.
THE THINGS THEY SAY
The art of statesmanship is to foresee the inevitable and to expedite its occurrence — French diplomat Talleyrand
CARTOON OF THE DAY
PETER BROOKES, The Times
Poignant story behind these three cobblestones buried in memory
DX showbiz writer Ian Lyness
in the land he loved so much
By BRIAN EMSLEY
THESE three cobblestones have been interred bearing messages in fond remembrance of former Express showbiz writer, and my friend, Ian Lyness.
The Drone ran an obituary four years ago after he died aged 70 in Colorado, where he lived with his American wife Catherine. But he suffered terrible homesickness for England.
Ian had asked me back in 2011, after first getting lymphoma, that his ashes be scattered in Hadley Wood, near High Barnet. But when his ashes were sent to me by his widow they were blocked by UK Customs for paperwork reasons and ended up in a lockup in Utah. His wife had by then relocated to Maryland.
A profound patriot, Ian would be turning in his urn that he could not rest in England especially when masses of illegal immigrants pour in with no paperwork. So, to honour his request, I and another chum buried cobblestones in the wood, messages penned on them. One of his favourite films was I’m All Right Jack, hence one of the messages.
He was a great supporter of King Richard III, who as a teenager, commanded the Yorkist army that crushed the Lancastrian army on the same spot at the Battle of Barnet. So, I hope Ian’s happy!
DRONE SUBBING WORKSHOP
The golden rule is: Always ensure the headline matches the picture
Spotted yesterday by MARGARET ASHWORTH who commented : ‘Mail Online, obviously.’
CUTTING A DASH: A fine example of the sub-editor’s craft from The Pratt Tribune in Kansas. Not.
WHY HYPHENS MATTER
OLD JOKES HOME
Q: Have you heard about the Jehovah’s witness advent calendar?
A: Every time you open a door, you get told to fuck off.
*****
I sued an airline when they lost my luggage. I lost my case.
James Mossop dies at 89
One of the great sports writers, James Mossop of the Sunday Express, has died at the age of 89.
Jim covered ten World Cups, eight Olympic games, dozens of world title fights, major golf tournaments and Formula One races.
He started his career on the North West Evening Mail and developed a passion for journalism that never waned. He spent most of his career on the Sunday Express before joining the Sunday Telegraph.
Alex Montgomery, former chairman of the Football Writers’ Association, said: ‘He was the very best of journalists, an outstanding football writer who had to be read and who was on so many occasions in a class of his own.’
NEW
What a way to start a day! Calamity Lammy drowning, not waving, on the radio and telly, as he fails adequately to represent the Government and articulate its position on the Iran conflict. Gloomy articles alleging Miliband and Pixie are the ones actually dictating policy now. Lamentations that our once respected Foreign Office is derided and held in contempt across the diplomatic world. Polly Toynbee in the Guardian trying to convince me that the most deeply flawed and shittiest organisation in Britain is our only hope. Then there’s that nice, friendly girl from Only Fans who’s in the family way. (For God’s sake, how did that happen?). My knee’s hurting. I’ve got to do my exercises. Do I really have to get up?
Watching Starmer flailing and failing to convince that he is on top of this Iran thing, you’d think people would be justified in running to hide under the stairs with their hands over their ears. But this could be the PM’s ‘first lucky break in a while’, says Hugo Gye in The i Paper. Starmer finds himself both on the same side as voters and his stroppy MPs. Although Reform UK make no secret of their admiration for Donald Trump and the Tories back him on Iran, both are out of step with the electorate: some 81% disapprove of the US president and 49% are against his strikes on Iran (just 28% back the military action).
Well, you wouldn’t rush to buy a second hand car from Pete Hegseth. Flash Git personified, from the tip of his pointy shoes to the scraped back oily hair and the Stars and Stripes kerchief he wears in his breast pocket. This is the face of Epic Fury. The US Secretary of War, a former decorated army officer and TV presenter, is known for language as incontinent as his family life. His robust, triumphalist use of words to describe operations against Iran betrays a lack of breeding and class. To him, 135 schoolgirls killed in a missile strike are mere ‘toast’. Not that anyone’s counting, but his boast that the US Navy’s sinking of an Iranian warship using a torpedo was the first since World War Two is incorrect. Britain had such a Gotcha moment in the Falklands War when the Belgrano was similarly dispatched. To our shame.
