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QUOTE OF THE DAY
‘One Martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough’ — James Thurber
We’re not ones to gossip — but sometimes it can't be avoided
Another day another lunch, where would a chap be without a hearty midday nosebag? These five chums got together at Lord Drone’s favourite eaterie, Boulevard Brasserie in London’s Covent Garden to discuss their achievements … films, TV series, books, newspaper columns and just having a good time. Have you guessed who they are? Let us assist you…
Hello dear, this is Elsie, er, Elvis Presley is dead
GEORGE DEARSLEY tells how a quiet night on the dogwatch on the Daily Mail in Manchester was somewhat enlivened by a call from Elsie, a lonely widow who had been listening to an American radio station and revealed that Elvis Presley had died.
LABOUR LOOKALIKE
BINGO MILIBAND
Great headline Kelvin, but
it nearly got me beaten up
BY GEORGE DEARSLEY
Watching the brilliant BBC crime drama Sherwood brought back a frightening memory. The show is set in a former mining village and repeatedly flashes back to the miners' strike of 1984.
I was in Nottinghamshire one day for the Daily Star, covering a visit by miners' leader Arthur Scargill, the day most national papers had printed an inflammatory picture of Scargill apparently making a Nazi salute. Every paper, except one, ran the picture.
The exception was The Sun, where sympathetic print union members refused to publish the image because of editor Kelvin MacKenzie's clever but crass headline: MINE FUHRER.
The striking miners were incensed by the general negative Press coverage and when a group saw me they decided to take revenge. I would have suffered a severe beating had I not been about 400 yards from a police station.
I might have beaten some sprint records but the cop shop saved me. Dangerous times.
Revel Barker
One of the great characters of Fleet Street, Revel Barker, former Sunday Mirror foreign editor and later Mirror Group managing editor, has died at his home on the Maltese island of Gozo. He was 79.
Revel also ran the Gentleman Ranters website, a rival to the Daily Drone which originally chronicled Fleet Street memories but later switched to writing about whisky.
The crazy night Expressmen Terry Pattinson and Harry Dempster failed to get the Royal Picture
of the Year — Princess Anne in a mini-skirt helping to bump start her boyfriend’s car
Bugged by MI5, Percy Hoskins
of the Express
PERCY HOSKINS of the Daily Express was one of the great crime reporters of his age. He was so well thought of that Lord Beaverbrook provided him with a rent-free flat in London’s Park Lane.
Hoskins, pictured, who died in 1989 aged 84, had a huge contact list which was the envy of Fleet Street. It was said of him: “If you are in trouble, you should call Percy before your lawyer.”
Now a fascinating story in Press Gazette has revealed that in the early 1940s, Hoskins was bugged by MI5 who were concerned by the stories he was producing, often connected to the war effort, black marketeering, information about captured spies, and inside knowledge about the flight to Britain of Nazi Rudolph Hess.
The Road to Perdition
By Helena Handcart
NEW
A reader writes: ‘I am preparing a piece on terrorist organisations (freedom fighters as the BBC would call them) and welcome readers’ contributions. I am particularly interested in the Bader Douglas Group, the Professorial Wing of the E.R.A, Hummus, the Red Army Fiction and the Shining Pith.’ (As in taking the? — Ed).
Fellow diarist the Hibernian imp pads out his Mail column on Page 19 with an item about EastEnders being ousted for the Boris interview with Laura K. Trouble is, on Page 2 a story trumpets that the programme had been cancelled because the hapless BBC inquisitor had mistakenly sent her briefing notes to the former PM. Oops all round. But the TV page is totally exonerated (I’ve been there).
A buried 500lb bomb has exploded seven decades after being dropped on an airfield in Japan during the war. The blast, which caused a crater 23ft wide and 3ft deep, closed Miyazaki airport. No one was hurt.
New York’s achingly trendy twats have devised a new way to breach the barriers of preposterousness: hanging out in the launderette. More and more are supplementing washers and driers with bars, cafés and bookshops, says The Wall Street Journal. Pearl Lee’s Washtub in Brooklyn hosts jazz, reggae and comedy nights with food and drink to ‘ease the chore of laundry with libations’.
