Eyes were a little smoky as Fleet Street bade farewell to Bacon, the most sizzling of Express lawyers

ALAN FRAME reports from the St Bride’s memorial service for former Express Newspapers lawyer Stephen Bacon

Now here’s a tip for all aspiring gossip writers; go to memorial services and take copious notes. This old hack was at St Scaffold yesterday (St Bride’s has disappeared under acres of the stuff as part of a £1.4m refurb). We were there for a fine service celebrating the life of the modest, funny and clever Stephen Bacon (affectionately known as Sizzling), who, as our legal eagle, got Express Newspapers and News Group out of many an expensive and humiliating scrape.

The packed congregation heard that Stephen was the son of the rector of Failsworth (for soft Southerners that’s oop Oldham way). That much we knew but what came next in son Nicholas’s address was quite the marmalade dropper: not only did the Rev B totally give up on God while still ministering to his flock but he had three wives, one at home in the conventional manner (mother of Stephen), another in Scandinavia and a third in Korea.

Years later, after his father had died, Stephen, at home in Kent, spotted some Jehovah’s Witnesses walking up the drive. Telling Nick to let them in, he rushed upstairs and re-emerged resplendent in his dad’s regalia complete with a cross around his neck. A lively ecclesiastical debate followed and the god-botherers fled at pace.

He was fond of a good argument and, as a serious Latin scholar, would take the family on holiday to Italy so he could pick a fight while visiting various basilicae (yes, I did Latin too) with bemused priests conducting the row not in Italian but in Latin. Vini, vidi, vici!

The first address was given by Justin Walford, former legal manager of the Express who, as did Stephen, always aimed to get contentious stories into the papers rather than the easy option of red-pencilling everything. Justin, who has now retired from heading the legal department at The Times, (he’s 67 and looks barely 47, damn him), told us Stephen enjoyed memorial services and would listen carefully to addresses, essentially reading them for libel! And, as I remember both of them advising, ‘to just stick in allegedly every so often’.

Both Stephen and Justin were deeply upset by Jeffrey Archer’s libel victory over the Daily Star which, as we all know, cost the paper £500,000 in damages and robbed editor Lloyd Turner of his job. Their pleasure when Archer was much later jailed for perjury in the case, was tempered by the fact that Lloyd had not lived to be proved right.

And as Andrew Caldecott KC, the distinguished Old Etonian media Silk, reminded us in the third address, Stephen championed the under-privileged. “He was upset that Monica Coghlan had died before Archer was sent down. She was the only one in the affair who always told the truth,” he said.

Caldecott talked of the time when both the DX and Star were sued for libel by the parents of Madeleine McCann when the papers shamefully hinted that maybe they had been responsible for her disappearance. “I was instructed by Stephen on behalf of the papers but we both agreed that if it’s indefensible, then settle and settle quick”.

Stephen persuaded editor Peter Hill (who read the first lesson yesterday) and owner Richard Desmond that a front page apology was essential and would also serve to reduce costs. “And that is exactly what happened. Damages were set at £550,000, or as the Attorney General advised me, about a quarter of the amount had the case been fought and lost”.

Old friends were there: Dick Dismore, Mike Hughes — breaking off a pensions conference in Manchester especially to remember Stephen — and Huw Whittow who read the second lesson. As always with St Bride’s, the music and sheer theatre of the service was stunning. So too was hearing of Stephen’s final text message to Nicholas the night before he died on July 13. It read simply: “I expect trouble”

But back to the gossip; when we arrived we were chatting to one of Stephen’s old school friends from their days as boarders at The Perse, Cambridge. “Ah, David Gilmour’s old school”, I ventured. ”Yes”, said my informant, “he tried to seduce me when I was about 13.” Or, as Stephen would have advised: Allegedly, Allegedly, Allegedly!

ALAN FRAME

16 October 2025