Trying to get your head around the Iran conflict, it’s as well to know that we don’t know what we don’t know, you know? Maybe that explains why, that as soon as someone becomes president of the United States, he becomes more hawkish. Jim Geraghty in The Washington Post points out that Clinton ran in 1992 complaining about George HW’s ‘erratic’ foreign adventures, only to use his ‘war powers’ authority more than any other president. Barack Obama opposed the Iraq war then sent 30,000 troops to Afghanistan and killed thousands of people in drone strikes. Now, Trump. The reason is probably simple: the CIA’s classified Presidential Daily Brief reveals in grim detail just how many bad people are out there trying to kill Americans. As Geraghty says: ‘Reading that every day, how dovish can you remain?’
Away from the mayhem on the Middle East, Ukraine has gone back to the past to pursue its conflict with Russia. Kiev is using 19th-century Maxim machine guns to defend against drones, says Tom Newton Dunn in War & Peace. The ancient weapons, invented by Britain’s Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim in 1884, have a water-cooling system around their barrels which means that, unlike modern machine guns, they can fire continuously for minutes. Thus, they avoid overheating and create a sustained ‘wall of lead’. Some of the Maxims being used in the war today were first delivered to Tsarist Russia before World War One.
First the good news: the number of independent bakeries in the UK has risen by 34% in the past five years. Now the bad: patisserie prices have rocketed. According to Sammy Gecsoyler in The Guardian, in London you can pay a bonkers £12.90 for a hazelnut pastry at Copains in Covent Garden, £12 for a croissant topped with gold leaf in Harrods and a, frankly absurd, £25 for a hazelnut cookie at The Berkeley in Knightsbridge.
You could never accuse Donald Trump of undue modesty. Oh, no. Never before has a US president displayed so much of his own image on the White House walls, say Doug Mills and Larry Buchanan in The New York Times. At least nine portraits of him have gone on display, including three of him pumping his fist after the 2024 assassination attempt and one with his face painted in the American flag. Others show him looking at a cross at the top of a mountain; posing alongside previous pro-tariff presidents with the title The Tariff Men; and standing in front of the Stars and Stripes with Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln.
No one’s blaming AM-W, you understand, but sweat from 25,000 of the common herd who pass through the Vatican’s museums every day has had a visible impact on one of the Sistine Chapel’s most famous decorations. Now restorers are cleaning Michelangelo’s iconic fresco,The Last Judgment, for the first time in more than 30 years. They are carefully removing the white film of salt all that perspiration has left behind on the 16th-century masterpiece, says AP. The chapel received a major restoration between 1979 and 1999 to get rid of centuries of smoke, grime, and wax; the chapel’s other frescoes are cleaned annually.
Apropos the sweatless one, Popbitch tells of the twat formerly known as Prince attending a posh event for important people in the City. As he liked to do. One of the bankers there struck up a conversation with some American colleagues when, all of a sudden, who should barge into the group but AM-W. He immediately interrupted the small talk, demanding to know what everyone did. One of the Americans, entirely ignorant of who the interloper was, returned the question. The royal wanker snarled: ‘I run the fucking country.’
On a clear day you can see for ever. We all know that but, really, what is the longest line of sight from any given location? The website All The Views In The World has an interactive map which provides the answer. In perfect, crisp weather conditions with ‘favourable refraction’ the furthest you can see on Earth is 329 miles. This is from an unnamed Himalayan ridge near the Indian-Chinese border to Pik Dankova in Kyrgyzstan. Longest view in the UK stretches 144 miles, from Merrick, a mountain in Scotland, past the Isle of Man, to Snowdon in north Wales.
As more and more schools introduce phone bans, students are turning to retro tech for their music fix, says Callie Holtermann in The New York Times. Devices making a comeback include iPods, portable CD players like the Sony Discman, and even the Walkman and other cassette players. Reddit forums for iPod enthusiasts have become ‘flooded with students’ and an eBay seller hawking refurbished kit has seen sales more than treble.