A groupie passes on the true story of a female fan asking Trueman Capote to autograph her navel in a restaurant. Her over-refreshed husband wasn’t pleased. He blundered over, whipped out his tackle and demanded: ‘And autograph this!’ Capote considered and replied: ‘I don’t know if I can autograph it but perhaps I could initial it.’
Thanks to Guido Fawkes for digging up the following quote from Labour Minister Chris Bryant at a conference fringe event: ‘My memory of the general election is we basically didn’t say we were going do anything.’
The TV debut of Friends may have been 30 years ago and the show off air since 2004 but it’s still a force to be reckoned with, writes Yogi Baird our TV Reporter. Last year it was the eighth most streamed with 25 billion minutes, according to Nielsen. The main cast members still make more than $20 million each annually in syndication. Nice work etc.
A US reader comments on an FT article which lists why Europe has underperformed the States since 2000 and will continue to do so: ‘There are two kinds of Europeans — those who are dynamic, resourceful and hardworking and those who stayed behind.’
SportSpot: Dutch footie stars seem to be going through a bad patch just now. International Quincy Promes (crazy name, crazy guy etc) is holed up in Dubai avoiding charges of cocaine trafficking and stabbing his cousin. Meanwhile, former Wigan defender Ronnie Stam has been accused of importing two tonnes of coke into the Netherlands. Still, it’s looking good for the Dutch lags’ five-a-side team.
Jimmy Carter wasn’t expected to last a week when he entered hospice care 19 months ago. Now he has just celebrated his 100th birthday and has lived through 40% of US history since the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
A daft draft bill in California, which would have required new vehicles automatically to beep when drivers exceeding the speed limit by at least 10mph, has been vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom. As someone once said: Strange people, the Yanks.
Melting glaciers on the Matterhorn have forced Switzerland and Italy to adjust their borders. Many of the dividing lines between the two countries were drawn along glacier ridge lines no longer there.
You think it’s been a tad damp of late but try living in the US as hurricane season gears up. Helene and a storm which preceded it dumped 40 billion gallons of water in Florida and surrounding states. That’s Lake Tahoe or 60 million Olympic swimming pools or 619 days of water flow over Niagra Falls.
ClichéClash (a brand new thread): The dreaded phrase ‘brand new’ reared its ugly head (sic), as it does regularly, in one of those clickbait crapheaps that pass for online newspapers. I received my first bollocking in journalism many years ago for lazily using it. The Chief Sub — Ray Goulding, if you must know — put me right: ‘Why fucking brand new? Just new will do.’
UntouchedByHumanSub: ‘terraced council house’ — Brendan O’Neill, Telegraph. ‘Terraced house goes on market’ — Sun. ‘Brits brace for travel carnage’ – Sun. ‘Freezing chill’ — Express.
TheThingsTheySay: ‘An extra cover drive off Chaminda Vas which went to mid wicket.’ —Stuart Broad, recalls his first runs in Test cricket.
HeadlineOfTheWeek: Moustached Man Refused To Leave Female Nightclub Lavatory Because He ‘Identifies As A Woman’ — Telegraph.
Observer sale: Staff are the last to know
Jaws dropped at Guardian HQ when news began to circulate that Tortoise Media was in talks to buy The Observer, reports Popbitch. The paper’s blindsided staff were hauled into a meeting with management just moments before its competitors began reporting the news in their own outlets.
As for the rest of the Guardian Media staff, they found out about the proposed deal not from any official email, but from TVs beaming Sky News into their newsroom.
How much I dislike
the Daily Mail
By Brian Bilston
I would rather
eat Quavers that are six week’s stale,
blow dry the hair of Gareth Bale,
listen to the songs of Jimmy Nail,
than read one page of the Daily Mail.
If I were bored
in a waiting room in Perivale,
on a twelve hour trip on British Rail
or a world circumnavigational sail,
I would not read the Daily Mail.
I would happily read
the complete works of Peter Mayle,
the autobiography of Dan Quayle,
selected scripts from Emmerdale,
but I couldn’t ever read the Daily Mail.
Far better to
stand outside in a storm of hail,
be blown out to sea in a powerful gale
then swallowed by a humpback whale
than have to read the Daily Mail.
Even if
I were blind
and it was the only thing
in Braille,
I still would not read
the Daily Mail.
