet Street was very male-dominated then. Heavy drinking was the norm but there was a lot of fun and I worked with some really clever people.”
Who could she be talking about, I wonder?”
(Drone editor dives under nearest desk)
David Eliades, giant of DX foreign desk and brilliantly successful author dies at 92
THE Drone is particularly sad to report that David Eliades, who manned the Daily Express foreign desk for many years, has died at the age of 92 at his home in Switzerland.
There was more to David than just journalism. He was an author too and one of his works is still playing to audiences at various locations in Italy.
A Gran tale about Fleet St
Another day, another great book, this time a tale about Fleet Street by former Daily Star columnist Cathy Hollowell.
Beginning as an apprentice reporter on the Brighton and Hove Gazette in 1968, she worked her way through national agencies, night shifts at the Daily Mail, and the Daily Express before landing her dream job on the Star, interviewing extraordinary people from every walk of life.
Hollowell, who wrote under the name Cathy Couzens, now lives in Texas, with her husband, Don.
CUTTING A DASH: A fine example of the sub-editor’s craft from The Pratt Tribune in Kansas. Not.
WHY HYPHENS MATTER
NAMES WHO MADE THE DAILY EXPRESS GREAT
TOM BROWN reports: Cleaning out old files including some historic newspapers, I came across the attached memo. The subject matter — expenses in 1977 — is of course important. But the real interest is in the list of names — some of the most outstanding journalists ever who every day made the Express the marvellous paper it was in those days.
The memo is signed by the late, great Morris Benett.
The things they used to say on Boulevard of Broken Dreams
By PAT WELLAND
With nothing better to do, I’ve been re-reading a couple of books about the Boulevard at a time now seen – as one of the authors remarks – “as remote as the Byzantine empire”.
From political commentator Alan Watkins’ excellent A Short Walk Down Fleet Street, two conversations between Jack Nener, “a foul-mouthed bow-tied Swansea boy” who was Mirror editor 53-61, and his deputy, Dick Dinsdale:
1. “What we need on this paper, Jack, are a few Young Turks.”
Nener: “I can see we could do with a few new faces about the place, but why in fuck’s name do they have to be Turkish?”
2. “The sub-editors, like most people who work long shifts in unchanging company, had a number of catchphrases, or joke sentences. One of them – it comes from the film of Tom Brown’s Schooldays, rather than from the book itself – was: ‘Flashman, you are a bully and a liar, and there is no place for you in this school.’
Nener was overheard asking: ‘Who’s this Flashman, then, Dick?’
‘Flashman? Flashman? I don’t think we’ve got any one of that name on the paper, Jack. Is he a reporter or a sub?’
‘I don’t give a fuck what he is, but get rid of him fucking quick. He’s a bully and a liar’.”
3. From Matthew Engel’s equally enjoyable Tickle the Public – 100 years of the popular press: “There is a story that around 1926 John Logie Baird went into the Express office anxious to show his new invention (TV, as any fule kno) to the editor (Beverley Baxter). Baxter, in keeping with the paper’s reputation for percipience, sent down the message ‘Get rid of that lunatic. He may have a knife'.”
OUR GREATEST EVER LOOKALIKE
BENNY GERRY
These two chaps could be twins, couldn’t they readers? And one thing is for sure, you will never see Gerry Adams and Benny Hill in the same room. Admittedly that is mainly because that nice Mr Hill is dead, but we on the Drone don’t let the facts stand in the way of a lousy story hooked in desperation out of the flong basket.
But seriously, those berets definitely came from the same jumble sale and the spectacles are almost identical.
You should have gone to Specsavers — Ed
Mind the steps…
MALCOM TATTERSALL says that if Justice Secretary David Lammy really wants to end the long delays in our judicial system, he should bring back “the police station steps”.
GONG BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
AH, this fair takes a chap back to the old days when a bollocking from Sunday Express editor Eve Pollard earned the victim a medal.
This little gem was found in the effects of the late SX executive Phil Durrant by his widow Helen.
She said: ‘I have a lot of stuff to sort that was being stored. I found this with a safety pin on the back to wear as a badge, in Phil's stuff!'
Former Sunday Express exec Peter ‘Stewpot’ Steward told the Drone: ‘I don't know why everyone on the Sunday Express during Eve’s reign of terror didn't get one.’
