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‘I’m sure wherever my Dad is, he’s looking down on us. He’s not dead, just very condescending’ — Comedian Jack Whitehall
FRONT PAGES
CARTOON OF THE DAY
Christian Adams, Torygraph
Police probe The Sun after collapse of Harry phone-hacking case
POLICE are investigating The Sun following Prince Harry’s phone hacking case against Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire, a move that was predicted by the Daily Drone.
The Metropolitan Police have requested transcripts of the pre-trial hearings as fresh calls were made for a new criminal investigation, The Guardian has reported.
The development will raise the hopes among press intrusion campaigners of a potential new investigation into allegations of “perjury and cover-ups” made against News Group Newspapers, owner of The Sun.
The case between Harry and NGN was settled on Wednesday, 14 minutes before the trial was to begin, with the offer by NGN of substantial damages and an apology to Harry and Tom Watson, the former deputy leader of the Labour party, who was a co-claimant.
The admission by NGN of “incidents of unlawful activities carried out by private investigators working for the Sun” was the first time the company had recognised illegality beyond the now defunct News of the World.
NGN continues to deny that phone hacking took place at The Sun, the company’s flagship newspaper, or that its journalists there were involved in criminality. The newspaper was edited by Rebekah Brooks, who is now chief executive at NGN, between 2003 and 2009.
On the steps of the court on Wednesday, the claimants’ barrister David Sherborne had further claimed that the disclosures made by NGN over the five years that the case had been running offered grounds for a fresh police investigation into “perjury and cover-ups”.
Lord Watson has said that he intends to submit a dossier of evidence to the Met commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley.
The Guardian understands that this file is being compiled by Watson’s lawyers, who intend to submit the evidence within weeks.
Sources close to Harry and Watson said the evidence of criminality by executives at NGN was “almost incontrovertible”. The company strenuously denies this.
Drone Opinion
You won’t be able to hack it much longer, Rebekah
By ALAN FRAME
‘Be sure your sins will find you out,’ warned the Old Testament Book of Numbers. And in the case of the not-so-biblical News Group and, in particular, CEO Rebekah Brooks, so it came to pass yesterday.
The settlement between NGN and Prince Harry (and former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson) has, I am reliably informed, cost the company more than £13 million with the vast legal costs almost doubling that amount. In total, Rupert Murdoch’s UK tabloids have paid out more than £1 billion in settlements and costs since their dirty tricks first came to light in 1997. And in the process Murdoch has closed the News of the World, at its best a force for good with its exposures and campaigns. It’s an expensive business.
Many Drone readers were out of Fleet Street before phone hacking became the tool of choice for some reporters as much as a regulation notebook and tape recorder. So I never saw at first hand how suddenly all those remarkable royal and showbiz exclusives came about.
One thing I know for sure: it is a despicable and rightly illegal activity and all editors should have warned their staff that if they resorted to it, no matter the story, they would lose their jobs. And it’s not yet over; next January Harry’s action against those smug types at Associated Newspapers is scheduled for the High Court.
In the case of NGN, it has stuck to its line in its ‘full and unequivocal apology’ to Harry for its intrusion into his life and that of his late mother Diana that it was private investigators who led the intrusion. Is anyone so stupid as to think that they were not commissioned by editorial execs or reporters. And how were their invoices explained when they came to be paid?
It has always denied that there was no hacking at The Sun, only the NoW. Yesterday that line was exposed as a total lie..
So where does this leave flame-haired Rebekah Brooks? Her life as a chancer who has avoided the handcuffs on three occasions must surely have come to end of the road. She escaped the wrath of the Leveson Inquiry in 2011 but made a gesture by resigning as CEO of News International (now News UK). Three years later she was cleared at the Old Bailey of charges of criminal phone hacking and was brought back to her old job by a seemingly bedazzled Murdoch.
Now that NGN has admitted the charges brought by Harry and Watson against The Sun it must follow that she was lying throughout the last 14 years when she insisted she knew nothing about hacking. She should quit now and retire at 56 to the Cotswolds to ride her horses. It seems impossible that even old Rupert will be minded to save her.