Stand and Deliver
By Hermione Orliff
As we collectively tremble ahead of Rachel Reeves’s first Budget, you’d think less of me if I didn’t remind you of another Labour Chancellor’s monumental fuck-up at the turn of the century. Yes, Gordon Brown sold the UK’s gold reserves at an average price of $275-$276 an ounce. Latest price? Ahem, a record $2,708.70 an ounce.
England’s ODI captain Harry Brook may be a brilliant player but does he worship at the altar of the Spirit of Cricket? He is accused of time-wasting to engineer a draw in the rain-affected final match to tie the series against Australia. Some members of the Drone’s Third XI even question whether he went to the right school but what do they know? (Especially about winning — Ed).
Michelin star? Not always a guarantee of success or longevity for restaurants, says The Economist. Researchers analysed New York eateries which opened between 2000 and 2014. Those that won a star were more likely to close than those that didn’t. Suppliers and landlords tend to use the award as an excuse to raise their prices and chefs are more likely to be poached by rivals.
The marvellous Maggie Smith, who has just died at 89, was famously grumpy. Michael Palin once said: ‘Maggie in a bad mood is clearly a few degrees worse than anyone else in a bad mood.’ When asked if she’d like to take one of her hits, Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, to Broadway, she replied witheringly: ‘I wouldn’t take it to Woking.’
Coca-Cola’s new flavour, Spice, has hit it out of the park. Yes? Er, no. It’s been pulled from the shelves after just six months because neither you nor anyone you know was remotely interested in it.
The existence of Mozart proves the existence of God, as Old Aunt Marje Rambleshanks used to say. So what a thrill that a previously undiscovered work has turned up in Leipzig 233 years after his death. The 12-minute Serenade in C was composed when Mozart was aged between 10 and 13.
The pilot of a small aircraft forced to make an emergency landing blocking a highway in Wyoming was completely unfazed. He told motorists: ‘I’ve got the tools right here. I’ll just open it up, figure out what’s going on and get her fixed.’ He tinkered with the engine for a few minutes…and then took off.
A 1,000-year-old seed discovered in a cave in the Judean desert in the 80s has DNA links to a tree which, although lost today, was mentioned in the Bible, says ILF Science. Boffins nurtured the seed over 14 years until it grew into a 10ft tree related to the Frankincense and Myrrh family.
A top Chinese economist who, rashly, criticised Xi Jinping’s handling of the country’s economy in a private group chat has… disappeared, reports The Wall Street Journal.
New York Mag’s Political Reporter Olivia Nuzzi has been put on leave after disclosing an ‘emotional and digital’ (sic) relationship with former independent presidential candidate RFK Jr.
TheThingsTheySay: ‘The ancient splendours of Downing Street, as heir of Pitt, Wellington, Disraeli, Gladstone, Lloyd George and Churchill, mean little to him. He is an uninteresting man, scuttling about in vast, echoing halls and chambers built for far bigger people.’ — Peter Hitchens, MoS, on the toolmaker’s son. (They said the same about Attlee — Ed)
Is England reversing the trend on obesity? New NHS data show that the number of overweight children has fallen to the lowest since 2000; obesity in adults has been stable for five years.
SportSpot: São Paulo FC raised the ante before their Copa Libertadores tie against Botafogo by hiring a blimp, emblazoned with the words ‘Vamos São Paolo’, to fly over the city. Ahem, it crashed into a house and then they lost the match on penalties.
UntouchedByHumanSub: Britain Braces For 400-Mile Wall Of Water And 50kmph Gusts — Express Online. (Not only mixing miles and kilometres but 50kmph — 31mph in real money — wouldn’t even disturb the editor’s syrup)
TitleTattle (books’ original names) The Last Man in Europe = 1984.
HeadlineOfTheWeek: ‘Rizzle Kicks’ Jordan Stephens Flaunts Exclusive £50 Lidl Croissant Handbag In Greenwich’ — Mirror
ONLY IN THE DRONE
Our top columnists
ON OTHER PAGES
WHO FLUNG FLAN: Watch out Pottsy, he’s behind you! Picture editing courtesy of Drone Laboratories
Custard Pie Corner
2 PAUL POTTS
By ALASTAIR McINTYRE
IF there is a face most deserving of the full custard pie treatment it is that of Paul Potts.
He was parachuted into the Daily Express as political editor in the late 1980s and became deputy editor to Nick Lloyd. It was reported at the time that Potts was liked by Mrs Thatcher who recommended him to the chairman, Lord Stevens.
