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THE THINGS THEY SAY
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up — Pablo Picasso
TODAY’S PAPERS
CARTOON OF THE DAY
DAVE BROWN, Indy
OUT OF REACH
Newspaper sales figures will now be kept secret
DO you want to know the latest circulation figures for the Express, Mirror and Star? Sorry it’s a secret.
Print circulation figures for the titles will no longer be made public.
Publisher Reach has decided to keep its national newspaper ABC print sales numbers private.
This means they will be available only to ad buyers who agree to keep the data confidential.
Reach follows the Sun and Times publisher News UK, Telegraph Media Group and The Guardian, which have all kept their print figures private for more than four years.
The changes at Reach cover the following titles: Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, Sunday People, Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star, Daily Star Sunday, and Scottish titles Daily Record and Sunday Mail.
Reach’s Sunday tabloids, and the Sunday People in particular, had frequently led the biggest year-on-year circulation declines for a long time.
The company has not explained its decision but it goes without saying that if sales were going up it would trumpet that fact rather than hide it.
The Andrew formerly known as Prince has been detained at His Majesty’s hilarity
As several journalists caught up in the Met’s old Operation Weeting investigation into phone hacking will tell you, a bang on the door at 6.30, is not the ideal way to start the day. But that’s how Mr Mountbatten-Windsor, pictured left after a day of questioning by police, began his Wednesday. His 66th birthday.
His former girlfriend's family have had experience of the dawn raid when Kevin Maxwell's former wife Pandora yelled from a bedroom window "Go away or I'll call the cops" only to hear "Madam, we are the cops”.
Meanwhile it was gratifying to see Andrew's brother follow the arrest with a statement along the lines of Alan Frame’s column in this great organ on Tuesday. He urged the King to address the nation to assure us that nobody was above the law.
And you thought our readers were just a bunch of old hacks. Shame on you!
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.”
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.
NEW TODAY
How prescient do we have to be? Just a week after we said that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was ‘awaiting the rozzers’ knock’, the rozzers, er, knocked. And it wasn’t even a 66th birthday strippagram. Major story, of course. We are, as the Beeb’s Ben Brown confided, in ‘unchartered’ territory. Yet while AMW was cooling his heels in a custody suite in rural Norfolk his sister was actually in jail. The Princess Royal, as patron of the Butler Trust, was on an official visit to HMP Leeds. It’s the sort of calendar clash that gives PRs nightmares.
The Epstein Net is spread far and wide. Forget royals and British politicians, the list of world figures with links to the paedophile just grows, says The Washington Post. It includes a former Norwegian prime minister; the head of one of the world’s largest logistics firms; a former US treasury secretary; a former president of the UN General Assembly; the chairman of one of America’s biggest law firms; a former French cultural minister; the former director of several prominent US art museums; and a former US senator who served as Bill Clinton’s envoy to Northern Ireland.
Wisely, Sarah Ferguson, not normally known for being demure and flying under the radar, is, for once, keeping her head down. She’s probably also stopped wearing her distinctive gold necklace with the letters GM on it. According to Popbitch, it was a present from her father, Ronald Ferguson. And the GM stood for Ginger Minge.
As it is announced that the £174.50 annual licence fee is to rise to £180 from April, more tales of how shitty and deeply flawed the BBC is. Do any of its 21,000 employees pause to ponder that it’s public money that keeps them in their jobs? Freedom of information requests have revealed huge expense claims. For instance: one-night hotel stay for a Beeb staffer at the plush Soho House in Barcelona. Kerching: £841; taxi ride from Newcastle to Glasgow. Kerching: £403 (single train tickets are £30). Another BBC manager had a three-night stay at the Ameritania Hotel, in New York, for £1,841, or £613 a night. The corporation’s biggest hotel bill last year was £6,548, for two twin rooms for three-nights at the Hilton, in Austin, Texas. That’s £545 a night a person.
Apropos the above, who’d be the new BBC director-general facing the in-tray from hell? Tim Davie, he of the dark suits and white trainers, slips away in April, a casualty of the unwise ‘editing’ of a Trump speech on Panorama. Rhodri Talfan Davies takes over as interim DG ‘while a permanent replacement is sought.’ Spare a thought for whoever this is. They face two major challenges: the president’s $10 billion lawsuit next February in which he is suing for defamation after two sections of a speech were spliced together to make it appear that he encouraged the storming of the Capitol in 2021. Then there is the BBC’s charter renewal, also next year.
The great guessing game at Westminster is who will take over at No.10 when Starmer is inevitably bundled out. Surprisingly, one name increasingly bandied about in the bars is that of former Royal Marine and Selly Oak MP, Al Carns. Lt Col Carns, DSO, OBE, MC, has a distinguished service record and, while in uniform, was military adviser to three Defence Secretaries. He’s already a junior defence minister. Anything else we should know? He’s in the habit of using the parliamentary sauna stark naked, I’m warned.
There was surprise when Israel’s air strikes on parts of Syria following the October 7 massacre received no response. Maybe, says Robert Worth in The Atlantic, it was because the then Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, was playing Candy Crush on his phone at the time — as he does. That wasn’t the only distraction: he had also been having an affair with an adviser and was sleeping with women she procured for him, ‘including the wives of high-ranking Syrian officers.’ Oh, Bashar, where did it all go wrong?
