.
THE THINGS THEY SAY
There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact
— Arthur Conan Doyle
TODAY’S PAPERS
CARTOON OF THE DAY
MORTEN MORLAND, The Times
Daily Express makes sure that the facts don’t get in the way of a story
(Not that it is much of a story …)
The Daily Express appears to have hijacked the proud motto of the Daily Drone: ‘We may not be first with the news … but we’re always wrong.’
The Express informed its online readers (Sid and Doris Bonkers): The Green Party has sparked an outcry over their demand to legalise prostitution. A party policy document said sex work involving consenting
adults "should be decriminalised”.
There is just one problem, as reader Pat Prentice points out. Referring to the ‘confected anger’, he said: ‘Unfortunately, no one seems to have questioned whether prostitution in Britain already is legal. It is…’
It looks as if the last sub to quit the Express is slowly mouldering on the bonfire.
Not a serious party? Not a serious paper either, sadly. Ho-hum…
Bonfire of the Telly Subbies
FORMER DX Features Sub NICK HILL spotted this on the News on BBC1 on Sunday (February 22). No one in high places picked up the error and it was repeated about an hour later on Countryfile.
Nice headline Nick! — Ed
OUT OF REACH
Newspaper sales figures will now be kept secret
DO you want to know the latest circulation figures for the Express, Mirror and Star? Sorry it’s a secret.
Print circulation figures for the titles will no longer be made public.
Publisher Reach has decided to keep its national newspaper ABC print sales numbers private.
This means they will be available only to ad buyers who agree to keep the data confidential.
Reach follows the Sun and Times publisher News UK, Telegraph Media Group and The Guardian, which have all kept their print figures private for more than four years.
The changes at Reach cover the following titles: Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, Sunday People, Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star, Daily Star Sunday, and Scottish titles Daily Record and Sunday Mail.
Reach’s Sunday tabloids, and the Sunday People in particular, had frequently led the biggest year-on-year circulation declines for a long time.
The company has not explained its decision but it goes without saying that if sales were going up it would trumpet that fact rather than hide it.
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.
How prescient do we have to be? Just a week after we said that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was ‘awaiting the rozzers’ knock’, the rozzers, er, knocked. And it wasn’t even a 66th birthday strippagram. Major story, of course. We are, as the Beeb’s Ben Brown confided, in ‘unchartered’ territory. Yet while AMW was cooling his heels in a custody suite in rural Norfolk his sister was actually in jail. The Princess Royal, as patron of the Butler Trust, was on an official visit to HMP Leeds. It’s the sort of calendar clash that gives PRs nightmares.
The Epstein Net is spread far and wide. Forget royals and British politicians, the list of world figures with links to the paedophile just grows, says The Washington Post. It includes a former Norwegian prime minister; the head of one of the world’s largest logistics firms; a former US treasury secretary; a former president of the UN General Assembly; the chairman of one of America’s biggest law firms; a former French cultural minister; the former director of several prominent US art museums; and a former US senator who served as Bill Clinton’s envoy to Northern Ireland.
Wisely, Sarah Ferguson, not normally known for being demure and flying under the radar, is, for once, keeping her head down. She’s probably also stopped wearing her distinctive gold necklace with the letters GM on it. According to Popbitch, it was a present from her father, Ronald Ferguson. And the GM stood for Ginger Minge.
As it is announced that the £174.50 annual licence fee is to rise to £180 from April, more tales of how shitty and deeply flawed the BBC is. Do any of its 21,000 employees pause to ponder that it’s public money that keeps them in their jobs? Freedom of information requests have revealed huge expense claims. For instance: one-night hotel stay for a Beeb staffer at the plush Soho House in Barcelona. Kerching: £841; taxi ride from Newcastle to Glasgow. Kerching: £403 (single train tickets are £30). Another BBC manager had a three-night stay at the Ameritania Hotel, in New York, for £1,841, or £613 a night. The corporation’s biggest hotel bill last year was £6,548, for two twin rooms for three-nights at the Hilton, in Austin, Texas. That’s £545 a night a person.