The trouble was he wasn’t up to the job and had poor interpersonal skills. He was shaky on news values and hadn’t a clue about newspapers. Potts was responsible for making the edition late more than anyone else at the time — and there were quite a few candidates.
Just when a page was ready to go, Potts would appear red-faced from the ‘executive suite’ and instruct the Night Editor to rip it up. This indecision happened night after night with scant regard for deadlines.
Potts went on to head the Press Association and at least made some success at that, turning the agency’s fortunes around. This allowed him to jump on the executive bandwagon and he was made a director of Times Newspapers. Astonishingly, he was later made a CBE (that’s one below a knighthood) and is now retired.
News in Brief
Guardian Media Group is considering a sale of The Observer to Tortoise Media after reporting rising losses for the last financial year. The company reported a fall in revenue for the year to 31 March 2024 after a four-year growth streak, although digital reader revenues were up by 8%. The publisher said the 2.5% year-on-year drop to revenue of £257.8m reflected a “market slowdown in advertising and sustained structural pressures on print”.
The Guardian has agreed a two-year pay deal that will see the salaries of most of its journalists increase by 3%, backdated to the start of April. The deal will apply to all Guardian News and Media staff on permanent or fixed-term contracts who are unionised via the National Union of Journalists chapel.
The BBC’s Clive Myrie was paid at least £66,000 by police, financial services industry and others, reports Press Gazette as full details of the corporation’s journalist outside earnings for July 2023 to June 2024 were revealed.
Drone howling: nul points
The smug pride on Alastair McIntyre’s face says it all, he has received high points from fellow news sub and good friend Bob Smith.
The trouble is we can’t quite remember what the contest was. The pic was taken at night (the clock says 11.23pm) in the Daily Express London newsroom in the late 1970s.
It could be the Jack Atkinson Howling Competition in which contestants yelp some of the chief foreign sub’s sayings, such as ‘HERE DOWN PLEASE’ or ‘I THANK YOU MOST KINDLY’. (Atkinson, a collector of antique guns, once threatened to use one on McIntyre). Alternatively it could have been a vowel howl.
In the background, the less important work of completing the third edition is proceeding.
How different it must be to newsrooms today where subs don’t wear ties, let alone a monocle. Mostly, they work from home in their pants.
LOOKALIKE?
PRESTON STARMER
Sir — I note the astonishing resemblance of Sir Keir Starmer to Preston, the evil mechanical hound who featured in a Wallace and Gromit adventure.
Can they possibly be related?
ARDMAN FAN
No, me neither — Ed
THE GREAT HOLE OF FLEET STREET
By JUSTIN COCKLECARROT, Legal Editor
AFTER years of being the famed home of national journalism, Fleet Street is to become a major legal centre for the City of London.
The redevelopment of Salisbury Square, opposite the old Express and Telegraph buildings, will include 18 courtrooms and will combine all the Square Mile’s existing courts— except for the Old Bailey — into one building and become the new headquarters for the City of London Police.
A ceremony to mark the “bottoming out” of the basement has taken place, marking out the completion of the deepest excavation phase of the project, reaching 18 meters deep between Whitefriars Street and Salisbury Square. This milestone was achieved by excavating 62,270 cubic meters to form a three-storey basement.
No pubs were affected in this massive development, the Drone was assured last night.
Sex scandal which led to Lloyd Turner’s outrageous sacking
THE Monica Coghlan affair of 1986 is a more-or-less forgotten scandal today. But readers of the Drone remember it well.
CHRISTOPHER WILSON is one of them and recalls his part in the affair in which Lord (Jeffrey) Archer had given a prostitute called Monica Coghlan (pictured) £2,000 through an intermediary to leave the country and say nothing.
The subsequent libel case led to the grossly unfair sacking of Daily Star editor Lloyd Turner, a superb operator, after the paper claimed (correctly as it later turned out) that Archer had had sex with Ms Coghlan.
AUGUST ABCs
Star Sunday sinks below CityAM
The Daily Star Sunday now has a smaller circulation than the free City AM for the first time since the business newspaper launched 19 years ago.
The average Daily Star Sunday weekly circulation fell by 2% month-on-month and 16% year-on-year in August to 66,994, ABC figures show.