Former Arsenal stalwart Paul Merson has been waxing lyrical on the telly about his old pal, Charlie Oatway. Who? The former Brighton midfielder is probably better known by his full legal name: Anthony Philip David Terry Frank Donald Stanley Gerry Gordon Stephen James Oatway. His parents were die-hard QPR supporters and they named him after each player in the club’s 1973 starting 11. The additional nickname came when his sister said: ‘He’ll look a right Charlie.’ It stuck.
GlobalWarmingHotline: You gloomsters and gainsayers take note: Rainy Britain has actually become 4% sunnier since 1994 — official. But it’s nothing to do with climate change, say researchers in Spain. More like government action aimed at cleaning up air, including embracing renewable energy and electric vehicles. The cleaner air causes clouds to form differently, bringing together larger water droplets that let more sunlight pass through to the ground.
An Haitch’s appraisal of great fly halves prompts a reader to write: ‘We shouldn’t forget that the greatest of them all also worked for the Express. After his tragically early retirement, at 27 with only 25 Wales caps, Barry John wrote a regular column and was sometimes seen being led astray by the Sports Desk in various Fleet Street hostelries. John was truly exceptional, revered as much in New Zealand as he was here; the fact that he edged a fly half called Watkins out of the Welsh team is neither here nor there. But pressure of expectation from Welsh rugby zealots eventually forced him to quit the goldfish bowl, as he called it. A girl curtseying to him in a bank in Cardiff made up his mind. John, who died at 79 in 2024 said: “This wasn’t normal: I became more detached from real people.” Then he met Emery & Co.’
Apropos the above, it’s usual at mawkish times such as this to seek comfort from Max Boyce’s ode The Outside Half Factory, thus: ‘But now the belts are empty/ came a sadness with the dawn/ and the body-press is idle/ and the valley's blinds are drawn/ disaster struck this morning/ when a fitter's mate named Ron/ cracked the mould of solid gold/ that once made Barry John.’ Says it all, doesn’t it?
Littlejohn confides in the Mail that he shaved off his Mandelson-style moustache in the 1980s after a reader’s request for a signed copy of his ‘dishy’ byline pic. It was from a man. Don’t worry, Rich, we never doubted you. (Well, not much — Ed).
The Two Haitches’ favourite columnist, the Marvellous Ms Midgley in The Times, never fails to hit the spot. Here are some bitter asides from her about romance in marriage: What food totally kills a woman’s libido? Wedding cake. How do you stop a man buying you flowers? Marry him. My wife told me that sex is better on holiday. That wasn’t a very nice postcard to receive. And the three stages of marital sex: tri-weekly. Try weekly. Try weakly.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man is well known as a load of bollocks (not forgetting a prominent todger). But the same could also be said of Italy’s state broadcaster Rai’s opening credits for its Winter Olympics coverage. The newspaper Corriere della Sera has pointed out that the famous image has suffered a spot of genitalia erasure. ‘What happened to the Vitruvian Man’s genitals?’ it demanded. Opposition politicians quickly added to the backlash, urging the culture minister to ‘shed full light’ on the redaction. This is the second penis-based controversy of the games: claims that ski jumpers were injecting their private parts to increase the surface area of their suits – giving them an aerodynamic advantage – was dubbed ‘Penisgate’.
OlympicSpecial: I’ve worked out the curling. If we win, it’s our brave Team GB. If we lose, it’s those useless, shifty Jocks.
StatsAFact: Sales of Wuthering Heights have soared by 469% in the UK and more than doubled in the States because of publicity about Emerald Fennell’s controversial film adaptation of the Brontë stringvest ripper (Eh? — Ed).
LetterOfTheWeek: A Guardian reader from South Yorkshire laments the behaviour of his Smart #1 car last Saturday. He writes: ‘Before it did anything else, it said “Love is in the air” and wished me a happy Valentine’s Day. As a matter of principle, I refused to speak to it for the rest of the day.’
TheThingsTheySay: ‘You can ask me the questions, you can make your conspiracy theories 20 times…the answer will be the same. It’s nonsense.’ — Former Mail crime editor Stephen Wright responds to questions in the Celebs v Mail case.
It’sOnlyMoney: What a shame that some local councils are so short of money that they are having to cancel elections. Good job, though, that some managed to squirrel away some spare cash for important projects. Blackburn: £30,000 on asylum seeker mental health; Cheltenham: £780,000 on gagging orders; Crawley: £250,000 on a ‘solar carport project’.
NIBS
Hickey ed sacked for
his addiction to lunch
FORMER William Hickey editor CHRISTOPHER WILSON remembers his predecessor Richard Berens, friend of royalty, habitué of Boodles, who was seldom spotted at his desk.
Legend has it that the recently late Tom Stoppard once wrote about a Morris 1,000 Traveller for The Western Daily Press. He described it as a "half-timbered car".
Eric Price reputedly scoffed later that it proved he would never have made a proper journalist. Allegedly.