Two people in a hot air balloon which snagged a communications tower 900ft in the air in Texas had to be rescued by firefighters. Adeel Hassan in The New York Times watched as the 14-man crew took an hour to scale the structure’s 12-inch-wide ladder, ‘saying prayers aloud’. They attached harnesses to the balloonists, set up what looked like ‘the world’s shortest – but scariest – zip line’ to the basket, and winched the pair the 10 or 12 feet back to the tower, ‘with nothing but air below them’.
People in British Columbia are changing their clocks for the last time to adopt permanent daylight time in a great ‘spring forward’. Premier David Eby said regularly changing the clocks causes ‘all types of problems’. These ranged from children and their parents losing sleep to more car accidents. In addition, he confided, dogs ‘were getting up at the wrong time’. (Eh? — Ed).
More than 80 years on, we seem anxious not to be beastly to the Germans, writes Jess Sayin, of Daily Drone Verify. A recent item referred to France, in 1940 being ‘overrun by the Nazis’. Fact: only 10-11 per cent of Germans were members of the Nazi Party (Rommel wasn’t and neither were many senior officers of the Wermacht). Thus, the majority of the three million soldiers who invaded France were, not, er, Nazis but they definitely were, er, Germans.
TheThingsTheySay: ‘They (the Greens) will push through mad ideas the electorate’s never been consulted on, as Labour has done, because they know they would never win power if they said what they actually believed.’ — Camilla Long, ST.
NMPKT: There are 154 female billionaires in the States. They include Kim Kardashian, Rihanna and Taylor Swift.
NewJokesHome: What’s the difference between Trump and Netanyahu? One is the President of the USA. The other is married to Melania.
It’sOnlyMoney: Taxpayers are footing a £12.7 million bill for Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) staff bonuses … despite them losing almost £10 billion in overpayments, the Telegraph has found. Around 200 senior figures received an average of £2,122 each during 2024-25. The Taxpayers’ Alliance comments: ‘The DWP is in a crisis, haemorrhaging billions of pounds in fraud and error payments and completely unable to tackle the worklessness crisis blighting our economy. It’s time the public sector stopped handing itself bonuses for failing year after year, costing taxpayers millions extra, on top of the billions wasted.’
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)
Stand and Deliver
By Hermione Orliff
However intense, brutal and damaging it is, the Iran war can’t last long, right? Don’t hold your breath on that. Since the end of World War 2 there has been a series of ‘limited operations’ that have been anything but. Trouble is, says Max Boot in The Washington Post, air strikes, such as those in Iran, rarely, if ever, bring down dictatorships. The problem with Iran is that it’s so huge — covering an area the size of France, Germany, Spain and Italy combined. Try achieving regime change overnight. And don’t listen to the politicians. JD Vance, a former Marine remember, says there is ‘no chance’ the US will be involved in a lengthy conflict. That’s what LBJ thought about Vietnam. That lasted 19 years, five months, 29 days. George W and Iraq (eight years, eight months, 28 days), Soviets in Afghanistan (nine years, one month, three weeks) and Russia’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, supposed to last days, four years and counting.
Apropos the above, how is Britain reacting to the war? (I say ‘reacting’ because we rarely lead these days). Apart from Badenoch’s assault, a packed Commons did not distinguish itself. Starmer was clad in full wet lettuce armour. Surely we deserve better than him. Davey? All sound and bollocks: inconsequential, shallow. The Mail’s Quentin Letts casted a customery beady eye on proceedings. He spotted Defence Secretary John Healey send a slip of paper up the back-benches to the young Labour MP Uma Kumaran. Ten minutes later Ms Kumaran asked Sir Keir a decidedly soft long hop of a question, reading it off that same piece of paper. What craven hacks these people are.
TheThingsTheySay: ‘This is not Winston Churchill we’re dealing with.’ — Donald Trump’s assessment of the twat Starmer.