It may not be as simple as that however. The Yard is being urged to conduct a full criminal investigation. Those handcuffs may still be needed.
Remember the Country Boys, the gay little column that ran in the Drone for years? Thought not.
Well listen, luvs, Oliver is back! This time as a Labour MP. Ooh, just fancy that! And we all look forward to him standing erect in the Chamber for his maiden speech, don’t we? Oh, please yourselves. Interested? Read on … you know it makes sense! (It doesn’t — Ed)
A Remembrance of Newspapers Past by PAT PRENTICE, a new weekly memoir only in the Drone
The Road to Perdition
By Helena Handcart
NEW TODAY
As Rachel from Accounts picked up a few tips at the World Economic Forum in Davos, here is some info: billionaire wealth soared by
$2 trillion last year, three times faster than 2023; the richest 1% own 45% of global wealth; the world’s first trillionaires will emerge within a decade; the wealth of the richest 10 billionaires grew by $100 million a day on average over the last 10 years. Last year saw 204 new billionaires emerge. Downside? 44% of humanity lives on $6.85 a day.
Apropos the above, journos are getting poorer. According to Office for National Statistics data, as analysed by the Telegraph, the earning of ‘journalists and reporters’ (eerily reminiscent of FOC Peter Shirley’s ‘journalists and sub-editors’) fell by 23.3% in 2024. Editors also saw a drop in pay by 6.2% and there were 42.9% fewer of them.
Trump’s inauguration speech — at 2,900 words — was the longest in modern history. Rumours that he is to join the Daily Drone as a so-called columnist have been denied in America-on-Thames (as it has been re-named).
I’m always urging you to keep up with the latest so get alongside soup-flavoured lozenges. Food company Progresso’s new stomach-churning snack is inspired by its classic Chicken Noodle Soup with ‘comforting hints of broth, vegetables soft egg noodles, parsley and..’ (Enough! — Ed)
All that glisters… medals won at the Paris Olympics are already, er, rusty. More than 100 Olympians have asked for replacements. It’s a headache for luxury goods purveyor LVMH which spent $163 million sponsoring the games and a subsidiary of which designed the medals. Guess who’s at fault, though? The hapless EU. The mint that produced the medals blamed a new regulation banning the anti-rust chemical chromium trioxide.
The Mail’s interminable plundering of the Mitford Diaries (A right riveting read — Daily Star) recalls P.G. Wodehouse taking the piss out of Oswald Mosley by dubbing him Roderick Spode. In The Code of the Woosters he wrote: ‘Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever see such a perfect perisher?’
Panning for gold? That’s sooo last century (Or the one before — Ed).The new nuggets everyone is searching for are cattle gallstones. The chunks of hardened bilirubin, a traditional Chinese remedy, fetch $5,800 on the black market, double the price of gold.
Virtuoso American pianist Ruth Slenczynska — last surviving pupil of Sergei Rachmaninov — turns 100.
The world’s largest all-wooden housing development is under way in Sweden. Stockholm Wood City, which began in October, is set to provide 2,000 new homes by 2027. Developers aim to improve sustainability by using timber instead of concrete and steel and say spending time in buildings made with natural materials can improve wellbeing.
Government jobsworths love to ban things, don’t they? In Scotland they want to stop birthday cakes in kids’ nurseries ‘to address rising obesity rates’. A ‘special activity’ or ‘special trip’ are suggested as alternatives.
Nice work etc… Goldman Sachs has just given CEO David Solomon an $80 million retention bonus. This is in addition to a 26% pay rise which pushed his salary to $39 million. Envious idlers should know: the bank’s stock has risen 175% since Solomon took the top job in 2018.
StatsAFact: A gold medal won by American 100-metres hurdler Fred Schule at the 1904 St Louis Olympics sells for $545,371.
LeftInACab: Clipboard in blue plastic folder marked British Tennis Coaches’ Association; 2024 Woodland Trust Calendar; Ordnance Survey Landranger map of Canvey Island and Castle Point 1:50 000 scale; elasticated knee bandage (off white); Mary Berry wipedown cupcake recipe sheet.
