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THE THINGS THEY SAY
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge
— Charles Darwin
TODAY’S PAPERS
CARTOON OF THE DAY
Every picture tells a story
Which was why the Daily Express snapped this one up like lightning
THE Daily Express has always given prominence to good pictures and whole pages were often given over to PHOTONEWS (ask any flong sub).
Terry Manners spotted this pic, left, online and the Express snapped it up. He explained: “In February 1971, a giant, forked lightning bolt lit up London and Colin O’Brien, a photographer in Clerkenwell, caught it by chance at cloud level on camera, snapping it from the top floor of a new tower block ‘Michael Cliffe House’ that his parents had just moved into. Colin walked into the Daily Express offices in Fleet Street the next morning with the picture and sold it at once. It became the PHOTONEWS page the next day. It is featured today on the website Spitalfields Life.”
Will the last sub-editor to leave the building kindly turn off the lights?
(Too late, they’ve all been sacked)
HERE is evidence that stories are being subbed by robots.
The caption on this pic of actor Johnny Briggs lying on the cobbles of Coronation Street reads: "An individual dressed in a dark suit and a blue shirt is seated on a cobblestone street, smiling and leaning back with his arms crossed.”
That is a classic example of Artificial Intelligence scanning a pic and writing what it saw. A human being was not required.
Terry Manners, who spotted this error on the MSN.com website, told the Drone: “This is the picture of former Coronation Street star Johnny Briggs this morning showing him in a clip from the series looking utterly distressed. But the caption has him smiling would you believe. The pic went with a story about Johnny suffering illness and leaving the show but the sub thinks he is just a bloke in a suit sitting on the cobbles and smiling. Ughh!”
Point of order, M’lud: Johnny Briggs died five years ago.
Peter ‘PJ’ Wilson dies at 87
Another well-known Fleet Street name, Peter ‘PJ’ WILSON, former news editor of the Daily and Sunday Mirror, died on March 18, aged 87.
He joined the Daily Mirror as a reporter in 1966 and left in 1987, weary of working for the then proprietor Robert Maxwell.
PJ’s friend and colleague Peter Miller wrote on the Mirror Pensioners website: ‘Three things made PJ an exceptional journalist: He could spot the potential in a story, then get the story, often against the odds, and finally write it so fluently that the sub-editors invariably ticked it through. Those rare talents made him a brilliant reporter and an inspiring news editor.’
Farewell to the Great Eliades
CHEERS DAVID: Raising a glass to David Eliades are, from left, Kim Willsher, Alan Frame, Geoff Levy, Gill Martin and Chris Williams
By ALAN FRAME
Before David Eliades joined the Daily Express in 1963 he worked briefly one floor up on the SX. Until, that is, the ghastly old lecher John Junor called him in and said: ”I’m afraid we shall be parting ways” to which David replied: “Sorry to hear that, where are you going?”
That was one of the many stories told when friends of the great man celebrated the 92 years of his life in the St Bride’s Glee Club, more formally known as the Humble Grape wine bar at the rear of Fleet Street’s parish church.
The event was hosted by David’s widow Lamar, pictured, who had travelled from Lugano with her daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren who took in their stride the sight of old hacks drinking vast quantities of fine wine.
Kim Willsher arrived straight from the Eurostar that had brought her from home in Paris. She told of David persuading Nick Lloyd to splash on the news of the Chernobyl disaster (we led the way on the appalling effects of the fallout which lasted for decades) and ensured that she had a well-deserved pop at Nick in the process.
One of David’s great gifts was in encouraging young female reporters, in spectacular contrast to the likes of Mike Parry, and it was no surprise that so many of them were there to raise a glass to him; Liz Gill, Gill Martin, Melanie Whitehouse, Gill Swain and Jo Gourlay. Louise Court would have been there had she not just lost her father Monty, former news editor of the Mail and editor of Racing Post.
Sadly David Richardson wasn’t well enough to make it from Languedoc but his daughter Lucy dashed down from her job in the City to read a message from the old boy.