Amid the Gorton and Denton aftermath let’s not forget that Your Party held its first leadership contest – on Zoom. Will Dunn, in The New Statesman, reports that the winner, Jeremy Corbyn, had a photo of his late cat, El Gato, in the background, while his rival, Zarah Sultana’s ally, Grace Lewis, 22, underlined the professionalism of the proceedings by joining the meeting from her car. One hopeful, on mute, appeared to be doing a spot of online shopping while another squinted at her screen, shaking her head beside a tartan ironing board. A third was having a cheeky vape. A rallying cry from one candidate went: ‘We want to win everyone to our side, except the far right’. Dunn cautions that, in Your Party, the ‘far right’ appears to encompass ‘Reform, the Conservatives, the Labour Party, the county of Surrey, Audi drivers and people who listen to The Archers’.
So that’s what it’s all about! More opportunities for ‘horizontal research’ by people working from home resulted in a whopping 291,000 additional births in the US in 2024, economists have found.
It must run in the family but Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor isn’t the only royal brat who let the side down, says Samuel Rubinstein in Engelsberg Ideas. William the Conqueror’s eldest child, Robert Curthose, spent so lavishly on ‘jugglers, parasites and harlots’, the last of whom sometimes stole his clothes in the middle of the night and ran off, that his younger brother had to capture him during the Battle of Tinchebray in 1106 to put the country out of its misery. Curthose languished in prison for 28 years until his death.
Tax economist Alan Cole used a prediction market site to bet his $342,195 life savings that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency would fail to shrink US government spending. Cole, 37, from Washington, won easily. His profit: $128,000 or 37%.
A Ruddy Rural Rustic writes: ‘O, to be in England now that March (You mean April, dolt — Ed) is there! Driving through the sylvan fields of Lincolnshire and being treated to an aerial spectacular high above by the Red Arrows; then being halted by emergency lights on the A15 at RAF Waddington to witness the Hawk trainers finishing their impromptu display by landing one-by-one across the road just yards away. Heavenly!’
A software engineer set up his robot vacuum cleaner so that it could be steered via his video game controller, only to find he had inadvertently hacked into nearly 7,000 similar models around the world. Sammy Azdoufal was able to access live camera feeds, microphone audio, maps and status data from tech giant’s DJI robots in 24 countries, without their owners knowing. Rather than making use of this new robot army, he fessed up and DJI fixed the vulnerability.
The world’s tallest mural made of plastic bottle caps has been unveiled in San Salvador, reports Jesús Maturana in EuroNews. Based loosely on the Mona Lisa, the gigantic Gioconda, erected in Zacamil, a neighbourhood of Mejicanos, is more than 13 metres high and built with around 100,000 lids recycled by the local community. Óscar Olivares, the Venezuelan artist behind the project, worked with litter pickers, volunteers and local organisations to complete the work. It reinterprets Da Vinci’s masterpiece as a woman with a dark complexion and curly hair, dressed in the colours of the Salvadoran flag.
Courageous call from organisers of Shambala, a meat-free music festival in Northamptonshire, for gamely (SWIJDT?) arranging a vote on whether to have venison on the menu. Alas, the proposal – to address a surge in the local deer population, which is ruining ecosystems – didn’t go down well. Siddy Bennett, a vegan singer-songwriter, says the smell of dead deer being cooked would ‘lower the vibrations of the festival’. Bless.
There was much chuntering when 20-over cricket was introduced to the first class game back in 2003. ‘Mickey Mouse’, ‘Slogfest’ ‘Mindless Betrayal’, ‘Death Sentence For Tests’, ‘WG Spinning In Grave’ etc. Those, brought up playing the format at school or for village teams on long summer evenings, felt a tad baffled. Then, golly gosh, what moaning and tutting from Werther’s-sucking members in pavilions up and down the country when the first T20I was played 21 years ago! Yet has the great game been harmed? Forget the financial balm to the grassroots, the cricket itself has actually been enhanced. In batting, the reverse sweeps, the scoops, the whoops, the up-yer-bums have even been adapted, to advantage, into Test cricket. Fielding has improved markedly. But what cricket-lovers everywhere should really applaud: T20 has saved the spinner. The twirler, seemingly destined for the scrapheap, is back. In England’s recent World Cup victory over New Zealand, two quicks bowled only 27 balls for the Kiwis; Archer and Curran three fewer.