Apropos the above, who’d be the new BBC director-general facing the in-tray from hell? Tim Davie, he of the dark suits and white trainers, slips away in April, a casualty of the unwise ‘editing’ of a Trump speech on Panorama. Rhodri Talfan Davies takes over as interim DG ‘while a permanent replacement is sought.’ Spare a thought for whoever this is. They face two major challenges: the president’s $10 billion lawsuit next February in which he is suing for defamation after two sections of a speech were spliced together to make it appear that he encouraged the storming of the Capitol in 2021. Then there is the BBC’s charter renewal, also next year.
The great guessing game at Westminster is who will take over at No.10 when Starmer is inevitably bundled out. Surprisingly, one name increasingly bandied about in the bars is that of former Royal Marine and Selly Oak MP, Al Carns. Lt Col Carns, DSO, OBE, MC, has a distinguished service record and, while in uniform, was military adviser to three Defence Secretaries. He’s already a junior defence minister. Anything else we should know? He’s in the habit of using the parliamentary sauna stark naked, I’m warned.
There was surprise when Israel’s air strikes on parts of Syria following the October 7 massacre received no response. Maybe, says Robert Worth in The Atlantic, it was because the then Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, was playing Candy Crush on his phone at the time — as he does. That wasn’t the only distraction: he had also been having an affair with an adviser and was sleeping with women she procured for him, ‘including the wives of high-ranking Syrian officers.’ Oh, Bashar, where did it all go wrong?
Former Arsenal stalwart Paul Merson has been waxing lyrical on the telly about his old pal, Charlie Oatway. Who? The former Brighton midfielder is probably better known by his full legal name: Anthony Philip David Terry Frank Donald Stanley Gerry Gordon Stephen James Oatway. His parents were die-hard QPR supporters and they named him after each player in the club’s 1973 starting 11. The additional nickname came when his sister said: ‘He’ll look a right Charlie.’ It stuck.
GlobalWarmingHotline: You gloomsters and gainsayers take note: Rainy Britain has actually become 4% sunnier since 1994 — official. But it’s nothing to do with climate change, say researchers in Spain. More like government action aimed at cleaning up air, including embracing renewable energy and electric vehicles. The cleaner air causes clouds to form differently, bringing together larger water droplets that let more sunlight pass through to the ground.
An Haitch’s appraisal of great fly halves prompts a reader to write: ‘We shouldn’t forget that the greatest of them all also worked for the Express. After his tragically early retirement, at 27 with only 25 Wales caps, Barry John wrote a regular column and was sometimes seen being led astray by the Sports Desk in various Fleet Street hostelries. John was truly exceptional, revered as much in New Zealand as he was here; the fact that he edged a fly half called Watkins out of the Welsh team is neither here nor there. But pressure of expectation from Welsh rugby zealots eventually forced him to quit the goldfish bowl, as he called it. A girl curtseying to him in a bank in Cardiff made up his mind. John, who died at 79 in 2024 said: “This wasn’t normal: I became more detached from real people.” Then he met Emery & Co.’
Apropos the above, it’s usual at mawkish times such as this to seek comfort from Max Boyce’s ode The Outside Half Factory, thus: ‘But now the belts are empty/ came a sadness with the dawn/ and the body-press is idle/ and the valley's blinds are drawn/ disaster struck this morning/ when a fitter's mate named Ron/ cracked the mould of solid gold/ that once made Barry John.’ Says it all, doesn’t it?
Littlejohn confides in the Mail that he shaved off his Mandelson-style moustache in the 1980s after a reader’s request for a signed copy of his ‘dishy’ byline pic. It was from a man. Don’t worry, Rich, we never doubted you. (Well, not much — Ed).
The Two Haitches’ favourite columnist, the Marvellous Ms Midgley in The Times, never fails to hit the spot. Here are some bitter asides from her about romance in marriage: What food totally kills a woman’s libido? Wedding cake. How do you stop a man buying you flowers? Marry him. My wife told me that sex is better on holiday. That wasn’t a very nice postcard to receive. And the three stages of marital sex: tri-weekly. Try weekly. Try weakly.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man is well known as a load of bollocks (not forgetting a prominent todger). But the same could also be said of Italy’s state broadcaster Rai’s opening credits for its Winter Olympics coverage. The newspaper Corriere della Sera has pointed out that the famous image has suffered a spot of genitalia erasure. ‘What happened to the Vitruvian Man’s genitals?’ it demanded. Opposition politicians quickly added to the backlash, urging the culture minister to ‘shed full light’ on the redaction. This is the second penis-based controversy of the games: claims that ski jumpers were injecting their private parts to increase the surface area of their suits – giving them an aerodynamic advantage – was dubbed ‘Penisgate’.