Two distinguished former Express defence corrs were there, John Ingham and Michael Evans who excused himself after a mere three hours to write a piece for The Times.. Chris Williams came down from Glasgow, the indomitable Kate Hadley from Cambridgeshire, as had Esther Harrod, and David’s goddaughter Emma Freemantle from Herefordshire. Somehow I made the seven miles from Gipsy Hill and David Wigg the three from the King’s Road.
It was a great show of the affection we all had for David; Sue Peart, Maureen Paton, Caroline Hendrie, John Burns, Jeremy Gates and Geoff Levy all shared their memories and if I hadn’t ended up in the Bell with Williams, Willsher and Ingham I might well be able to recount them.
Thank you Lamar, and most of all thank you David. You were a star!
NEW
Whither Ukraine when a bigger, broader war has been hogging the headlines? The Iran conflict should be bad news, says Marc Champion in Bloomberg: oil prices have risen, easing Russia’s financial woes, Kyiv’s allies in Europe are feeling the strain and critical US weapons are in shorter supply. Yet Zelensky is ‘unfazed’. Ukraine’s extensive experience in drone warfare has made it a very attractive security partner. The Ukrainian president sent around 200 experts in drone interception to help out Gulf states shortly after the Iran war began; last week he signed 10-year drone deals worth billions of dollars with Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. He has even offered to help equip the Strait of Hormuz with the same system that thwarts the Russian navy in the Black Sea. In addition, Moscow’s spring offensive is faltering. All in all, Ukraine is having ‘a surprisingly good Iran war’.
As the Home of the Brave welcomes the Artemis II astronauts back from their epic odyssey, our reference to the Apollo 8 crew quoting Genesis in a broadcast on their pioneering orbit around the far side of the Moon prompts a reader to recall the ill-fated Challenger shuttle which exploded 73 seconds into its flight in 1986, killing all seven crew. Poignantly, the last recorded words spoken by the pilot, Michael J. Smith were: ‘Uh-oh’. That evening President Reagan paid tribute to them and America’s grit and resilience in a televised address. His speech was eloquent and moving. He famously quoted the opening and final words of High Flight, a poem written by an American airman in 1941: Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth/And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings/ And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod/The high untrespassed sanctity of space/ l Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
If you reach for the skies just now you’ve a chance to spy a genuinely iconic Supermarine Spitfire overhead. For two weeks it is making nine flights throughout Britain to celebrate its 90th anniversary. The two-seater carries the same serial number – K5054 – as the prototype which took off for the first time from Eastleigh Aerodrome near Southampton in March, 1936. Already it has flown over Big Sky County escorted by two F-35 Lightnings on its way to RAF Coningsby. Aircraft designer RJ Mitchell is rightly lauded as being the father of the Spit. But the fighter owed its versatility and tight turning capability in dogfights to its unique wings. Canadian aerodynamicist Beverley Shenstone is credited with their design where the leading edge and trailing edge of the wing roughly form two segments of an ellipse. But, then, you knew that, didn’t you?
Apropos the above, the Express, of course, enjoyed a proud link with the RAF: it was almost entirely due to Beaverbrook’s unique, frenetic management style as Minister for Aircraft Production that enough Spitfires were produced to win the Battle of Britain. His son, Sir Max, was a decorated fighter pilot (who actually flew Hurricanes) as were other Express journalists, such as Cocky Dundas and Bill Waterton.
You don’t want to be too hasty in top level chess. Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura spent 67 minutes deliberating over a single move during a match at a tournament this week. It turned out to be the wrong one. He lost the game.
Cambodia has unveiled the world’s first statue honouring a landmine-detecting rat. Magawa the rodent lived until it was eight years old and identified more than 100 landmines and other explosives from 2016 to 2021. It cleared more than 1.5 million sq ft of land and was capable of searching a tennis court-sized area within 20 minutes compared to four days by a human. More than 100 African pouched rats are deployed in landmine detection globally. Up to six million landmines remain undiscovered in Cambodia alone.