News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun and defunct News of the World, has agreed to pay “substantial damages” to Chris Jefferies, who was wrongly arrested in 2010 for the murder of Joanna Yeates, over the invasion of his privacy. (The Guardian)
Former media commentator Roy Greenslade and TV producer Paddy French have launched a crowdfunding bid to pay for publication of a new book looking at the exploits of former News of the World journalist Mazher Mahmood. (Go Fund Me)
BBC Middle East editor Raffi Berg is suing Owen Jones for libel over an article published on the Drop Site website about the BBC’s coverage of Gaza. Jones said he looks forward to “vigorously defending my reporting”. (Jewish News)
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Stand and Deliver
By Hermione Orliff
NEW
Those who still use the term ‘new technology’ for anything more sophisticated than copy paper and pencil and think AI stands for Advanced Idiots are in for a shock. The tsunami of Artificial Intelligence is frightening. Matt Schumer says on X: ‘Those of us who work in the industry know of the impending disruption to white collar work because it’s already happening. Coding skills are basically redundant: if I want an app, or a widget for a website, or any sort of digital tool, I ask AI to build it and it just… appears.’ The age of AI going from ‘helpful tool’ to ‘does my job better than I do’ is already here. Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft’s AI head, reckons most white collar work will be ‘fully automated’ within 18 months. He says: ‘For anyone who works with a laptop and thinks AI isn’t coming for them, take it from me: The future’s already here. It just hasn’t knocked on your door yet.’
Apropos the above: Here’s what the AI revolution looks like on the ground. Dan Cox, chief technology officer of Axios, reveals that six months ago, anticipating what was coming, the company cut its tech and product workforce by 30%. Says Cox: ‘The remaining team doubled its output in January and will double that again this month. One of our best engineers recently completed a task similar to one that took him three weeks a year ago. This time he did it in 37 minutes.’
Amid the mayhem at the heart of Labour, how has Starmer managed to step back from the abyss? In fact, the real question is: how has he been allowed to do so by the cohort of conspirators plotting to supplant him? The answer is that there has been a move to the soft Left in the party and now the plotters control him. As Patrick Maguire in The Times says: ‘He’s been liberated… back into captivity.’ Another reason why the coup de grâce was not administered: just who would succeed Starmer? Andy Burnham is blocked and Ben Walker, in The New Statesman, says that while Angela Rayner is popular with Labour members, her favourability ratings among the wider public are almost as low as Starmer’s. Streeting has ‘no purchase on the rank-and-file’ and, among the small proportion of voters who have actually heard of him, ‘he is disliked’.
Ukraine’s neighbour, Poland, is accustomed to provocations linked to Russia, says The Economist: railway sabotage, arson, drone incursions. But, just as winter temperatures plummet, this ‘hybrid war’ has become more worrying. Cyber attacks on 30 Polish energy facilities threatened a major power outage affecting up to 500,000 people. It was the boldest attack yet on a civilian target with no connection to the Ukraine war.
Despite not having released any new music over the past 12 months, abrasive pop person Noel Gallagher is celebrating winning a BRIT Award for songwriter of the year. The Oasis frontman confesses: ‘I’m not sure how I’ve got away with that one, but I’ll take it.’ He advises any ‘wet wipe songwriting teams’ who had a problem with his win that he was happy to ‘have it out on the red carpet’. So unlike the way dear Ivor Novello comported himself.
A woman has been reunited with her false leg 10 months after it was swept out to sea (and that’s not a sentence one reads often). Brenda Ogden, 69, lost her new £2,000 custom-made titanium blade-style prosthesis when it was engulfed by a huge wave moments after she took it off to swim at Hornsea, East Yorkshire. Ten months later 38-year-old Elizabeth Forbes found the leg while walking along the same beach looking for fossils. Leg and owner were reunited through Facebook.
Finn Russell’s mercurial performance in the Calcutta Cup match was painfully nostalgic. Especially when his eloquent demonstration of the fly half’s art was later celebrated in print in the Sunday Times, ironically, by Stuart Barnes. For those who remember, Barnes was every bit as good. Yet he was allowed to showcase his elusive genius only 10 times for England. His rival for the No.10 jersey at the time was Rob Andrew, a competent but stolid performer. He played 71 Tests. Although both were Oxbridge Blues, Andrew was considered to be the more Establishment pick; Barnes the maverick: just like Russell then. Or not. What a waste. And don’t get me started on Danny Cipriani.
Long-running sitcom The Simpsons has aired its record 800th episode in the States. Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie have now been on-air for nearly 40 years.
Straight-talking Guardian art critic Adrian Searle has a reputation for being, er, critical. And often not in a nice way. Now he’s stepping down after 30 years he’ll be missed, says Popbitch. But not by Charles Saatchi. The collector once told him: ‘Let me write your review for you. “I’m a c***, this place is s*** and the artists I show are all f*****.” Will that do for you?’
American Winter Olympics athletes strut around Milan and Cortina in revolutionary new inflatable coats. Nike’s Air Milano Jacket inflates and deflates with the aid of a small battery-powered fan, allowing wearers to regulate their temperature without having to add or remove layers. When deflated, the gimmicky garment acts as a windbreaker; when inflated, it’s as warm as a mid-weight puffer jacket.