Henry Macrory remembers that the 'badges' were created by the late Sheila Copsey.
The day I was told to rewrite Tom Stoppard’s copy (and share his ancient typewriter)
JOHN SMITH remembers a mad day at the Bristol Evening World in the 1960s when a gas explosion rocked the city. Tom Stoppard was one of several reporters sent to cover the drama. Trouble was that young Tom was not a news man and wrote far too much. Consequently a frazzled chief sub told Smith to rewrite the Bard’s lyrical prose.
Express sales plunge after puzzles redesign cock-up
SALES of the Daily Express have haemorrhaged after an ill thought out redesign of its popular puzzles pages.
Frustrated readers deserted the sinking ship after changes to bring puzzles in line with the Mirror to save cash.
Bosses were forced into an about-face and published a grovelling apology promising to restore puzzles into their old format.
What the powers that be have failed to understand that readers hate redesigns, taking the view that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
The Express has undergone many rejigs over the years, including a switch from broadsheet to tabloid which did little to stem the relentless plunge in circulation.
Meanwhile they can’t even get the Page One blurbs right with one reading: “FREE Family size bottle at of Coca -Cola.”
An insider told the Drone: “Everyone is struggling with this new regime. The subs are swamped.”
That’ll be all my good man: Daily Mail’s butler retires after 46 years of service
THINGS are getting serious at the Mail, not only have they made 16 reporters on Femail redundant, they have also lost the services of the in-house ‘butler’.
The gentlemen’s gentleman, who padded round Northcliffe House with a silver tray laden with pink gins, has retired after 46 years. He was known as the Fleet Street Jeeves, a misnomer if there ever was one, because Jeeves was never a butler, he was a valet.
There is no word yet if the butler will be replaced but the Drone understands that Jacob Rees-Mogg doesn’t have much on his plate at the moment.
In other news, The Mail’s putative purchase of the Telegraph hasn’t even been announced as a done deal yet, but DMG’s bosses are wasting no time marking their territory.
Up on the second floor of DM towers, staffers have noticed a new publication has been added to the lightbox of the organisation’s titles.
Right next to the logos for The i Paper, Metro and Weekend Mail - welcome to … The Telegraph!
Observer Sport hits rock bottom with this daft front page
Look, we on the Drone enjoy schoolboy humour as much as the next man but this front page of this week’s Observer sports section has crossed the bounds of acceptability.
It’s not funny, it’s not clever and it has no relevance to the story to which it refers, England’s poor cricketing performance so far in the Ashes in Australia.
In fact it doesn’t refer to cricket at all and the pic has no connection with the sport.
The rest of The Observer was well subbed and attractively laid out so maybe the Sports Editor and his minions should go back to journalism school.
As more and more experienced journalists are shown the door, this is the sad result.
YOU READ IT HERE FIRST!
Caroline Waterston to step down as Mirror editor just as we predicted
Chloe Hubbard, left, is replacing Caroline Waterston
THE news that Mirror editor-in-chief Caroline Waterston was on the way out — was broken by the Drone THREE DAYS before it was officially announced.
Waterston, who will leave at the end of the year, had been in the job for less than two years. She will be succeeded by Chloe Hubbard, who has been UK editor at The Independent since the start of this year.
Hubbard’s start date will be announced later. Her remit, like Waterston’s, will also mean leading Reach’s magazines team including OK!.
FIRST WITH THE NEWS (FOR ONCE): Our original story
Waterston’s departure comes shortly after a shake-up at Reach that saw Express editor-in-chief Tom Hunt become editorial director (brands), with the editors of the Mirror, Express and Star reporting to him. They remained “responsible for maintaining and developing distinctive brands with growing, loyal audiences”.
The Mirror was understood to have been among the hardest-hit titles by redundancies at Reach this autumn.
DRONE TV EXCLUSIVE
On film: The London Evening News office from 50 years ago
STEVE MILL has produced some grainy footage of the Evening News newsroom from the mid-1970s which the Daily Drone is proud to publish.
Steve said: “There was a fair bit of jiggery pokery to get the video from an old dvd recorder hard disk, and you'll no doubt have experience with file sizes, quality and compatibility. Hope the file type is workable.”
It is workable and we extend our thanks to Steve for completing this task which we know from past experience how difficult it can be.