NMPKT: The Oakland-San Francisco Bay bridge averages 260,000 vehicles daily, each paying an $8 toll. That’s $2,080,000 for those without an abacus to hand.
DearDrDrone (The thread in which readers may unburden themselves, share their concerns and ask questions to which there probably is no answer): At a drinks party someone said, in all seriousness and without irony: ‘I see Sadiq’s got his knighthood. Well deserved, I’d say’. Should I have a) Muttered: ‘Turned out nice again’ and tried to move on? b) Said: ‘Yep. The boy done good’ or c) Grabbed them by the throat shouting: ‘You must be fucking bonkers!’? DD: c.
UntouchedByHumanSub: ‘Several inches of snow is set to fall among the worst of Storm Eowyn, with several inches feared to fall in several locations’ — Mirror
SportSpot: Sacked Plymouth gaffer Wayne Rooney is star of Train With Wayne, coaching sessions at a beach hotel in Dubai. Families of four pay up to £8,650 for a few days’ tuition.
HeadlineOfTheWeek: Woman At The Gym Did Grim Act In Changing Rooms For 10 Minutes — I’m Mortified — Mirror.
ON OTHER PAGES
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
NEW TODAY (SIGH)
The debate continues with a letter from Caine & Baker, who claim to be counsellors for intimidated clerics
Stand and Deliver
By Hermione Orliff
NEW TODAY
Intrepid Ron Crocker was sitting in the Coin-Op Laundry in Maltby, Yorks, watching his bits go round when some hooded and masked twat burst in demanding his wallet. Up with this sort of argy-bargy Ron, 84, is not inclined to put. He demurred and sent the mugger on his way. However, the would-be assailant, obviously two sheets short of a full wash, returned and tried to grab his belongings. Ron went nuclear, hitting him in the face with a rolled up pair of jeans (as you do) and routed him again. In a post-skirmish debrief, the pensioner said: ‘He picked the wrong bloke.’
Biden may have been a bit of a disappointment (underplaying things again, are we? — Ed) as POTUS but the US stock markets did well during his reign. The Standard & Poor’s index climbed more than 55%, the Dow 39% and the Nasdaq almost 46%.
Child safety paranoia is rampant at the Beeb (not surprising, really). Employees have been banned from bringing their children into the office for newsroom visits etc. Kids are also prevented from even sitting temporarily in reception while they wait to pick up or deliver stuff to their parents.
Gruffalo writer Julia Donaldson has overtaken JK Rowling as the UK’s top-selling author, according to The Bookseller. She has sold 48.6 million books compared with Rowling’s
48 million. However, the Harry Potter author is still in the lead for earnings with UK sales of £390.5 million; Donaldson’s are £240 million. Interestingly, third on the list, with £200 million, is… Jamie Oliver.
UntouchedByHumanSub: The Mail carries four live pix of freed Gaza hostage Emily Damari clearly showing her left hand still bandaged after Hamas shot off two fingers. Nowhere in any caption is this pointed out.
Apropos the above: The Lloyd Turner dictum on caption writing — Readers should look at the pic. Then read the caption and see something there that makes them need to look at the pic again.
Clive Myrie? It’s at times like this, the inauguration of the Donald, that you really miss Huw Edwards.
Old school habitués of the Albion would demur but saunas, not pubs, are the new places to socialise, my Vogue confides. The number of Finnish-style public sweat boxes doubled in the UK between 2023-24 and is expected to reach 200 this year. Mind you, we lag way behind Finland: 90% take a sauna at least weekly.
As The Traitors plots towards a climax on the Beeb, a new poll provides an insight into British voters, says The i Paper. Of those who prefer to be Faithful, 39% are Labour supporters and only 25% Tories. Conservative voters account for 36% of Traitors with only 24% backing Labour.
The distinctly unfunny Glasgow International Comedy Festival organisers are insisting performers agree to prohibiting ‘discriminatory or harmful’ views. God only knows what gags will be allowed, muses the Telegraph’s Michael Deacon. ‘Why did the chicken cross the road? To join a mass protest against the apartheid state of Israel’s genocide of the people of occupied Gaza.’
