Every career, even one as illustrious as Eve Pollard’s, needs a little luck to turbocharge it. Pollard’s slice of good fortune came when she applied for a job on the new Mirror Magazine.

The Mirror board had decided that the colour supplement would come out with the daily on Wednesdays. Mike Molloy, who had been bringing out Mirrorscope, a brilliant section for in-depth analysis of news stories and live issues, was pencilled in as editor.

But first he had to make his bones on Nova magazine, part of the IPC stable. It was run by Dennis Hackett and Michael Wynn Jones from offices in Southampton Street, Covent Garden.

Hackett didn’t really believe the Mirror Magazine would materialise. He suspected it was one of those Fleet Street ideas that would be quietly forgotten – until Hugh Cudlipp ordered a dummy be prepared.

Molloy made the editorship his own when Hackett was struggling for a headline on a story for the dummy. It was about a lioness with an albino cub, which she rejected because of its white fur.

“Pride and prejudice,” piped up Molloy.

“You’ll do,” said Dennis. “I’ll tell Cudlipp you’ve got the job.”

And so recruiting began for Mirror Magazine. One of the hopefuls was Pollard, now 82, who in 1968 was fashion editor of Honey magazine.

In her interview with Hackett and Molloy there was a moment of confusion between the two men, Molloy recalls in his memoir The Happy Hack. They nodded to each other.

“So you want that one?” Hackett asked Molloy after Pollard had left the room.

“I thought you wanted her, “Molloy answered.

“Well, you’ve bloody well got her now,” said Hackett.

It was the launch of a spectacular career that saw Pollard become editor of the Sunday Mirror and the Sunday Express, though she was not, as many believe, the first woman editor of a national newspaper in Britain. That accolade belongs to Rachel Beer, of The Observer and The Sunday Times.

Eve Pollard, OBE, was also editor in chief of Elle magazine in the U.S., editor of the Mail’s You magazine, a prolific broadcaster and a novelist.

She also found time to become the mother of Claudia Winkleman, the most beloved fringe in showbusiness (including Edinburgh) and start Women in Journalism.

The Mirror Magazine also launched another stellar career when Molloy hired the unknown Delia Smith to write a cookery column. He introduced her to his deputy, Michael Wynn Jones, and they later married.

Delia arguably taught the nation to cook with her TV shows and best-selling books of precise recipes. The reason they were so meticulously recorded dates back to her Christmas cake recipe published in the Mirror magazine.

Molloy walked in the day after publication to find phones ringing off the hook. “It’s Delia’s Christmas cake,” said his secretary. “She didn’t say when to put the nuts and fruit in, so they all left them out.”

Wynn Jones later told Molloy that Delia had learnt a crucial lesson from the cock-up and from then on guided readers and viewers through the cooking process, a step at a time, offering precise measurements of ingredients.

Before the Mirror Magazine was even up and running, IPC was taken over by Reed International, a company more used to making paper than making newspapers. Dennis Hackett, who had been appointed director of the magazine, told Molloy that it could not succeed financially: The unions had plundered any future profits.

That was prophetic, as it turned out. The magazine lasted a year, despite contributions from such brilliant journalists as Keith Waterhouse and Jeffrey Bernard.

“But we had a hell of a good year, wrote Molloy. “The readers and the advertisers loved us. The only people who hated Mirror Magazine were the majority of the Daily Mirror staff. Most of us on the magazine were under 30 and so happy we could feel jealousy in the air.”

The magazine’s journalists didn’t do too badly. Bill Hagerty, assistant editor, went on to edit The People; Delia Smith used her payoff to buy a house in Suffolk, where she still lives with Wynn Jones, who founded Sainsbury Magazine.

Jeffrey Bernard retreated to Soho and got his amusing gig at the Speccie; and Waterhouse carried on writing his column in the Daily Mirror, rather than its defunct magazine.

Molloy became an assistant editor for the Daily Mirror and eventually editor… blissfully unaware that the Maxwell years lay ahead.