OlympicSpecial: I’ve worked out the curling. If we win, it’s our brave Team GB. If we lose, it’s those useless, shifty Jocks.
StatsAFact: Sales of Wuthering Heights have soared by 469% in the UK and more than doubled in the States because of publicity about Emerald Fennell’s controversial film adaptation of the Brontë stringvest ripper (Eh? — Ed).
LetterOfTheWeek: A Guardian reader from South Yorkshire laments the behaviour of his Smart #1 car last Saturday. He writes: ‘Before it did anything else, it said “Love is in the air” and wished me a happy Valentine’s Day. As a matter of principle, I refused to speak to it for the rest of the day.’
TheThingsTheySay: ‘You can ask me the questions, you can make your conspiracy theories 20 times…the answer will be the same. It’s nonsense.’ — Former Mail crime editor Stephen Wright responds to questions in the Celebs v Mail case.
It’sOnlyMoney: What a shame that some local councils are so short of money that they are having to cancel elections. Good job, though, that some managed to squirrel away some spare cash for important projects. Blackburn: £30,000 on asylum seeker mental health; Cheltenham: £780,000 on gagging orders; Crawley: £250,000 on a ‘solar carport project’.
NIBS
Hickey ed sacked for
his addiction to lunch
FORMER William Hickey editor CHRISTOPHER WILSON remembers his predecessor Richard Berens, friend of royalty, habitué of Boodles, who was seldom spotted at his desk.
Legend has it that the recently late Tom Stoppard once wrote about a Morris 1,000 Traveller for The Western Daily Press. He described it as a "half-timbered car".
Eric Price reputedly scoffed later that it proved he would never have made a proper journalist. Allegedly.
News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun and defunct News of the World, has agreed to pay “substantial damages” to Chris Jefferies, who was wrongly arrested in 2010 for the murder of Joanna Yeates, over the invasion of his privacy. (The Guardian)
Former media commentator Roy Greenslade and TV producer Paddy French have launched a crowdfunding bid to pay for publication of a new book looking at the exploits of former News of the World journalist Mazher Mahmood. (Go Fund Me)
BBC Middle East editor Raffi Berg is suing Owen Jones for libel over an article published on the Drop Site website about the BBC’s coverage of Gaza. Jones said he looks forward to “vigorously defending my reporting”. (Jewish News)
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
ONLY IN THE DRONE
Our great columnists
Stand and Deliver
By Hermione Orliff
NEW TODAY
Les tricoteuses are sharpening their needles, a baying mob awaits the clattering tumbril. Apart from being defenestrated from the Line of Accession, what now for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor? Well, don’t hold your breath for an Old Bailey denouement any time soon, says Cocklecarrot. Being Released Under Investigation means there is no time limit for the inquiries, which, in Andrew’s case, are likely to be complex. He is also liable for further questioning at any time. Journalists caught up in the Establishment witch-hunt launched when Starmer was DPP know all about that. As we have noted, they were also investigated under the umbrella of Misconduct in Public Office, a fairly whiskery Common Law offence. After their dawn raid and interview they were released on police bail. It’s a sort of limbo: private and public life is on hold; careers are disrupted. As we now know, it was all bullshit. Nearly 30 News International journalists, who were charged, were eventually cleared. For some, this process, from arrest to acquittal, took three years and three months. But, as the CPS and the police well knew, conviction is neither here nor there when the Process is the Punishment.
Apropos the above, I see that the famous/infamous pic of a stunned AM-W slumped in a car after his arrest has not only been splashed over newspapers and websites worldwide but has been on show in the world’s most-visited art gallery. What are described as ‘TikTok pranksters’ put the snap on the wall of the Louvre. Fuck knows what that was all about but it was removed after 15 minutes. Meanwhile, Reuters photographer Phil Noble, who, acting on a tip, drove from Manchester to the very cop shop in Norfolk in which Andrew was held, has received universal praise for his part in what he calls ‘a proper old school news day’. Phil took six shots: two showed police, two were blank and one was out of focus. But the other… the best photo he’s ever taken? No, he admits. The most important? Yes, 100%.