Sunshine, crab sandwiches and a banned book on the beach
People tend to forget that it was possible for the editor to contact you on holiday before the advent of the mobile phone. The drill was to provide the office with the telephone number of the place you were staying (although many of us conveniently forgot to do this).
ALAN FRAME almost choked on his crab sandwich when a messenger arrived at his Devon cottage with a red hot copy of the banned book Spycatcher.
Garth Pearce tells all, 51 years on
A trawl of the internet looking for a pic of Percy Hoskins (of which more later) has uncovered an excellent piece by reporter Garth Pearce about his early days on the Daily Express in 1973.
This is of particular interest to many of the leading lights of the Drone who joined the Express at the same time.
Garth, pictured, tells of meeting reporter Frank Howitt on his first day after getting the job following an interview by a carpet-slippered managing editor Eric Raybould.
And dear old Norman Luck was on hand to instruct the new boy on how to fiddle (sorry) fill in his expenses.
Those were the days!
Ludgate Circus 1896, when the shit shovelling was a little different
By ORSON CARTER
HERE’S a pic of journalists’ old stamping ground that we haven’t seen before. It’s Ludgate Circus looking up Fleet Street in 1896. Little has changed in the intervening 128 years — apart from the horse-drawn carriages.
It is so atmospheric you can almost smell the horse manure but whether that was preferable to today’s diesel fumes is a moot point. It just shows the area is no stranger to shit-shovelling.
And just fancy that — there is still a clock in exactly the same position today.
TERRY MANNERS reports: Interesting to see the picture of Fleet Street in 1896. There may have been horse manure but at least you could cross the road. Here is an engraving by Gustave Doré of a traffic jam in the Street 20 years earlier. Dung wasn't the real problem then, it was the horses themselves. They often fell dead on the job and their bodies would be left for weeks to rot so that they could be easily cut up later and taken away, because they were often too heavy otherwise.
Ah, those were the days … pubs, good humour and silly japes. Didn’t we veteran hacks have a wonderful time in the old Fleet Street?
This pic of the celebrated journalist Hannen Swaffer and chums was even before our time in 1955 — he’s the one in the mask and the fag.
The photo was published along with others in 1988 by The Observer which was about to up sticks and retreat from Fleet Street.
Fortunately, the piece, which chronicles the old pubs of the Street of Broken Dreams is still available and can be viewed HERE
Raising a glass to the pubs of old Fleet St
Fleet Street through the ages
ROGER WATKINS has been rummaging through his dusty drawers again and found his collection of pictures of the Street of Shame. There’s a few that we haven’t published before so we’re putting the lot up on the Drone for old time’s sake.
How the mighty is fallen
The iconic Daily Express building in Fleet Street is looking a shadow of its former self as this pic taken by NICK PIGOTT proves. A massive redevelopment has left the Black Lubyanka high and dry.
The photo is taken from the rear of the building which is not the structure many of us worked in. This was demolished in the 1990s leaving only the listed foyer which was so impressive.
Nick said: “No printing presses, no composing room, not even a Poppinjay! I kinda felt sorry for it; it looked so small and vulnerable.”
A Harrowing thought …
Sir — In your re-run of the Observer piece on Fleet Street pubs I was interested to see our old pal, Terry Manners, pictured perching on a stool at the bar of the Harrow.
It was obviously during his Boulevardier-Bookmaker Phase.
He still has that jacket, I’m told, but nowadays only wears it in the garden when there’s a nip in the air.
POPPINJAY, EC4
It looks more like Keith Waterhouse to me — and isn’t that Gill Martin and Susie Boniface at the bar? I think we should be told — Ed
BARRY GARDNER adds: The young lady sitting (centre) looks remarkably like Patsy John, the unrivalled and superb Evening News newsdesk secretary who helped kick-start the Fleet Street careers of many young reporters. Great personality who epitomised the fun days of news-gathering.
ROGER WATKINS asks from his armchair: Is that Osbert Lancaster serving behind the bar? It isn’t Jean. (This passes for a Watkins ‘joke’ — Ed)
JEFF BOYLE remembers: Great pic of the 'Backarrer' as we Mail subs used to call the tiny back bar of our watering hole, The Harrow, taken a few years before my defection to the Express. The guy serving the drinks may look like Osbert Lancaster, but is in fact barman Len, whose dulcet tones at 11pm always rang out: 'Haven't you fucking lot got homes to go to?' Ah, memories.