*****

I’m already enjoying the leadership contest in the Labour Party. Long may it last. It is forcing the protagonists to show their true colours.

Wes Streeting is a snake. His declaration that “one day” Britain should again be a member of the European Union was pure malevolent mischief, designed to prod Reform into frantic action against his main rival, Andy Burnham, in the Makerfield by-election.

Burnham is Mayor of Manchester and would not have to give up that job to run for Parliament. But as one of his functions is Manchester Police and Crime Commissioner, he would have to stand down if he won.

And that would be only half the job done. He would still have to win the leadership contest, which is a risk he has to take to grasp the glittering prize.

Burnham, who has said in the past that Brexit should be reversed “in his lifetime”, now says he won’t try to take us back in. “My view is Brexit has been damaging, but the last thing we should do is re-visit these arguments.”

Especially in  Makerfield, eh, Andy? The latest polling puts him on 45 per cent against Reform’s 43 per cent. However, the people of Makerfield might think he is taking their goodwill for granted and object at the ballot box to Burnham using them as a stepping stone to Downing Street.

And the election poses a question for the Tories: Should they step down to give Reform potentially the whole of the Right wing vote?

I’m glad Starmer didn’t roll over and “set a timetable” for his demise. Why would you be complicit in your own political death? Make them fight.

Meanwhile the Prime Minister plods on, no doubt enjoying the spectacle of the internecine warfare, which is only just getting going. I’ve never seen him so relaxed.

Like a man who knows the die is cast and there is nothing he can do but await his fate.

I can’t remember when politics was last as interesting as this.

*****

I confess I’m confused by the sexual politics of the Channel 4 reality TV show Married at First Sight UK.

The premise is simple enough: A couple matched by “experts” using interviews, data and cod science meet for the first time at their wedding.

Then off they go to start their new life under the constant, intrusive scrutiny of the cameras. They have eight weeks to get to know each other, bond (or not) and decide whether they want to remain together.

They can choose to divorce and if they do it within the eight weeks, C4 pays the bill.

The interest for the viewer is, presumably, in whether there is romance or fisticuffs; shagging or slagging.

This week we heard allegations that three of the brides had been raped or sexually assaulted. One woman said her screen husband bruised her during sex and threatened to attack her with acid.

The screen husband says the sex was consensual and denies threatening her.

A second woman said her screen husband had groped her while she slept. She also claimed she said no when he suggested sex but he just carried on.

The man says that the sex began consensually but the woman “communicated through her body language that she had withdrawn consent” and he stopped.

A third woman accused her screen husband of ejaculating inside her without her permission.

She said: “I want to share my story and hope that it can actually start a serious conversation about moving forward and putting more things in place, because at the end of the day, I shouldn’t have been in that situation.”

Er, come again? Okay, that’s entirely inappropriate and I regret making light of a distressing episode.

But honestly, do you feel sorry for any of them? I’ve never watched it but it sounds like a poisonous, grubby, voyeuristic little show full of needy people craving their 15 minutes of fame.

Married or not, do the women have the right to say no and not to be coerced? Of course they do.

And is my sympathy diminished by their agreement to take part? You bet.

Reality TV is cruel, ruthless and exploitative. Don’t go there. However much they pay you.

*****

The Government has announced a £30 million crackdown on the Kurdish mafia controlling the convenience stores on our high streets.

It is a triumph for the BBC’s UK editor Ed Thomas and his team, who risked violence to uncover the sordid truth behind the mini-marts dealing drugs and selling illegal vapes and smuggled cigarettes.

The clean-up will be run by the National Crime Agency (NCA)  and will also involve trading standards officers, immigration enforcement and Revenue and Customs. They will raid shops, close them down and seize cash.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: "We are hitting back with a nationwide crackdown to shut these fronts down, seize dirty cash and drive organised crime off our high streets and put bosses behind bars."

It would not have happened without the BBC’s great journalism. I hope Thomas gets the respect he deserves from those who run our trade. A gong for the gang-buster!

PRESCIENT: Dispatches, 6 May 2026

RICHARD DISMORE

20 May 2026