You can’t keep Daily Drone Chief Sub LP Brevmin in his box for long. His latest, justified, moan is about up-your-bum ‘writers’ who forget they’re employed by NEWSpapers. Some Guardian scribe illustrates this in a lengthy piece about Tracey Emin (I gave up at the first mention of the artist’s abdominal probs). It was published in mid February and, in a shaft of ‘colour’ refers to ‘January drizzle’. Why date your work like this? And where was the sub/prodnose /features editor? Bollocks, ain’t it?
GlobalWarmingHotline: Enthused by the Winter Olympics, my neighbours decided to take a short skiing holiday, also in Italy. What a disappointment! You’ve guessed it: there was too much snow. Persistent falls, perceived to be dangerous, confined them to their hotel or tramping aimlessly through the drifts in their resort.
StatsAFact: More than 15 million American homes — approximately 10% of the country’s housing inventory — were vacant in 2024.
UntouchedByHumanSub: ‘The beautiful main house and its surrounding gardens were blanketed in white snow.’ — Mail.
TheThingsTheySay: ‘We have nothing to fear but Keir himself.’ — a ‘Westminster wit’ quoted by Tim Shipman in a fine piece in The Spectator on the travails of our leader which was reprinted in the Mail.
LetterOfTheWeek: A gem from a Times correspondent about helpful pot hole warning signs: ‘I saw a filling station where the signs “in” and “out” of the premises had been embellished 20 yards on by “shake it all about”.’
OldJokesHome: ‘I’ve only got two, maybe three good Motown puns left in me. Four tops.’
It’sOnlyMoney: Three grace-and-favour flats in Admiralty House have been refurbished with more than half a million pounds of taxpayer cash since mid-2024, says Guido Fawkes. The work included replacing a loo macerator and beds as well as refurbishment of rooms including spending more than £32,000 tarting up a reception room. Total cost at the building, once home to Angela Rayner and John Healey (separately, I should add): £522,644.40 inc vat. That’s £18,936.39 a month since June of 2024.
Paddy Clancy, 82
ANOTHER big figure from old Fleet Street, former Daily Express reporter Paddy Clancy, has died aged 82.
Clancy, who was well known in his native Ireland for his broadcasting work, died on Friday, 23 January at Sligo University Hospital surrounded by his family.
He is survived by his wife Bernie, two daughters and a son.
The Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin said Clancy was "an enormous presence in Irish journalism for over six decades. His distinctive take on RTÉ's morning paper round up was essential listening.
"His reporting and columns were essential reading for many years in the Sligo Champion, Donegal People’s Press, Irish Sun and Mirror."
Retro Rambleshanks, author of the acclaimed Drone series Yesterday Once More, writes: Ashley Walton, LOTP, used to tell of the time when, as a new reporter, he was sent by Night News Editor Mike Steemson to fetch Paddy Clancy and fellow Irishman Mike O’Flaherty back to the office from The Cartoonist where they were ‘resting’.
‘How will I know them?’ he asked. ‘Easy,’ says Steemson, ‘they’ll be standing at the bar wearing just their underpants.’ And so it came to pass. When Ashley returned to the office Steemson asked what the response had been. ‘They said to tell you to go fuck yourself,’ reported Ash. ‘Oh, good,’ said Mike, ‘they’re coming back, then.’ And so, fully clothed, they were.
OUT OF REACH
The ones that got away
THREE’S COMPANY: Bob Watson, Shaggy Shearer and Dolly Dalton
By BOB WATSON
DOOMED news blooper group Reach may be hurtling towards oblivion —but it didn’t stop a select band of former hardy Daily Express subs from raising a glass to the good old times on Monday.
They convened at The Kings Arms in Roupell Street, a salubrious back-street boozer in the shadow of the London Eye and Waterloo station.
One cynical hack — who spent more than 20 years at the paper when it was reputedly the world’s greatest organ — said there was undoubtedly more at the gathering than in the decimated Express newsroom after Retch’s countless cuts down the years.
He sighed: “We Expressians always knew how to party so it was nice to have a wet re-run with a few old chums along with a few laughs. It was slipping down a treat by the end!”
The star studded line-up included Collette Harrison, Nick “Dolly” Dalton, Chris “Shaggy” Shearer, Andy Jones, Jon “Smudger” Smith, Tony “Boggy” Reid, Bob Watson, Ray Williams, Bill “Hat and a Hat” Dickson, Rab Anderson, Allison Randell and Andy Waller.
Gaiety at Eighty for Tony
IT was nosebags all round for the Class of 1970 when former Expressman Tony Boullemier took his old friends out to dinner to celebrate his upcoming 80th birthday.
Adding to the entertainment was Kelvin MacKenzie, who got married for the third time earlier this year. He confided that each time he marries he moves a junction or two of the M25. He is currently at Junction 11 and he confessed that he is currently considering Junction 16.