One of the greatest scandals of British public life is the all-pervading quangocracy. Quangos, astonishingly, account for a third of government spending. When you consider the bizarre things they spend our money on it’s not surprising. Take Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: freedom of information requests reveal Britain’s largest quangos held a total of 1,078 EDI events in 2024 and 2025. The Environment Agency and UK Research and Innovation topped the list for the most with 295 and 128 events respectively. OFGEM came third with 106. Events include: LGBT+ Poetry Workshop by the House of Lords; reclaiming narratives in Kew’s colonial archive - staff talk by Kew Gardens; World Hijab Day 2025: celebrating the value of hijab by OFGEM; drawing workshop – celebrating queer bodies by The British Museum; and an Environment Agency focus on LGBT children’s books and ‘tree bathing’ (Eh? — Ed).
A campaigning weekly newspaper reporter’s image was stuck on to a punchbag in the town hall with the words Punch Me. Joe McCann, of the Melksham News in Wiltshire, has recently been in the forefront of a series of reports on the Town Council including coverage of its faulty CCTV system and a row over the scrapping of former dog park equipment. Joe got up at a council meeting and said: ‘Within this council building, there is a punch bag with my face cut out and stuck to it, with the word “punch me” written at the bottom. I’d like the council’s response.’ Officials immediately launched an investigation. Mayor Safi Rabey said: ‘This is not acceptable and you have every right to be furious.’ Jonathan Heawood, director of the Public Interest News Foundation, said: ‘It’s appalling. If journalists can’t do their jobs safely, then we all suffer. I hope that from now on, Joe McCann and all local journalists get treated with the respect they deserve.’
New public lavatories installed in Tokyo are transparent, reports the Drone’s Far East correspondent Lew Armitage Shanks. The idea is that users can see whether they are clean and safe before entering. Once locked, the loo’s walls turn opaque for privacy as you go about your business. You hope.
Nice tale about Jesse Jackson, the civil rights campaigner, who has died aged 84. Humble beginnings? You betcha. He was born in the poor town of Greenville, South Carolina to a 16-year-old schoolgirl and her 33-year-old married neighbour. When his mother married another man two years later, the couple had their own son and Jesse was sent to live with his maternal grandmother in a tiny house around the corner. It was a tough start. ‘People ask, “Why is Jesse Jackson running for the White House?”’ he said in 1984. ‘They’d never seen the house I’m running from.’
An astonishing £10.6 billion in Universal Credit was given to households with at least one non-working migrant between January 2024 and June 2025, according to research by the Centre for Migration Control. Across the same time span, a total of £15.1 billion was paid out to households where at least one resident was a foreign national. Figures released by the Department for Work and Pensions show there were 771,000 unemployed migrants receiving Universal Credit as of January, 2026. That’s a 55% jump since April, 2022. As the CMC points out, £6.7 billion a year works out at £251 from every household in Britain just to support households with an unemployed migrant. Or hire 158,611 new police officers…(More It’sOnlyMoney below).
Tired of being tired? What you need is a good ‘sleepcation’. It’s the latest travel trend, says Natasha Dangoor in The Wall Street Journal. Gen Zs and millennials are shunning sunrise hikes and sea swims and checking into fancy hotels for some serious shut-eye. Special “sleep packages” offer CBD gummies, bath bombs, weighted blankets and satin lavender eye masks, as well as extensive pillow menus with options ranging from “bamboo charcoal memory foam” to “honeycomb hole”. One travel blogger banked 16 hours on the first night of her doze-filled trip last year, then ate breakfast, had a bath and headed straight back to bed.
Competitors at the Winter Olympics have set a new record. In just three days they’ve got through a mountain (SWIJDT?) of free condoms provided for them. Organisers had to restock supplies. Spokesman Mark Adams said there were 2,800 athletes and 10,000 johnnies. ‘Go figure, as they say.’
Strong winds which blew sand off a beach in the east of Scotland briefly exposed an archeological goldmine. A couple walking their dogs discovered what experts have now documented as the country’s first examples of ancient preserved human and animal footprints. Radiocarbon dating puts them at 2,000 years old. Quick thinking by Ivor Campbell and Jenny Seddon saved the find: they contacted a local archaeologist who alerted University of Aberdeen researchers. The identification was confirmed before the tide washed it all away. (Well done for not resorting to a tedious ‘race against time’ piece. — Ed.)