The world’s longest outdoor escalator nicknamed The Goddess has been unveiled in, where else, China. The moving staircase system on the steep banks of the Yangtze River in Wushan, is a kilometre long, says the FT. It is made up of more than two dozen individual escalators and lifts and takes 21 minutes to ascend or descend. Wuhan is known for its sometimes bizarre architectural feats, including a train line that runs straight through an apartment building.
Baffled boffins are bamboozled by a finding deep in the heart of the Canadian wilderness, says Popular Science. Tucked away in a forest 465 miles northwest of Ottawa, a massive slab of bedrock features a hand-etched rendition of the Lord’s Prayer. But the religious text isn’t inscribed in French or English, it’s composed of more than 250 symbols from the oldest known runic alphabet. The stone was only revealed when a tree fell near the town of Wawa, not far from Lake Superior. It also displays a detailed illustration of a boat, an additional 16 runic signs, and 14 X markings.
Several ‘racist adverts’ have had to be removed from Reach’s website, Edinburgh Live, according to The Edinburgh Minute. Reach says the ads about immigration came via a ‘partner's automated programmatic advertising.’ The company is taking action to improve its guardrails.
Cemetery space in China is so scarce and expensive that families have taken to storing the cremated remains of their loved ones in abandoned flats. They’re called ‘bone ash apartments’. Chinese cities are full of empty homes because of a property bubble that’s burst. But now the government has outlawed the practice. The ban came in ahead of the Qingming Festival, known as Tomb Sweeping Day, when relatives tend to family graves.
More and more veggies and vegans are giving up on nut roasts and leaf cutlets and switching back to, yikes, red, bloody meat. The proportion of the population who don’t eat animal products has fallen from 10% in 2021 to 7%. The shift is thought to be due to the growing popularity of protein-rich diets.
Could it be that phone scrolling, especially at meal times, is going out of fashion? If so, there’s a long way to go. In the States people spend an average of 4.5 hours a day on their devices. And 86.5% of phone use involves social networking and texting during meals. Now, though, the number of bars and restaurants banning phone use is growing. Curiously, it’s the young who are leading the way. Some 63% of Gen Z are switching off and older users are following.
GlobalWarmingHotline: The discovery of a tree log in the Pasterze glacier in Switzerland shows that the climate was warmer 6,000 years ago than it is today. Scientist Dr. Johannes Steiner told the German language channel Report24news features that the Swiss stone pine was growing at 6,700 ft. It would be too cold for it to do so now. By the way, the brief phew, what a scorcher moment we experienced this week is not a record for an April day in the UK. That was 29.4c as long ago as1949. That’s your climate change for you.
LetterOfTheWeek: A reader of The Times contributes to correspondence about couples of advanced age enjoying a bit of rummy pumpy. He writes: ‘My wife and I are both in our eighties and when she recently asked if I’d like to go upstairs to have sex I replied that she’d have to choose one or the other as I couldn’t manage both.’
StatsAFact: The UK eats 59.2 million kg of Cadbury Dairy Milk a year, 18.2 million kg of Galaxy and 15.2 million kg of Maltesers.
HeadlineOfTheWeek: Manager Of Scotland's First Alcohol Free Bar Crashed His Car While More Than Four Times The Drink-Drive Limit. — Mail
UntouchedByHumanSub: Charlotte Ivers, new TV critic of The Sunday Times, agrees with me that the drama,Tehran, is ‘the best thing on television’ but omits to mention which channel it’s on (Apple TV, by the way).
TheThingsTheySay: ‘I need to call my agent, knowwhamean.’ — Gemma Collins ain’t happy in I’m a Celebrity — South Africa. Do you know what I mean, perchance?
OLD JOKES HOME
When the hospital asked me for a stool sample, I sent them a leg off my kitchen chair. The trouble is now my wife keeps falling off it.
There are 11 groups of people in the world.-- those who understand Roman numerals, and those who don't.
I filled my car up with £110 worth of petrol then drove off without paying. I was taken to court and fined £75. Watch this column for more money-saving tips.