The Night Howls
Two members of the Daily Express news sub-editorial team fill their time after returning from the pub late at night in the 1980s. If memory serves, this was the final of the Arthriticson Howling Contest which involved shouting HERE DOWN PLEASE! in the manner of Foreign Sub Jack Atkinson an aged Ulsterman. By the look on the face of Lord Drone, left, he has received a high score from adjudicator Mr Robert ‘Algy’ Smith.
We thank you most kindly, as the late Mr Arthriticson would have said.
You must remember this Sunday upstart (but to be frank we doubt that you do)
NEWSPAPERS come and, regrettably, newspapers go — and one of the least remembered is the News on Sunday. It was a left-wing tabloid launched in April 1987 and folded only seven months later. Judging by its first splash, right, it’s not surprising.
The founders were former members of the left-wing group Big Flame and other radicals.
The idea of the paper was originally thought up by Benjamin Lowe aided by Alan Hayling, who became Chief Exec and Chris Bott who wrote the business and fundraising plan. They took John Pilger on board as acting editor but he left before the newspaper was launched. The decision to base its HQ in Manchester was criticised.
The paper had hoped to sell 800,000 copies but the first issue only managed 500,000 sales and by its eighth issue circulation had gone down to 200,000. The failure of the paper was attributed to inexperienced staff, bad management, poor marketing, a commitment to political correctness and ideological purity at the expense of news values.
The NoS was kept afloat during the 1987 general election campaign thanks to the extension of an additional loan from the TGWU, so that its folding would not embarrass the Labour Party. It went bankrupt immediately after the election and was purchased by Owen Oyston but finally closed down five months later, in November 1987.
Two ex-employees, Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie, wrote a "withering" account of its demise called Disaster!.
NEW BOOK ALERT
Inside story of the kidnapping of Kelvin MacKenzie (up to a point)
ALLAN HALL, of this parish, has written another book, which will be published next January but can be preordered today.
He told the Drone: “Conceived in delirium, written in Berlin, edited in Bavaria, printed in Cambridge — The Duck Press is the incredible story of the kidnapping of one Kelvin Calder MacKenzie! AND it's NOT self-published! (Spoiler alert: Kelvin survives.)
“Other than that, it’s a bit of a romp featuring a grieving father who lost his only son at Hillsborough, a gay crimper called Desmond, a Saaarf London villain named Vic, a Sun femme fatale, a fired Sun hack, a compassionate detective, a man-eating lizard called Cecil and the biggest beast of them all, Keith Rupert Murdoch. Sun staff in the book are sometimes real, sometimes fictional characters.”
The author pledges to squander all royalties on strong drink.
Allan Hall is retired now but was formerly a crime reporter at the Daily Mail, chief reporter at the Daily Star, US editor for The Sun and US editor at the Daily Mirror. He is the author of 30 books on crime, mysteries and the paranormal, including the bestselling Monster about Josef Fritzl.
FRONT PAGES FROM 1997
How papers change yet strangely stay the same
THE DAILIES
THE SUNDAYS
There have been big changes in newspapers in the 28 or so years since these front pages were printed in 1997 but they are still recognisable today.
The Times, The Independent and The Guardian were all broadsheets and the tabloid/compact titles had mostly dropped the definite article from their names. Quite what the point of this was unclear to most of us at the time. If the powers that be thought it would increase circulation it didn’t. Readers dislike change and the experiment was dropped.
The Sundays all look much the same today, except that the News of the World was retitled as the Sun on Sunday. The Sunday Business was turned into a magazine in 2006 and later merged into The Spectator which converted it into the monthly Spectator Business magazine.
DX lawyer Stephen Bacon dies at 79
Stephen Bacon, one of the great Daily Express lawyers and a thoroughly nice man, has died. He was 79 and had been suffering from prostate cancer.
Stephen practised for 11 years in Manchester chambers before joining Express Newspapers from where he retired as head of legal. He later became a media law consultant mainly for The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sun.
Stephen leaves a wife, Felicity, who is a retired Express features sub, and a daughter, Cleo.
Compton Miller dies at 8o
Richard Compton Miller, the last of the gossips from the great days of Fleet Street has died at the age of 80. He had been in hospital with pneumonia when he caught an infection and had also been suffering from Parkinson’s Disease.
The funeral is on Tuesday December 16, at 1.30 at the Temple Church, Middle Temple.
