THE DOG’S BOLLOCKINGS
Mirror editor Jack Nener was an expert
at giving his backbench a tongue-lashing
Jack Nener with actress Janette Scott at Sandown Park, 1959
There are bollockings… and then there are Fleet Street bollockings. Editors who delivered a tongue-lashing now of the kind that was common before we came over all corporate would probably be sued.
Consider this one, by Jack Nener, editor of the Daily Mirror from 1953 to 1961. Like most editors, Nener, a Welshman, had a fixation which his backbench would be unwise to forget.
He insisted that pictures of dogs be retouched before they got into the paper because the photographer’s flash would leave the impression that they had cataracts.
Tiring of his instruction being overlooked, Nener threatened to fire the whole backbench next time they failed to retouch the dog picture. Inevitably, it happened again.
“Who am I talking to?” Nener roared.
“Dick Dinsdale, Jack.”
“No, I’m not. You can’t be Dinsdale – Dinsdale is a newspaperman. I’m talking to some fucking imposter; some whoreson sewer rat who’s crawled onto the staff in order to sabotage the Mirror. Let me speak to Joe Grizzard.”
“Grizzard here, Jack.”
“Don’t ‘Jack’ me, you fucking useless bag of human ordure. How many times have I told you about dogs’ eyes? And still you…”
“But Jack…”
“Don’t interrupt me. Tomorrow, I’m going to trawl the gutters of Fleet Street and recruit a better team of men.”
“But, Jack…”
“What are you trying to say you half-baked excuse for an arsehole?”
“You haven’t read the caption to the picture, Jack, the dog really is blind.”
This spectacular – but not particularly rare – eruption of rage is recounted by Mike Molloy in his book The Happy Hack – A Memoir of Fleet Street in its Heyday.
(Given that the incident happened when he was a youth and the book wasn’t published until 2016, I dare say Molloy had to consult his contemporaneous notes.)
It is one of many gloriously outrageous tales that will transport anyone who was there back to the Street of Shame on gossamer wings.
Another concerns a revelation on newspaper layout that lasted him a lifetime, delivered by the new editor of the Sunday Pictorial, Lee Howard.
Molloy tells us that Howard, a well-to-do novelist before Fleet Street, was 6ft and weighed 22 stone. He wore Savile Row suits, drank “astonishing amounts of whisky” and smoked 100 Player’s a day.
One night, Molloy joined the revellers in Howard’s office where “someone was pontificating on what were the best techniques for a layout in a popular paper.”
Finally Howard said: “I’ll show you what the greatest layout can ever be, old dear.”
Molloy recalls: “He took a fresh sheet of paper on which he drew an oblong, saying, ‘This is a picture of the Archbishop of Canterbury fucking Elizabeth Taylor.’
“Above the oblong he wrote the headline, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY FUCKS ELIZABETH TAYLOR.
“Down the side he scribbled an indication of the copy. ‘This is the caption telling how, why, when and where the deed was done.’
“I looked at the scheme he’d drawn in a sudden epiphany. Of course, I realised: the simpler, the better.”
Scattered through the book like diamonds on a silk cloth are vignettes of the leading bit-part players of the day. Howard brought with him to the Pictorial a women’s editor, a “tiny, fashionable figure with a stainless-steel resolve” – Felicity Green.
Molloy had a relationship with the delightful Green – No? oh, well, please yourselves – that he describes as “something similar to the bond that existed between Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster and his Aunt Agatha.”
Michael Parkinson wrote the foreword to the book and claims credit for the title. “Every few weeks or so a half-dozen of those who worked alongside him [Molloy] or simply admired him both as a man and an editor meet, yarn, eat and drink and generally feel a lot better for it.
“During one of our meetings the subject of the book came up. The publisher was looking for a suitable title – I looked at my friend who, as usual, seemed to be having a marvellous time, and said, without having to think, ‘The Happy Hack’.
“It summed up not just the life of Mike Molloy, but the joy we all felt about being in Fleet Street before the world changed.”
And so say all of us.
*The Happy Hack, published by John Blake, can be bought on Amazon. The Kindle edition is £3.99 and well worth a read.
*****
Judges, as any night lawyer roused from his slumbers would tell you, are beyond reproach.
They could not, for example, be swayed by anything they read in a newspaper and so, in cases where there was no jury, the reporter had a little more leeway when assessing the risk of prejudicing a trial.
I have always thought this was daft, antediluvian claptrap, rooted in the Edwardian notion that a gentleman was always honourable.
How could a judge put aside his own opinions, feelings, prejudices, simply by donning a wig and an ermine-trimmed robe?
This view was reinforced by the case of Christian Quadjovie, 26, who, despite convictions for sexual assault, carrying a knife and dealing drugs, was deemed not to be a threat to the public.
Quadjovie, born in France, came to the UK aged 10, and has since spent 963 days banged up behind bars.
Now the Sun on Sunday has revealed that the judge who allowed him to remain in Britain, Fiona Beach, was once a director of the Asylum Aid charity. She represented migrants, without payment, on behalf of the Bail for Immigration Detainees charity.
Her judgement has since been overturned and Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick is demanding an investigation into whether Judge Beach, 54, had declared her roles with the charities.
Her apparent conflict of interest undermined confidence in the courts, Jenrick said.
I can’t wait to hear the outcome. Judge Beach might have been entirely proper about her connections to migrant charities.
But she got the case of Christian Quadjovie entirely wrong. Such people abuse our tolerance and hospitality and should be kicked out.
It is not for Jenrick – and certainly not for me – to decide what should happen to Judge Beach. But someone needs to. It is hard to escape the conclusion that she was swayed by her personal views.
This is a trend evident not just in this case, but in many more involving migrants or asylum seekers. The legal profession, sometimes smug and self-satisfied, cannot afford to let activists pursue an agenda.
When they consider the actions of Judge Beach, they should remember the words of Adam Smith: “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.”
*****
When I heard of David Montgomery’s leaked proposal to take over the company that owns the once-mighty Mirror and Express, I thought, maybe it’s not such a bad idea. He can’t be worse than the wretches from Reach.
Then I read about the 850 jobs that would go and the stories to be generated by artificial intelligence. Lawks a mercy! The poor benighted serfs at Retch should imagine they are on the Daily Express, circa 1976.
It is 9.10 pm and, as one, they stand up, slip their jackets off the back of their chairs and head for the pub. And never come back.
There is no longer much risk that David Laws would track them down. Dear old Bunny died almost two years ago. And even if he called on the celestial line, they could always channel their inner Drone.
Which went something like this.
“Hello? Alastair who? No, sorry, never heard of him. This is a public house.”
Replaces handset.
“Who was that, Bings?”
“Bunny. Wants me to sub a top that’s possibly going into Page 104 on the Third. Steward, another pint of Pride, if you please. Then I really must get back… or I’ll miss my train.”
*****
I looked both ways, just as nanny taught me, and then stepped fearlessly on to the zebra crossing.
The arse on the bicycle, who must have come from a side street to the right as I was looking left, raced past me – within a gnat’s whatnot of wiping me out.
I’m thinking of taking a walking stick with me whenever I go out, even though I don’t (quite) need it to get about.
If I stick it through the spokes the little sod could be catapulted all the way to Brentford.
RICHARD DISMORE
20 August 2025