NIBS
talian journalists are striking because their industry-wide contract hasn’t been renewed in ten years, with salaries losing 20% of purchasing power to inflation. (Wanted in Rome)
CNN is preparing to cut employees as part of Mark Thompson’s digital overhaul, with a reported push for “more employees fluent in product, streaming, audience development, and digital storytelling”.
Future has expanded its Future Collab project with "Editors in Residence" at Who What Wear and "Masters" at Marie Claire. The schemes embed social media creators into the titles’ editorial output.
Australia's ABC has switched to BBC programming as more than 1,000 staff at the national broadcaster began 24-hour strike action over pay and conditions. (ABC)
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
ONLY IN THE DRONE
Our great columnists
Stand and Deliver
By Hermione Orliff
NEW TODAY
Remember when it was just LGB (Load of Gender Bollocks) followed by LGBT (Load of Gender Bollocks Tedium)? Now rainbow initialism for sexual minorities has gone the full alphabet soup. We’re way past 2SLGBTQQIA+ (two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual and related communities). A Canadian MP named Leah (don’t jump to conclusions) Gazan has coined a new variation: MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+. It adds the category Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls. The change is controversial, though. Campaigners moan that it implies that victim status is also a necessary ingredient of the soup and encourages sexual minorities to feel sorry for themselves and to complain endlessly about anything and nothing. Twats, the lot of them, aren’t they?
Space may be the ‘Final Frontier’ but isn’t it getting a tad crowded up there? We’re all aware of satellites in all forms of their wizardry but how many are there spinning around in Earth’s orbit? Ten? 64? 196? Actually, says the Guardian, there are around 32,000 circling the planet at immense speed. Some suggest that, by 2030, the number could be more than 60,000. The worry is that just one bad collision could subsequently send other satellites smashing into one another. This would eventually create an impenetrable layer of high-speed debris that would make space launches impossible, effectively trapping humans on Earth. Proposed preventative measures include catching defunct objects with nets or robotic arms, or, naturally, blasting them with lasers.
More (but not many) details emerge about the astonishing rescue of the American pilot on the run after being shot down in Iran. According to Steven Nelson in the New York Post, the CIA deployed a highly classified new tool called ‘Ghost Murmur’ which uses ‘quantum magnetometry’ to detect heartbeats from several miles away. ‘In the right conditions, if your heart is beating we will find you,’ assures my tame secret squirrel with a cloak and dagger and fur felt snap-brim Fedora.
Much excitement among the laddies who lunch as they prepare for the 100th meeting of the World’s Greatest Lunch Club. The surviving members of the iconic club will gather at a well-known Covent Garden eaterie to celebrate the unique gathering of former senior Express journalists. The club was launched in 2007 and in that time has had four different venues, survived lockdown but, sadly, has lost four members over the years. One disappointment at the 100th lunch will be the absence of the intended guest of honour, the former Duchess of York. In the wake of the Epstein scandal, the reclusive Sarah Ferguson has been contacted on one of her burner phones. She said that, regrettably, she would be out of the country but admitted she wasn’t sure which country.
ITV News International Editor Emma Murphy conducts a vox pop in a shopping district of Tehran. She stands out from the crowd not because she is blonde, blue-eyed and obviously western but, among the Iranian women pictured, she is one of the few wearing a headscarf. What’s that all about?
When sticky toffee pudding is quietly taking over pud menus in New York you know the Brits are back in town. It’s all part of the ‘Britification’ of the Big Apple, says Cami Fateh in Air Mail. There’s been a new wave of pub openings and Sunday roasts are available at all the top haunts. Even the Pornstar Martini, the Ed’s favourite cocktail, more synonymous with a raucous night out in Essex or Walton-on-Thames and the tincture of choice in the Dollis Hill bus drivers’ pop-up pub, is now a staple of Lower East Side and Brooklyn bars. This summer Dean’s, a new British pub in SoHo, will be serving Pimm’s and showing Wimbledon on a projector outside.