A luxury passenger ship that sank in Lake Michigan more than 150 years ago has been discovered 20 miles offshore. The 217-foot steamer Lac La Belle left Milwaukee on October 13, 1872, with 53 passengers and crew, as well as goods, including barley, flour, pork, and whiskey. After two hours, it began leaking uncontrollably and encountered a storm, forcing passengers to escape by lifeboat. Eight people died.
Forget gold and other precious metals. Since the 1950s, Italian bank Credito Emiliano has accepted giant wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano as collateral for business loans. The bank’s HQ is in a region known for its cheesemaking, and local producers requiring cash get it from the bank in exchange for their 80-pound parmesan wheels. At any given time the bank has about 440,000. As a matter of interest (SWIJDT?), the wheels increase in value as the cheese ages.
BrokenBritain: A utility company alerts a friend, who has a small business, that she is £8,000 in arrears. She disputes this and, after an investigation, is subsequently told she is, in fact, £4,000 in credit.
HeadlineOfTheWeek: Bar Shut After Public Urination, Mass Brawls And Attempts To Sing Toxic By Britney Spears - Star.
TheThingsTheySay: ‘Anyone seen my little screwdriver: you know, the one with a yellow handle I got in a cracker at Christmas?’ — orthopaedic surgeon to operating theatre staff after completing knee replacement on Guide and Mentor.
StatsAFact: 12% of Americans think Noah (who had an Ark) was married to Joan (of Arc).
It’sOnlyMoney: Britain is now borrowing an eye-watering £500 million every single day. To put that into perspective, that’s the equivalent of swallowing the entire lifetime tax contributions of almost 400 households each day with no sign of restraint from the government. The result is a national debt hovering around 95% of GDP, with interest payments alone exceeding £100 billion a year.
Paddy Clancy, 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.
OUT OF REACH
The ones that got away
THREE’S COMPANY: Bob Watson, Shaggy Shearer and Dolly Dalton
By BOB WATSON
DOOMED news blooper group Reach may be hurtling towards oblivion —but it didn’t stop a select band of former hardy Daily Express subs from raising a glass to the good old times on Monday.
They convened at The Kings Arms in Roupell Street, a salubrious back-street boozer in the shadow of the London Eye and Waterloo station.
One cynical hack — who spent more than 20 years at the paper when it was reputedly the world’s greatest organ — said there was undoubtedly more at the gathering than in the decimated Express newsroom after Retch’s countless cuts down the years.
He sighed: “We Expressians always knew how to party so it was nice to have a wet re-run with a few old chums along with a few laughs. It was slipping down a treat by the end!”
The star studded line-up included Collette Harrison, Nick “Dolly” Dalton, Chris “Shaggy” Shearer, Andy Jones, Jon “Smudger” Smith, Tony “Boggy” Reid, Bob Watson, Ray Williams, Bill “Hat and a Hat” Dickson, Rab Anderson, Allison Randell and Andy Waller.
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.”
Hot metal, hot off the press
PETER PHEASANT, pictured, who retired as night editor of the Nottingham Post five years ago, has turned his talents to writing.
His debut novel, Manfishing, is about the exploits of an ambitious young reporter on a weekly newspaper in the dying days of hot metal.
Manfishing is set in the fictional Midlands town of Brexham when stories were bashed out on typewriters in smoky newsrooms, long before the age of the internet.
It follows the exploits of Simon Fox, a small-time reporter with big ideas. Anything that’s fit to print makes the pages of the broadsheet Brexham Bugle, from court cases and council reports to weddings and whippet racing.
As Fox seeks out the next front-page scoop, he meets a cast of colourful characters, including a disabled pensioner who is being terrorised out of his home and an Auschwitz survivor pleading for help to save her sick grandchild.
But he knows nothing of the secret alliance between a corrupt detective and a violent skinhead.
Meanwhile, Fox is grappling with tragedy at home. And when the Bugle’s century of independence ends with a takeover, he is on a collision course with the new owners.
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)
EXCLUSIVE FROM THE DRONE GRAINY PIX DEPT
London Evening News staff meet for lunch, 45 years on
By BARRY GARDNER
Forty-five years after it closed the London Evening News managed to assemble most of its first team for a celebratory Christmas lunch on Tuesday (Dec 9).