DearDrDrone (The thread in which readers may unburden themselves, share their concerns and ask questions to which there probably is no answer): I try to book dental appointments for half past two: it’s my little joke but I’m not sure the dentist gets it. Sometimes, if I’m feeling particularly playful, I ring up to check the time. When the receptionist says 2.30 I say: ‘No, but I’ll come for the check-up anyway.’ What larks!
FactsLife: Pet lovers in the UK spend £9.89 billion annually on Fido, Tiddles and other fur babies. In America it’s $186 billion.
The Marvellous Ms Midgley laments the bizarre gift Myleen Klass tucked into her fiancé’s stocking at Christmas: a ring made from her own breast milk. ‘Is this what’s expected now,’ she asks in The Times. ‘I feel bad I only gave my husband a Halfords voucher.’
TheThingsTheySay: ‘You look freezing: go and get yourself a nice warm hot chocolate’ — Final Score host Jason Mohammad to footie correspondent.
Vain telly hunk David Muir is mocked for using clothes pegs to tighten an over-large, unflattering high viz jacket while reporting on the LA fires for ABC News. ‘Glad you look nice and svelte while our city burns,’ a pissed off Angelino posted on X.
LeftInACab: De Walt DCG412N 18V XR 125mm angle grinder; Wooden pencil box; a dozen yellow roses (wilting) with note that says: ‘I don’t want them — now fuck off’.
HeadlineOfTheWeek: The Click Brown Fox — Mail Online on pic of Reynard looking through the lens of a Nikon apparently about to take a snap.
SportingLife. What we knew: New Match of the Day presenter, Kelly Cates, is Kenny Dalglish’s daughter. What we didn’t: Graeme Souness used to babysit her.
OldJokesHome: I went skydiving for the first time. I was fitted with a parachute and was strapped to a fit young guy. We stepped out of the plane and as we plummeted to earth, he said: ‘How long have you been an instructor, then?’
Shag night on the Express
THAT caught your eye, didn’t it? Actually the shag referred to here is the tobacco variety and there was a distinct cloud of it in the Daily Express subs room when this pic was taken back in the day.
Terry Manners, who unearthed the photo during his history researches, is trying to date it. The pic shows a reporter giving his copy to the Chief Sub who is polluting the atmosphere with his shag-filled pipe.
Brian Freemantle dies at 88
By ALAN FRAME
Charlie Muffin was born on the 7.29 Southampton to Waterloo. And now Brian Freemantle, who created the great anti-hero spy series while journeying each morning to the Daily Sketch, is dead at 88.
Brian, pictured, and I had been friends since we met on the Sketch in 1969. He was foreign editor and I a new boy on the subs’ bench, fresh from the Express in Manchester. When the Sketch closed two years later we followed David English to the Mail with Brian heading a growing foreign team which did more than merely report events outside our little island.
In 1975 he organised UK Babylift, rescuing 100 Vietnamese orphans from Saigon and bringing them to families here, eager to adopt. One of those babies, 18-month-old Viktoria, later christened her own son Harry after Freemantle’s middle name. She went on to be a successful actress and producer.
Shortly after the airlift, Brian said goodbye to the day job, abandoned the train and became a full-time author writing an astonishing 85 books, mostly thrillers (and very good ones at that) with sales of more than 10 million worldwide. The first, Charlie M, was described by a critic as ‘one of the best spy novels ever written’ and was made into a film with an all-star cast including Ralph Richardson, Ian Richardson and David Hemmings.
Brian and Maureen, his wife of more than 50 years, were close friends with another foreign editor who wrote books while not in the environs of EC4, our very own David Eliades. They both proved that you didn’t have to be chained to the newsroom to realise great success.
Brian leaves behind Maureen and their three daughters, Charlotte, Victoria and Emma. And many great friends and admirers plus a legion of fans of the rebel Charlie Muffin.