Pictured at the Queen’s Head in Weybridge, Surrey, are Kelvin MacKenzie, Julia Boullemier (Tony’s daughter-in-law), Alastair ‘Bingo’ McIntyre (appearing by kind permission of Lord Drone), Chris ‘Lady Bingo’ McIntyre, Craig Mackenzie, Lesley MacKenzie (Kelvin’s wife), Tony ‘Monsewer’ Boullemier, and his son Richard ‘Ric’ Boullemier.
The Drone is particularly sad to announce the death of one of the funniest men in Fleet Street, Express sub-editor John Mulcock.
Mullers, as everyone called him, died on 18 October at the age of 81.
Drone editor Alastair McIntyre said: ‘Mullers was a great and dear friend and our joint insanity helped to keep us both sane during crazy and stressful days on the Express in the Noughties. I grieve for him.’
Tony Boullemier said: ‘A top sub and an extremely funny man. If he wasn't firing off a quip, he was saying something that you just knew was leading up to one.
‘And when political correctness spread over newsrooms in the 90s, he was one of the last journos to ignore it.’
John Mulcock
TIMES READERS’ LIVES TRIBUTE
CRICKETERS IN THE FRAME
DAVID RICHARDSON, pictured above in sunglasses, has been clearing out his loft and come up with a few sporting pix involving Daily Express journalists. But who are they?
Lord Drone is honoured for 20 years of his Fleet Street organ
LORDING IT: Drone as imagined by Scott Clissold of the Sunday Express
THE Daily Drone is 20 years old? Shurely shome mistake. Believe it or not it is true and to mark the anniversary His Worship Lord (Bingo) Drone was presented with a magnificent caricature hand-tooled by Scott Clissold, talented cartoonist of the Sunday Express.
The ceremony took place in front of disinterested diners at the Boulevard Brasserie in London’s Covent Garden, the venue for numerous drink-sodden gatherings of the World’s Greatest Lunch Club.
The brasserie is a favourite with WGLC members not just for the excellent cuisine but also for the fact that Le Patron provides old-age pensioners with half-price food.
Lord Drone gave a long address of thanks to gently sleeping members which can be summed up as “thanks awfully chums”. He left shortly afterwards in a sedan chair after proffering his fondest thanks to Roger Watkins (chairman), Terry Manners, Dick Dismore, Alan Frame and Pat Pilton for their generous gesture. (Will that do M’Lud? — Ed)
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.
Hot metal, hot off the press
PETER PHEASANT, pictured, who retired as night editor of the Nottingham Post five years ago, has turned his talents to writing.
His debut novel, Manfishing, is about the exploits of an ambitious young reporter on a weekly newspaper in the dying days of hot metal.
Manfishing is set in the fictional Midlands town of Brexham when stories were bashed out on typewriters in smoky newsrooms, long before the age of the internet.
It follows the exploits of Simon Fox, a small-time reporter with big ideas. Anything that’s fit to print makes the pages of the broadsheet Brexham Bugle, from court cases and council reports to weddings and whippet racing.
As Fox seeks out the next front-page scoop, he meets a cast of colourful characters, including a disabled pensioner who is being terrorised out of his home and an Auschwitz survivor pleading for help to save her sick grandchild.
But he knows nothing of the secret alliance between a corrupt detective and a violent skinhead.
Meanwhile, Fox is grappling with tragedy at home. And when the Bugle’s century of independence ends with a takeover, he is on a collision course with the new owners.
Stand aside le Carré, Seed’s written another spy thriller
"Where The Past Lies" is the fifth political thriller from ex-Daily Mail and TV journalist, Geoffrey Seed.
Former Mirror executive, the late Revel Barker, published Seed’s debut novel which led an Amazon best-seller list for three months.
Seed's wife says writing books is just his way of pretending he's no longer on the road. This is his side of the slur.
A MONOCLE-POPPING MOMENT AT THE EXPRESS
Do you mean us, Annie?
WHAT-HO! Express subs Alastair ‘Bingo’ McIntyre, Bob ‘Algy’ Smith and John ‘Bertie’ Brooks enjoying a refreshing glass of supper some time in the 1980s
MUCH has been written on these pages about the madcap Dronery on the Daily Express during the 1980s and 90s and our man TERRY MANNERS has found more evidence.
He writes: While browsing yet more publishing archives I came across this revealing quote from an interview with a local councillor for Salisbury, named Annie Riddle, pictured, in the December issue of the digital magazine Inside Salisbury.
Sounds fascinating, eh?
Talking about her time as a sub-editor in Fleet Street, she says: “When I was at the Express. There were a bunch of young lads there, four of them, they were very good, but they used to push it.
“They had this thing called the Drones Club and would pretend to be characters out of Bertie Wooster with the monocles and this would go on for the whole shift…
“Fleet Street was very male-dominated then. Heavy drinking was the norm but there was a lot of fun and I worked with some really clever people.”
Who could she be talking about, I wonder?”
(Drone editor dives under nearest desk)
EXCLUSIVE FROM THE DRONE GRAINY PIX DEPT
London Evening News staff meet for lunch, 45 years on
By BARRY GARDNER
Forty-five years after it closed the London Evening News managed to assemble most of its first team for a celebratory Christmas lunch on Tuesday (Dec 9).