ThisSportingStrife: Matt Waldron, a pitcher with the San Diego Padres baseball franchise, is having to take indefinite leave because he is ‘indisposed’. In most workplaces in the US you can’t even ask why someone is going to see a doctor. But in baseball, your boss feels able to tell the media: ‘This guy needs a few days off because he has an infection in his rear end: his butt is really barking.‘
UntouchedByHumanSub: Huge piles of manure have been dumped just ‘a stone’s throw’ from Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s home by workers on the Sandringham Estate, says the Mirror. Actually, it was more than 200 yards away. Some throw! ‘Royal Ascot…the prestigious horse-racing event in June.’ — MoS.
TortureTittleTattle: Intensive research by Physiotherapy Inquisitors at the Tomás de Torquemada Institute, Córdoba, reveals that the Lying Flexion is the most painful post-operative knee exercise known to man.
TheThingsTheySay: ‘Diana thought of Fergie as a sister. They eventually fell out over a borrowed pair of shoes and claims that one of them had given the other a verruca.’ — Former BBC hack Jennie Bond’s footnote on royal friendships in the ST.
NMPKT: The average American scoffs an estimated 46 slices of pizza a year. Sales were $43.3 billion in 2023.
It’sOnlyMoney: Forget Chagos (If only we could, pet — Ed), Britain, which has a growth rate of 1%, is also giving £45 million a year development aid to Mauritius (growth rate 4.5%). Eh? As Lord Horam, vice-chairman of the all-party Chagos Islands group, says: ‘It’s likely Mauritius will overtake the UK in GDP during the next 25 years… This must be one of the most generous giveaways in British diplomatic history — and one that is entirely unnecessary.’
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
ONLY IN THE DRONE
Our great columnists
Paddy Clancy dies at 82
ANOTHER big figure from old Fleet Street, former Daily Express reporter Paddy Clancy, has died aged 82.
Clancy, who was well known in his native Ireland for his broadcasting work, died on Friday, 23 January at Sligo University Hospital surrounded by his family.
He is survived by his wife Bernie, two daughters and a son.
The Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin said Clancy was "an enormous presence in Irish journalism for over six decades. His distinctive take on RTÉ's morning paper round up was essential listening.
"His reporting and columns were essential reading for many years in the Sligo Champion, Donegal People’s Press, Irish Sun and Mirror."
Retro Rambleshanks, author of the acclaimed Drone series Yesterday Once More, writes: Ashley Walton, LOTP, used to tell of the time when, as a new reporter, he was sent by Night News Editor Mike Steemson to fetch Paddy Clancy and fellow Irishman Mike O’Flaherty back to the office from The Cartoonist where they were ‘resting’.
‘How will I know them?’ he asked. ‘Easy,’ says Steemson, ‘they’ll be standing at the bar wearing just their underpants.’ And so it came to pass. When Ashley returned to the office Steemson asked what the response had been. ‘They said to tell you to go fuck yourself,’ reported Ash. ‘Oh, good,’ said Mike, ‘they’re coming back, then.’ And so, fully clothed, they were.
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)
David Eliades, giant of DX foreign desk and brilliantly successful author dies at 92
THE Drone is particularly sad to report that David Eliades, who manned the Daily Express foreign desk for many years, has died at the age of 92 at his home in Switzerland.
There was more to David than just journalism. He was an author too and one of his works is still playing to audiences at various locations in Italy.
A Gran tale about Fleet St
Another day, another great book, this time a tale about Fleet Street by former Daily Star columnist Cathy Hollowell.
Beginning as an apprentice reporter on the Brighton and Hove Gazette in 1968, she worked her way through national agencies, night shifts at the Daily Mail, and the Daily Express before landing her dream job on the Star, interviewing extraordinary people from every walk of life.
Hollowell, who wrote under the name Cathy Couzens, now lives in Texas, with her husband, Don.
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