CHRISTOPHER WILSON writes: Two things about Brian — he became a novelist by sheer determination, getting on the train at Winchester early in the morning and writing furiously, furiously until it was time to get off at Waterloo. On the ride home he'd revise, accumulating several finished novels without yet finding a publisher.
Finally a publishing exec came round to the house and said, "Wow, this is a great yarn, Brian! But... first-time novelist... we're never sure whether someone like you could ever produce a follow-up."
Brian: ‘I didn't say anything, just gave him a smile and opened my bottom drawer. There they were — half-a-dozen finished manuscripts just waiting to have a wrapper put round them.’ They were the first of his astonishing output of 88 books.
ALSO — Brian was a bit of a dandy. It was always Gucci shoes and Armani jeans with him, befitting his status as a best-selling author. After a day's labours he'd usually quench his thirst in Winchester's Wykeham Arms, and one night, Maureen being away, he stayed later than usual.
He told me the story a couple of days later, his face still puffy and bruised. Apparently he'd managed to find his way home across the Cathedral Close but, faced with his front door, felt in both pockets for his front-door key.
Brian: ‘Unfortunately, can't think why, I lost my balance. Hands trapped in my jeans pockets — d'you know how tight Armani jeans are? — and I fell forward into the door. Then I slid slowly down, hands still in my pockets. Blood everywhere."
The beautiful, long-suffering Maureen was a gifted makeup artist and next morning prior to her arrival home, he applied just about everything in her many makeup boxes to disguise the night's excesses.
Brian: ‘She saw straight through it. And I'd spent hours applying all that ruddy panstick.’
He was adorable, admirable, and just the very best fun. And Maureen was his perfect counterpart.
FLEET STREET IS BACK IN THE NEWS GAME
By SPIKE DIVER
A NEW digital daily newspaper is promising to breathe new life into Fleet Street.
London Daily Digital is planning to launch the title next month as a website and a page-turning digital edition.
The title is based in Fleet Street and has plans to support a London Museum of News, a Fleet Street Walk of Fame and a monthly media forum at St Bride’s Church.
The move comes four months after the Evening Standard’s daily print edition folded and morphed into a weekly magazine
LDD also plans to publish a monthly print edition priced at £5 with a run of 100,000 copies.
The title has a 17-strong team of staff already in place with plans to recruit 13 more people.
Azeez Anasudhin is the executive editor of the title and managing director of LDD News Ltd. He launched the Asian Lite digital newspaper and website in 2007 and has previously worked for titles including The Gulf Today and Indian Express.
Former BBC sports editor and Evening Standard columnist Mihir Bose is consulting editor of the title.
Rory’s new spy thriller
OUR friend and colleague Rory Clements has a new book out, A Cold Wind Wind From Moscow, a wartime spy thriller.
The synopsis reads: Winter, 1947. Britain's secret services have been penetrated. The country is more vulnerable than ever — and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin knows it. He decides it is time to send his master of 'Special Tasks' to create extra chaos.
But Stalin has a more important motive than mere disruption. He has a man on the inside who must be protected at all costs — a communist super-spy who has the secrets of the atomic bomb at his fingertips.
Freya Bentall, a senior MI5 officer, no longer knows who to trust and is left with one option: to bring in an outsider whose loyalty is beyond question - Cambridge professor Tom Wilde. His task: to find the traitor in MI5.
Barty’s having a party
Barty, right, surrenders to another glass of pinot grigiot with Tony
WE sought him here we sought him there, we’ve sought that damned elusive Barty Compton everywhere.
Now, thanks to ‘Monsewer’ Tony Boullemier, we’ve found him.
Monsewer reports: ‘Geoff 'Barty' Compton, who now lives near Nimes, en France, has been visiting the home his family recently bought in Worcestershire.
‘When I called in on him, it was a chance to swap multiple anecdotes from our days together at the DX in the early 1970s.’
They're pictured during a typical long lunch. And later on a canal bridge, which the Compton family now owns as part of their land.
Geoff regrets he wasn't well enough to attend Phil Durrant's recent wake but says he'll try and make future Express reunions.