All the recent madcap Boys’ Own Paper stuff about World War II warplanes and gimlet-eyed fighter aces prompts a reader to beg to tell (Again? — Ed) the famous tale about Douglas Bader, who mostly flew Hurricanes, addressing a girls’ school after the war. He was explaining what it was like to be in a dogfight with the Luftwaffe: ‘There was one fucker to the left, one fucker to the right and another diving out of the sun…’ At this point the headmistress interjected: ‘Excuse me, group captain, I just wanted to explain to the gels that a Fokker was a German war plane.’ ‘That’s as maybe, madam’, said Bader ‘but these fuckers were Messerschmitts.’
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, broken Britain-wise, Amol Rajan is thinking of relocating to India, the country of his birth. He says he’s ‘worried about my children growing up in England.’
Starmer’s proposed digital ID cards won’t say whether someone is a man or a woman, according to the Telegraph. Consultation papers have revealed they won’t include any sex or gender data. Government says the details are ‘not necessary’ to prove identity because the cards would be based on ‘biometric authentication’ but critics claim the revelation makes the introduction of the ID card system ‘a farce’. As Shadow Equalities Minister Claire Coutinho says: ‘Having struggled for so long to define what a woman is, Labour have now decided it’s easier just to abolish the concept entirely.’
The EU is flexing its muscles with American big tech. It has levied $7 billion in fines in the last two years against companies such as Alphabet, Apple, and Meta Platforms. That’s $25 billion in the past 20 years. More is likely because there are ongoing investigations against companies such as WhatsApp and Snap. It’s all relative though. Alphabet, Apple, and Meta alone plan to spend up to $334 billion in combined CapEx this year.
Nice work etc…Rory McIlroy’s win at the US Masters enabled him to add £3.3 million to his net worth of up to $250 million, making him the 17th highest paid sporting icon in the world. His caddie, Harry Diamond, pocketed 10% of the prize money.
HMRC? What a shower of shit — official. Every week more horror stories about hours spent on hold on the phone and giant fines dished out. Perhaps part of the reason HMRC is in such a mess is that its mandarins have decided that the best way to assist taxpayers is via the medium of snapchat filters. A Taxpayers’ Alliance investigation reveals that the taxman spent £43,029 on a ‘snapchat filter quiz’, essentially paying snapchat to ask people questions about our tax code. As the TPA says: ‘This frivolous expenditure shows that the HMRC has lost its way, prioritising PR stunts over the core service of helping people navigate the most complex tax code in the world.’
One country paying very close attention as events unfold in the Middle East is China which continues to eye up an invasion of Taiwan, says Simon Shuster in The Atlantic. Beijing will have taken note of the way the world’s supply chains, energy prices and stock markets have influenced Trump’s willingness to fight. And the Chinese will have liked what they saw. If their military partially blockaded Taiwan, where more than a third of the world’s microchips crucial for producing computers, cars, smartphones, home appliances and countless other goods are made, then the resulting shock to the global economy would be ‘far worse’ than the one we’re facing over Iran.
The US fertility rate has dropped to another record low. Last year the number of births per 1,000 women of reproductive age fell by 1%, down by nearly 20% from two decades ago. Despite a growing pronatalist movement advocating higher birth rates, American women are waiting to have children later in life. Some are deciding not to have any because of concerns about the economy, ‘climate change’ and healthcare.
RancidJockstrapDebt: Your actual Danny Dyer, professional Cockney, West Ham nutter, actor, presenter and dedicated rough diamond, plunges to new depths. He is heard at the London Stadium singing about his daughter and her husband, Hammers captain Jarrod Bowen: ‘Bowen’s on fire —and he’s shagging Dani Dyer.’ SportsSnaps: Since January 1, 2025, PSG have beaten more Premier League teams at home than Spurs have. Italy’s cricket team has won as many World Cup games as their football team since 2006.