Brilliantly organised by the last LEN News Editor Charles Garside, twenty-one former members of the ‘happiest office in Fleet Street’ gathered at The Punch Tavern, just around the corner from the old Associated Newspapers offices.
There were toasts to absent friends as several dozen bottles of wine were demolished.
As a mark of appreciation for his skills in corralling the motley crew of reporters, subs and feature writers Charles was presented with a rare copy of the last edition of the LEN, dated October 31st, 1980, signed by everyone present.
“Still a bloody good read,” he said.
Those at the lunch: Mike Ryder, Guy Simpson, Lee Rodwell, Paul Henderson, David Meilton, Colin Adamson, Helen Minsky, Kevin Murphy, Mia Scammell, Michael Crozier, Peter Dobbie, John McShane, Spencer Bright, John Blake, Charles Garside, Andrew Hogg, Jeff Edwards, Simon Brodbeck, Stan Slaughter, Ann Morris, Barry Gardner.
A Gran tale about Fleet St
Another day, another great book, this time a tale about Fleet Street by former Daily Star columnist Cathy Hollowell.
Beginning as an apprentice reporter on the Brighton and Hove Gazette in 1968, she worked her way through national agencies, night shifts at the Daily Mail, and the Daily Express before landing her dream job on the Star, interviewing extraordinary people from every walk of life.
Hollowell, who wrote under the name Cathy Couzens, now lives in Texas, with her husband, Don.
Forsooth! Here’s a clue, you silly arses
Another headline question to which the answer is No
NAMES WHO MADE THE DAILY EXPRESS GREAT
TOM BROWN reports: Cleaning out old files including some historic newspapers, I came across the attached memo. The subject matter — expenses in 1977 — is of course important. But the real interest is in the list of names — some of the most outstanding journalists ever who every day made the Express the marvellous paper it was in those days.
The memo is signed by the late, great Morris Benett.
The things they used to say on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
By PAT WELLAND
With nothing better to do, I’ve been re-reading a couple of books about the Boulevard at a time now seen – as one of the authors remarks – “as remote as the Byzantine empire”.
From political commentator Alan Watkins’ excellent A Short Walk Down Fleet Street, two conversations between Jack Nener, “a foul-mouthed bow-tied Swansea boy” who was Mirror editor 53-61, and his deputy, Dick Dinsdale:
1. “What we need on this paper, Jack, are a few Young Turks.”
Nener: “I can see we could do with a few new faces about the place, but why in fuck’s name do they have to be Turkish?”
2. “The sub-editors, like most people who work long shifts in unchanging company, had a number of catchphrases, or joke sentences. One of them – it comes from the film of Tom Brown’s Schooldays, rather than from the book itself – was: ‘Flashman, you are a bully and a liar, and there is no place for you in this school.’
Nener was overheard asking: ‘Who’s this Flashman, then, Dick?’
‘Flashman? Flashman? I don’t think we’ve got any one of that name on the paper, Jack. Is he a reporter or a sub?’
‘I don’t give a fuck what he is, but get rid of him fucking quick. He’s a bully and a liar’.”
3. From Matthew Engel’s equally enjoyable Tickle the Public – 100 years of the popular press: “There is a story that around 1926 John Logie Baird went into the Express office anxious to show his new invention (TV, as any fule kno) to the editor (Beverley Baxter). Baxter, in keeping with the paper’s reputation for percipience, sent down the message ‘Get rid of that lunatic. He may have a knife'.”
A TOPPING TALE IN THE TIMES
WE wouldn’t normally feature a story about farting in the Drone but if it’s good enough for The Times it’s good enough for Lord Drone’s mighty super soaraway organ.
But the following item in the TMS Diary yesterday is too funny not to share:
WIND OF CHANGE
The era of gender-neutral lavatories has its perils. The cricket commentator David Lloyd says he recently went into one and was embarrassed when he suffered a stentorian attack of flatulence.
Such things might go unremarked upon in the gents, but it would be dreadfully embarrassing if a lady were present. Lloyd was comforted and amused, therefore, when the woman in the next stall piped up and said: "Is that you, Maureen?"
The Drone picture desk was asked to provide a suitable illustration for this story but we are not sure the result, left, is entirely appropriate.
Go on, dear reader, you decide — oh and apologies to all Maureens.
A PLAGUE ON YOUR PLAGIARISM
Daily Express nicked our stories, say two writers
Two journalists have accused the Daily Express of plagiarising their stories and publishing the copy under another reporter’s byline.
Daniel Puddicombe, a freelance journalist, said he is livid after his Telegraph feature on a coast-to-coast train in Mexico was was apparently copied by the Daily Express site. The piece is under another journalist’s name, and was published six days after The Telegraph.
Puddicombe said he is certain it is his work that has been lifted as he is “the first and only non-Mexican journalist who travelled on that railway line and to have been in contact with the military and the Navy”.“There is absolutely no chance that anybody else could have done that,” he told Press Gazette.
He added another piece he wrote for the Telegraph about “Portugal’s Presidential Train” has also been “recycled” for the site, but it “at least references me and my original piece”. This second article did not appear to be written by AI, according to Pangram.