Brilliantly organised by the last LEN News Editor Charles Garside, twenty-one former members of the ‘happiest office in Fleet Street’ gathered at The Punch Tavern, just around the corner from the old Associated Newspapers offices.
There were toasts to absent friends as several dozen bottles of wine were demolished.
As a mark of appreciation for his skills in corralling the motley crew of reporters, subs and feature writers Charles was presented with a rare copy of the last edition of the LEN, dated October 31st, 1980, signed by everyone present.
“Still a bloody good read,” he said.
Those at the lunch: Mike Ryder, Guy Simpson, Lee Rodwell, Paul Henderson, David Meilton, Colin Adamson, Helen Minsky, Kevin Murphy, Mia Scammell, Michael Crozier, Peter Dobbie, John McShane, Spencer Bright, John Blake, Charles Garside, Andrew Hogg, Jeff Edwards, Simon Brodbeck, Stan Slaughter, Ann Morris, Barry Gardner.
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.
Forsooth! Here’s a clue, you silly arses
Another headline question to which the answer is No
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 the 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'.”
A TOPPING TALE IN THE TIMES
WE wouldn’t normally feature a story about farting in the Drone but if it’s good enough for The Times it’s good enough for Lord Drone’s mighty super soaraway organ.
But the following item in the TMS Diary yesterday is too funny not to share:
WIND OF CHANGE
The era of gender-neutral lavatories has its perils. The cricket commentator David Lloyd says he recently went into one and was embarrassed when he suffered a stentorian attack of flatulence.
Such things might go unremarked upon in the gents, but it would be dreadfully embarrassing if a lady were present. Lloyd was comforted and amused, therefore, when the woman in the next stall piped up and said: "Is that you, Maureen?"
The Drone picture desk was asked to provide a suitable illustration for this story but we are not sure the result, left, is entirely appropriate.
Go on, dear reader, you decide — oh and apologies to all Maureens.
A PLAGUE ON YOUR PLAGIARISM
Daily Express nicked our stories, say two writers
Two journalists have accused the Daily Express of plagiarising their stories and publishing the copy under another reporter’s byline.
Daniel Puddicombe, a freelance journalist, said he is livid after his Telegraph feature on a coast-to-coast train in Mexico was was apparently copied by the Daily Express site. The piece is under another journalist’s name, and was published six days after The Telegraph.
Puddicombe said he is certain it is his work that has been lifted as he is “the first and only non-Mexican journalist who travelled on that railway line and to have been in contact with the military and the Navy”.“There is absolutely no chance that anybody else could have done that,” he told Press Gazette.
He added another piece he wrote for the Telegraph about “Portugal’s Presidential Train” has also been “recycled” for the site, but it “at least references me and my original piece”. This second article did not appear to be written by AI, according to Pangram.
Both of Puddicombe’s articles lifted by the Daily Express were published on 18 October. He received an offer of £100 per article after reaching out to the Daily Express, which he declined and described as an “insult” as “less than one-third” of what he was paid per article.
Another journalist, who asked not to be named, claimed the Daily Express lifted their piece and published it under someone else’s name. It did refer to the journalist’s original work, but they were prompted to invoice the Daily Express by a journalist Facebook group. They were again offered £100.
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.
McEntee and chums, out on the toot again
It’s a grand life being a Daily Mail Diarist. Just ask John McEntee, pictured left, who writes the Ephraim Hardcastle column.
Dash off a few pars, leave the subs to clean it up, and saunter off to the pub.
This is the life of John McEntee, who wrote on Facebook: “After Richard Compton-Miller’s funeral in the Temple Church there was a grand reception nearby where we raised numerous glasses to Rochard [sic].
“I made the mistake of sneaking downstairs on arrival ignoring the cloakroom and availing of the disabled toilets. I dropped my trilby into the nearby washbasin as I commenced to Pee and heard this gurgle as the single tap automatically activated and gently filled my upturned hat.
“Did not diminish the joy of seeing my old friend and Daily Mail legend Geoff Levy with the evergreen Liz Brewer, My colleague Helen Minsky and the inestimable Adam Helliker. Lovely afternoon of memories and refreshment.”
I think we all felt refreshed for that. Thanks John.
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.
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