RampageOfTheRobots: Boffins in Florida have released 40 solar-powered, remote-controlled rabbits into the wild to tackle the problem of some of the world’s largest snakes which have become top predators in the local food ecosystem. The Burmese pythons, first spotted in the Florida Everglades in the 1970s, were introduced, either accidentally or intentionally, through the exotic pet trade. But they are very difficult to track down. Scientists hope to lure them into the open by inserting motors and heaters in the robot bunnies to imitate the motions and body temperatures of one of pythons’ favourite snacks: marsh rabbits or Sylvilagus palustris as you probably know.
HeadlineOfTheWeek: Keir Starmer Sends Warning To US And Iran After Peace Talks Break Down — Mirror.
TheThingsTheySay: ‘Start small and be patient - someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone else planted a tree a long time ago.‘ —American tycoon Warren Buffett, 95, (net worth about $142 billion) gives investment advice.
ClichéCorner: ‘Wedding bells are on the cards for Alison Hammond.’ — Mirror.
It’sOnlyMoney: Sickness in the NHS is costing the country billions. An investigation reveals that 28 million days were lost in 2025 in 2025. That’s 6% of the total days available and three times the national average. While it may be argued that NHS staff are more likely to face genuine illness from contact with sick patients, the reason for the explosion in days lost is from ‘mental health, stress and anxiety’. Eight million sick days were taken for this alone, a 42 per cent rise since 2020.
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.
James Mossop
One of the great sports writers, James Mossop of the Sunday Express, has died aged 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.’
The family, who are having a private funeral, have set up a tributes page.
CONTRIBUTE HERE
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.”
Ivor Davis dies at 87
ONE of the big stars of the old Daily Express, West Coast correspondent Ivor Davis, died on Sunday 29 March surrounded by his family in Ventura, California. He was 87.
The Express assigned him to cover the Beatles in 1964 when the toured America for a month. His wife, Sally Ogle Davis, died in 2012, and they had two children Gideon and Rebecca. In 1969 Davis co-wrote Five to Die, the first book ever published about the Sharon Tate-LaBianca murders, and covered the trial for the Daily Express.
As a foreign correspondent, he traveled throughout the western hemisphere covering riots, floods, earthquakes, and politics.
As Editor-at-Large for Los Angeles Magazine, he and Sally wrote more than 100 major magazine and cover stories. In 2019, he wrote about his journey with the Manson Family title Manson Exposed.
Davis was the best selling author of books about his travels with the Fab Four —“The Beatles and Me On Tour” and three books about his experiences with the Charles Manson murder case. His latest book is “The Devil in My Friend —The Inside Story of A Malibu Murder”— about a friend who turned out to be a murderer.
John Smith told the Drone: “Sad news about Ivor Davis, and farewell to another of Fleet Street’s greats. Our paths often crossed when I was New York correspondent for the Daily Mirror back in the sixties.
“He was fiercely competitive when chasing a showbiz story, but always amiable and cheerful company, ever ready to give me guidance when coping with the Hollywood scene that he covered so brilliantly for so many years.”
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.
EXCLUSIVE
John Osborne hated gossip writers but the play he wrote lampooning them was an embarrassing failure
John Osborne was one of our most successful playwrights but he hated gossip columnists such as William Hickey with a vengeance. So he wrote a play attacking them. Former William Hickey editor CHRISTOPHER WILSON, writing exclusively for the Drone, said the battle came to a head on 5 May 1959, the opening night of The World of Paul Slickey, the much awaited follow-up to Osborne's blockbusters Look Back in Anger and The Entertainer.
The play didn’t go well. The audience booed and actress Adrienne Corri, raced downstage throwing V-signs at them and shouting "Go fuck yourselves!"
Among those booing loudest was Noël Coward, who later wrote in his diary, “Never in all my theatrical experience have I seen anything so appalling — appalling from every point of view!”
CUTTING A DASH: A fine example of the sub-editor’s craft from The Pratt Tribune in Kansas. Not.
WHY HYPHENS MATTER
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.
OUR GREATEST EVER LOOKALIKE
BENNY GERRY
These two chaps could be twins, couldn’t they readers? And one thing is for sure, you will never see Gerry Adams and Benny Hill in the same room. Admittedly that is mainly because that nice Mr Hill is dead, but we on the Drone don’t let the facts stand in the way of a lousy story hooked in desperation out of the flong basket.