Both of Puddicombe’s articles lifted by the Daily Express were published on 18 October. He received an offer of £100 per article after reaching out to the Daily Express, which he declined and described as an “insult” as “less than one-third” of what he was paid per article.
Another journalist, who asked not to be named, claimed the Daily Express lifted their piece and published it under someone else’s name. It did refer to the journalist’s original work, but they were prompted to invoice the Daily Express by a journalist Facebook group. They were again offered £100.
Mind the steps…
MALCOM TATTERSALL says that if Justice Secretary David Lammy really wants to end the long delays in our judicial system, he should bring back “the police station steps”.
GONG BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
AH, this fair takes a chap back to the old days when a bollocking from Sunday Express editor Eve Pollard earned the victim a medal.
This little gem was found in the effects of the late SX executive Phil Durrant by his widow Helen.
She said: ‘I have a lot of stuff to sort that was being stored. I found this with a safety pin on the back to wear as a badge, in Phil's stuff!'
Former Sunday Express exec Peter ‘Stewpot’ Steward told the Drone: ‘I don't know why everyone on the Sunday Express during Eve’s reign of terror didn't get one.’
Henry Macrory remembers that the 'badges' were created by the late Sheila Copsey.
The day I was told to rewrite Tom Stoppard’s copy (and share his ancient typewriter)
JOHN SMITH remembers a mad day at the Bristol Evening World in the 1960s when a gas explosion rocked the city. Tom Stoppard was one of several reporters sent to cover the drama. Trouble was that young Tom was not a news man and wrote far too much. Consequently a frazzled chief sub told Smith to rewrite the Bard’s lyrical prose.
Express sales plunge after puzzles redesign cock-up
SALES of the Daily Express have haemorrhaged after an ill thought out redesign of its popular puzzles pages.
Frustrated readers deserted the sinking ship after changes to bring puzzles in line with the Mirror to save cash.
Bosses were forced into an about-face and published a grovelling apology promising to restore puzzles into their old format.
What the powers that be have failed to understand that readers hate redesigns, taking the view that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
The Express has undergone many rejigs over the years, including a switch from broadsheet to tabloid which did little to stem the relentless plunge in circulation.
Meanwhile they can’t even get the Page One blurbs right with one reading: “FREE Family size bottle at of Coca -Cola.”
An insider told the Drone: “Everyone is struggling with this new regime. The subs are swamped.”
That’ll be all my good man: Daily Mail’s butler retires after 46 years of service
THINGS are getting serious at the Mail, not only have they made 16 reporters on Femail redundant, they have also lost the services of the in-house ‘butler’.
The gentlemen’s gentleman, who padded round Northcliffe House with a silver tray laden with pink gins, has retired after 46 years. He was known as the Fleet Street Jeeves, a misnomer if there ever was one, because Jeeves was never a butler, he was a valet.
There is no word yet if the butler will be replaced but the Drone understands that Jacob Rees-Mogg doesn’t have much on his plate at the moment.
In other news, The Mail’s putative purchase of the Telegraph hasn’t even been announced as a done deal yet, but DMG’s bosses are wasting no time marking their territory.
Up on the second floor of DM towers, staffers have noticed a new publication has been added to the lightbox of the organisation’s titles.
Right next to the logos for The i Paper, Metro and Weekend Mail - welcome to … The Telegraph!
Observer Sport hits rock bottom with this daft front page
Look, we on the Drone enjoy schoolboy humour as much as the next man but this front page of this week’s Observer sports section has crossed the bounds of acceptability.
It’s not funny, it’s not clever and it has no relevance to the story to which it refers, England’s poor cricketing performance so far in the Ashes in Australia.
In fact it doesn’t refer to cricket at all and the pic has no connection with the sport.
The rest of The Observer was well subbed and attractively laid out so maybe the Sports Editor and his minions should go back to journalism school.
As more and more experienced journalists are shown the door, this is the sad result.
YOU READ IT HERE FIRST!
Caroline Waterston to step down as Mirror editor just as we predicted
Chloe Hubbard, left, is replacing Caroline Waterston
THE news that Mirror editor-in-chief Caroline Waterston was on the way out — was broken by the Drone THREE DAYS before it was officially announced.
Waterston, who will leave at the end of the year, had been in the job for less than two years. She will be succeeded by Chloe Hubbard, who has been UK editor at The Independent since the start of this year.
Hubbard’s start date will be announced later. Her remit, like Waterston’s, will also mean leading Reach’s magazines team including OK!.
FIRST WITH THE NEWS (FOR ONCE): Our original story
Waterston’s departure comes shortly after a shake-up at Reach that saw Express editor-in-chief Tom Hunt become editorial director (brands), with the editors of the Mirror, Express and Star reporting to him. They remained “responsible for maintaining and developing distinctive brands with growing, loyal audiences”.
The Mirror was understood to have been among the hardest-hit titles by redundancies at Reach this autumn.
DRONE TV EXCLUSIVE
On film: The London Evening News office from 50 years ago
STEVE MILL has produced some grainy footage of the Evening News newsroom from the mid-1970s which the Daily Drone is proud to publish.