SPOT THE DUMMY
STARMER
LORD CHARLES
DUMMY
STARMER
This is not much of a competition, is it readers? The facts speak for themselves and there’s no budget for a prize.
But as there’s not much happening news wise (apart from Reach predicting annual profits of at least £99m for 2025 despite a 1pc fall in digital revenues) we thought we’d bung these pix in for a laugh.
We admit we should have splashed on the Reach story but it’s a bit boring. We showed it to Lord Drone and he still hasn’t woken up.
WE’VE GONE BANANAS, READERS!
Swim’ll Fix It for the Donald
FRUIT AND NUT
The cheesy grins say it all. Lord Drone’s magnificent organ has staggered to the rescue of Donald Trump as he waits for his Nobel Peace Prize. We sent our columnist Helena Handcart (Mr) to dress up as a banana and hand the President the 10 metre swimming certificate (s)he won in the 1950s.
The Halfwit in the White House (what’s left of it) looks well pleased with the gift, doesn’t he readers?
FLEET STREET GOES TO WAR
An atmospheric picture from 1915 showing men queuing in Fleet Street to sign up to fight in the First World War. It makes one wonder if any of these brave lads ever returned from the killing fields.
This pic was submitted by Tom McCarthy who spotted them on a social media site called Old England in Colour, which features colourised photos.
RUPERT THE RUTHLESS
Rupert Murdoch was a ruthless operator from an early age, says Andrew O'Hagan in The New Yorker. The media tycoon's first job in the UK was a summer placement at the Birmingham Gazette, arranged for him by his father through the chairman of the paper's parent company, Pat Gibson. The editor, Charles Fenby, later recalled that he took young Rupert under his wing, befriending him and showing him everything he could about the business. "And what did he do? He wrote a filthy letter to Pat afterwards saying I should be fired."
Peter Grosvenor dies at 92
PETER Grosvenor, long-standing literary editor of the Daily Express, has died two months short of his 93rd birthday. He joined the Express in 1962 when Beaverbrook was still alive and taking more than a passing an interest in his newspapers. He remembered one call in particular when the Beaver informed him: "Mr Grosvenor, we have more readers in the Social AB class than any other paper. So it's a very important job you do Mr Grosvenor.” There would have been a hint of menace in the Beaver's delivery.
Meine Güte! Vee have vays of making a groß cockup at Der Torygraf, Herr Springer
By DONNA N BLITZEN
DID anyone at the Telegraph think to remind the subs that their paper had been bought by a German publisher?
We only ask because, with incredible timing, the Second World War-obsessed title led its Review section last Saturday with a picture of Adolf Hitler and a swastika with a headline asking: ‘Why would anyone pay to own this?’
The cockup happened one day after Axel Springer, which owns a string of top Teutonic titles including Bild and Die Welt, agreed to purchase the Telegraph Media Group in a deal costing £575 million.
The Daily Mail and General Trust had proposed to buy the company in a £500 million takeover, but the government ordered an investigation on public interest and competition grounds. In the interim, Springer nipped in, with chief executive Mathias Döpfner saying he wanted to “preserve the distinctive character and legacy” of the right-wing paper.
Poignant story behind these three cobblestones buried in memory of DX showbiz writer Ian Lyness in the land he loved so much
By BRIAN EMSLEY
THESE three cobblestones have been interred bearing messages in fond remembrance of former Express showbiz writer, and my friend, Ian Lyness.
The Drone ran an obituary four years ago after he died aged 70 in Colorado, where he lived with his American wife Catherine. But he suffered terrible homesickness for England.
Ian had asked me back in 2011, after first getting lymphoma, that his ashes be scattered in Hadley Wood, near High Barnet. But when his ashes were sent to me by his widow they were blocked by UK Customs for paperwork reasons and ended up in a lockup in Utah. His wife had by then relocated to Maryland.
A profound patriot, Ian would be turning in his urn that he could not rest in England especially when masses of illegal immigrants pour in with no paperwork. So, to honour his request, I and another chum buried cobblestones in the wood, messages penned on them. One of his favourite films was I’m All Right Jack, hence one of the messages.
He was a great supporter of King Richard III, who as a teenager, commanded the Yorkist army that crushed the Lancastrian army on the same spot at the Battle of Barnet. So, I hope Ian’s happy!
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—2026