1966 and all that: Picture
that sparked memories for an
old Folkestone Herald hand
There’s a few familiar faces here — Bob Smith, John Fox-Clinch and Nigel Lilburn — three fresh-faced young men at the Folkestone Herald in 1966 who went on to have successful careers on the Daily Express. The pic brought back memories for junior reporter CHRIS WILLIAMSON, (now aged 75) who has related them to the Drone.
Bob Smith said: ‘What memories from Folkestone. The girl behind me is Marianne Hewson who later became my (briefly) fiancée. George “Wiggy” Rayner was an ancient part-timer who subbed the cinema listings etc. He had been gassed in WW1 and was completely bald hence his hideous ginger wig.
‘Poor old George had a teeny issue with alcohol and used to pour lighter fuel on to cotton wool, tuck it in to his cheek and suck it during those difficult times when the pub was closed. He used to smoke and I always thought that one day he would breathe out as he lit up and incinerate himself.’
Fond farewell to Phil Durrant
TRIBUTE: Henry Macrory rereads the eulogy he delivered at Phil’s funeral, watched by Mike Snaith, Lynne Bateson, Penny Meyrick,
Viv Watts and Charles Garside
By THE EDITOR
A WAKE to celebrate the life of former Sunday Express production chief Phil Durrant drew a huge turnout at Fleet Street’s Punch Tavern on Wednesday.
Phil, who died aged 73 earlier this year, had not wanted a fuss, a fact that was ignored by the dozens of friends and colleagues who drank to his memory.
Those who attended included Dick Dismore, Craig Mackenzie, Deborah Stone, Nick Dalton, Stewart Kershaw, Andrew Waller, Bill Dickson, Chris Shearer, Mike Hughes, Tony Boullemier, Jenny Hjul, Ken Parker, Viv Watts, Steve Usher, Ray King, Colin Simpson, Jon Smith, Jim Cassells, plus many others whose names I have forgotten or can't recall. Apologies to them, I blame the beer.
The wake was organised by Phil’s widow Helen and Peter ’Stewpot’ Steward
to whom thanks must be paid for a splendid buffet.
Brian’s 3,500 miles of smiles thanks to the Daily Express
The smiles say it all — this was delighted Daily Express reader Brian Barnett and his wife Doreen celebrating in New York in 1958 after winning two seats on a flight in the newspaper’s competition.
The flight was on a new BOAC Comet 4 jetliner which cut the transAtlantic travel time dramatically.Brian, now 88, said of the flight: “It was the most exciting day of my life. It changed my life.”
Online boss Hunt named as new Express editor
THE new editor-in-chief of the Express newspaper titles has been named as online editorial director, Tom Hunt. He has been with the Express for more than eight years in a variety of senior roles and led the title’s first team devoted to video.
Hunt, pictured, said: “I’m honoured to be taking on this role and to build on what the team has already achieved. In the last year, the Express has infiltrated Just Stop Oil, shown how TikTok and Instagram are aiding Albanian people smugglers, captured the effects of a new drug destroying lives on Britain’s streets, and exposed an ISIS terror plot to target Olympics and Wembley.”
He added: “There is a huge opportunity here which I’m excited to take further, both digitally and in print, particularly as we cover Labour’s first months in office and see out a Conservative leadership contest.”
Hunt will replace outgoing editor-in-chief Gary Jones, who has stepped down from the role he has held since 2018.
Staff at all Reach titles fear that big changes are planned following the departure of Jones who clearly did not leave his post voluntarily.
REVEALED: Robot Weekly
DON”T say we didn’t warn you but the first edition of the weekly London Standard features not only an AI-generated picture of Sir Keir Starmer on its front page but also a column ‘written’ by a dead man.
The cover features a disclaimer saying: “Image of Keir Starmer created by AI.” The picture accompanies a feature about London’s potential as an AI capital, written by political editor Nicholas Cecil. It fits what Paul Kanareck, the Standard’s interim chief executive, revealed about the title’s intentions to experiment with AI.
And just as your non-stop super soaraway Daily Drone predicted, the mag features a review of the current Van Gogh exhibition at the National Gallery written by AI in the style of the newspaper’s former art critic Brian Sewell, who died in 2015.
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 2005-2024