Pictures: Ben Compton
THE WAY WE WERE
Daily Herald subs 1928
You wouldn’t know to look at this pic but the Daily Herald was once the world’s most popular newspaper, selling 2 million copies a day, a record in its time. The paper was founded as a socialist daily newspaper and was published in London between 1912 and 1964 when it was reborn as the Sun under editor Sydney Jacobson.
By 1969, the Sun had fewer readers than the Herald at the end of its existence. The newspaper was sold to Rupert Murdoch who turned it into The Sun, the tabloid we know today.
Night on the town with Bill the Sausage King
PAT PRENTICE recalls an enchanted drug and drink-fuelled evening with his Daily Telegraph colleague Bill O’Hagan, the Sausage King of Greenwich. In those days this was the normal sort of evening a Fleet Street hack spent after work but there was always an added attraction with O’Hagan.
Bill, who died of cancer in 2013 aged just 68, was a great character and a wonderful friend who made truly great sausages. He is missed.
Bill was a real Bastard
(despite being a really good chap)
Inspired by Pat Welland’s report about Bill O’Hagan, (below) PAT PRENTICE reveals a little-known fact about the much-loved Sausage King.
Bill’s birth name was not O’Hagan because his father was called Ebbo Bastard.
What could have possessed Bill to change his identity? Find out here:
Boozy nights with O’Hagan
By PAT WELLAND
The late and much lamented sausage king Bill O’Hagan, whom Pat Prentice so engagingly recalled, is remembered as an old Telegraph hand. But it tends to be forgotten, and was not mentioned in his Times obit, that he first adorned Fleet Street on the Express.
Bill fetched up on the subs’ desk soon after I joined the paper in ’72, having previously worked on some publication servicing Gatwick Airport. Unhappily, after impressing all with his astounding capacity for drink, he left shortly afterwards having committed, if I recall correctly, some headline indiscretion.
Bill was a committed patron of the Pemberton Media Club, which many will remember as a late-night haunt in Pemberton Row close to Dr Johnson’s house. This was a rebrand of the inkies’ Newspaper Workers Club in an attempt to elevate it above the level of stygian hellhole (hacks entered the Workers at their peril – I was privileged to be present there when it was suggested to gay barman Geoff that, as it was his 60th birthday, he would appreciate 60 candles rammed up his fundament).
As Bill and I both lived in the Greenwich area, I occasionally had the pleasure of being driven home by him in his decommissioned London taxi. His previous vehicle was, I believe, an ancient ambulance sailing under similar false colours, in this case the old LCC. When I say 'home', I mean the sausage shop where Bill would produce a primus and fry up a selection of some of his more exotic bangers to be washed down with Swan lagers before, suitably fuelled, I tacked the remainder of my way home in the rising dawn.
Bill’s ability to hold his drink while remaining ever genial was phenomenal. But even the greatest among us have our frailties. I remember him downing a last potent tumbler of spirits in the Press Club circa 3am. It may not, however, have been his final drink.
The next morning, I joined a small queue of cars on Greenwich South Street while drivers waited patiently, and with much amusement, as Bill uncertainly negotiated the complexities of crossing the road via a zebra crossing. A lovely man.
Perils of a young reporter
IAN BAIN remembers his first job as a trainee reporter on the Kent Messenger in Gravesend in the 1960s and how his district editor sold Ian’s exclusive story to the London evening papers and scooped up the linage
Sunday Express and People feel the chill in December
The Sunday Express and its Reach stablemate the Sunday People were the big losers in December, according to the latest ABC figures. But the Daily Mail’s print circulation was slightly bigger.
The biggest month-on-month decline was at Reach’s Scottish tabloid the Sunday Mail, down 5% to 42,044.
On a year-on-year basis, The i Paper saw the smallest decline among paid-for papers (down 4% to 122,949) while the biggest drop was at the Daily Star Sunday (down 22.7% to 61,230) followed by The Sunday People (down 21.2% to 47,629).
Free paper Metro kept its print distribution steady at 952,104.
Source: Press Gazette
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 2005-2025