Steve said: “There was a fair bit of jiggery pokery to get the video from an old dvd recorder hard disk, and you'll no doubt have experience with file sizes, quality and compatibility. Hope the file type is workable.”
It is workable and we extend our thanks to Steve for completing this task which we know from past experience how difficult it can be.
McEntee and chums, out on the toot again
It’s a grand life being a Daily Mail Diarist. Just ask John McEntee, pictured left, who writes the Ephraim Hardcastle column.
Dash off a few pars, leave the subs to clean it up, and saunter off to the pub.
This is the life of John McEntee, who wrote on Facebook: “After Richard Compton-Miller’s funeral in the Temple Church there was a grand reception nearby where we raised numerous glasses to Rochard [sic].
“I made the mistake of sneaking downstairs on arrival ignoring the cloakroom and availing of the disabled toilets. I dropped my trilby into the nearby washbasin as I commenced to Pee and heard this gurgle as the single tap automatically activated and gently filled my upturned hat.
“Did not diminish the joy of seeing my old friend and Daily Mail legend Geoff Levy with the evergreen Liz Brewer, My colleague Helen Minsky and the inestimable Adam Helliker. Lovely afternoon of memories and refreshment.”
I think we all felt refreshed for that. Thanks John.
You must remember this Sunday upstart (but to be frank we doubt that you do)
NEWSPAPERS come and, regrettably, newspapers go — and one of the least remembered is the News on Sunday. It was a left-wing tabloid launched in April 1987 and folded only seven months later. Judging by its first splash, right, it’s not surprising.
The founders were former members of the left-wing group Big Flame and other radicals.
The idea of the paper was originally thought up by Benjamin Lowe aided by Alan Hayling, who became Chief Exec and Chris Bott who wrote the business and fundraising plan. They took John Pilger on board as acting editor but he left before the newspaper was launched. The decision to base its HQ in Manchester was criticised.
The paper had hoped to sell 800,000 copies but the first issue only managed 500,000 sales and by its eighth issue circulation had gone down to 200,000. The failure of the paper was attributed to inexperienced staff, bad management, poor marketing, a commitment to political correctness and ideological purity at the expense of news values.
The NoS was kept afloat during the 1987 general election campaign thanks to the extension of an additional loan from the TGWU, so that its folding would not embarrass the Labour Party. It went bankrupt immediately after the election and was purchased by Owen Oyston but finally closed down five months later, in November 1987.
Two ex-employees, Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie, wrote a "withering" account of its demise called Disaster!.
NEW BOOK ALERT
Inside story of the kidnapping of Kelvin MacKenzie (up to a point)
ALLAN HALL, of this parish, has written another book, which will be published next January but can be preordered today.
He told the Drone: “Conceived in delirium, written in Berlin, edited in Bavaria, printed in Cambridge — The Duck Press is the incredible story of the kidnapping of one Kelvin Calder MacKenzie! AND it's NOT self-published! (Spoiler alert: Kelvin survives.)
“Other than that, it’s a bit of a romp featuring a grieving father who lost his only son at Hillsborough, a gay crimper called Desmond, a Saaarf London villain named Vic, a Sun femme fatale, a fired Sun hack, a compassionate detective, a man-eating lizard called Cecil and the biggest beast of them all, Keith Rupert Murdoch. Sun staff in the book are sometimes real, sometimes fictional characters.”
The author pledges to squander all royalties on strong drink.
Allan Hall is retired now but was formerly a crime reporter at the Daily Mail, chief reporter at the Daily Star, US editor for The Sun and US editor at the Daily Mirror. He is the author of 30 books on crime, mysteries and the paranormal, including the bestselling Monster about Josef Fritzl.
BARRED BY BARDOT
THE death of Brigitte Bardot at 91 has prompted Sue McGibbon, wife of the late Robin, to reveal a meeting he arranged with the actress at her rustic seafront villa in Canoubiers Bay, St Tropez.
Sue told the Drone: "We combined it with a little break and drove down to the French Riviera town bustling with luxury yachts, designer shops and celebrities.
"It was a blistering hot day and Robin had arranged to see Bardot at her home to discuss publication of a book on her life. We parked at the gates at the allotted time and I stayed in our white Jaguar as Robin got out and spoke to someone on the intercom.
"The gates opened and suited, booted and sweating, he walked up the drive carrying his burgundy briefcase that had held so many manuscripts.
"At that moment I heard a vehicle bouncing up the unmade track behind me and a jeep driven by a very pretty young man, with a little blonde sat next to him — and about six dogs of various sizes in the back.
"It skidded past the Jag and screeched to a halt, then I heard this very loud voice shouting at Robbie in a strong French accent: 'I doo not know yoo! Off my land!' Obviously Bardot.
"Worse. The dogs jumped off the jeep and were barking madly at Robbie trying to explain. She wasn't listening.
"Robbie managed to tell her to check with her agent before speedily walking back to the car, the barking dogs all around him.
"We found out later that Bardot's agent had left a message with her housekeeper that the meeting was taking place, but she forgot to pass it on.
"Over a much needed drink somewhere quieter and more welcoming, Robbie and I agreed. Her driver looked more like a film star than she did!
"Robin did not attempt to rearrange our date."
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.
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