But seriously, those berets definitely came from the same jumble sale and the spectacles are almost identical.
You should have gone to Specsavers — Ed
The things they used to say on 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'.”
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.
GOOD NEWS (we think) Daily Star gets cash boost from website robots
THERE’S good news at last for the Daily Star. It has become one of the biggest sources of online advertising revenue for Reach.
The paper’s senior reporter Adam Cailler now works full-time on tailoring content for web portal MSN.com which, like Yahoo, republishes content from a variety of publishers and shares ad revenue with them.
MSN.com is the third-biggest English-language news website in the world and has been edited by AI-driven robots since 2020.
It is possible for publishers to earn higher rates via advertising from content published on MSN than on their own sites because MSN operates its own advertising system based on first-party data from logged-in users.
The success at MSN comes amid plummeting Google Discover referral traffic hitting digital revenue at Reach, with overall page views down by 8% in the second half of 2025 across the network.
Cailler has spent the past six months dedicated to managing Daily Star content on MSN, which he said at times surpasses the brand’s own website in terms of article views.
“I’m not just the first at the Star, I’m basically the first at Reach to just be dedicated to nothing but MSN for a job,” he said.
The role came about after Cailler realised a lot of Daily Star content could not be automatically fed through to the platform due to its strict filters.
“Thus my six-month journey through the joy of MSN and trying to figure out their filters and monitoring and making it… quite a big earner for us. And it’s just developed from there.”
His role involves monitoring what is working on MSN over a 24-hour period, tailoring content and commissioning stories aimed at this specific audience.
Source: Press Gazette
The Night Howls
Two members of the Daily Express news sub-editorial team fill their time after returning from the pub late at night in the 1980s. If memory serves, this was the final of the Arthriticson Howling Contest which involved shouting HERE DOWN PLEASE! in the manner of Foreign Sub Jack Atkinson an aged Ulsterman. By the look on the face of Lord Drone, left, he has received a high score from adjudicator Mr Robert ‘Algy’ Smith.
We thank you most kindly, as the late Mr Arthriticson would have said.
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.
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.
Fleet Street in the mist
Looks eerily quiet, doesn’t it? This slightly moist pic of Ludgate Circus taken from the foot of Fleet Street dates from 1972 and found by Terry Manners in his dusty drawers.
The photo was snapped by City copper PC Lew Tassle walking home after his beat in EC4.
He would have been standing outside the Albion so one can’t help wondering whether he had slipped into the pub for an out-of-hours snifter. Just about everyone else did.
PC Tassle often displays his pictures in the wonderful Spitalfields Life website which opens a window to how London used to be.
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.
Meine Güte! Vee have vays of making a groß cockup at Der Torygraf, Herr Springer
By DONNA N BLITZEN
DID anyone at the Telegraph think to remind the subs that their paper had been bought by a German publisher?
We only ask because, with incredible timing, the Second World War-obsessed title led its Review section last Saturday with a picture of Adolf Hitler and a swastika with a headline asking: ‘Why would anyone pay to own this?’
The cockup happened one day after Axel Springer, which owns a string of top Teutonic titles including Bild and Die Welt, agreed to purchase the Telegraph Media Group in a deal costing £575 million.
The Daily Mail and General Trust had proposed to buy the company in a £500 million takeover, but the government ordered an investigation on public interest and competition grounds. In the interim, Springer nipped in, with chief executive Mathias Döpfner saying he wanted to “preserve the distinctive character and legacy” of the right-wing paper.
Poignant story behind these three cobblestones buried in memory of 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!
Another fine mess as Mail ends up with
two Chief Reporters
STOP PRESS: Arguably there are three
THERE’S a battle of egos taking place among the chief reporter(s) at the Daily Mail, writes Popbitch, Gossip Editor.
The unhappy marriage between The Daily Mail (the newspaper) and The Daily Mail (the website formerly known as MailOnline) has seen the joint publication end up with two 'chief reporters': Sam Greenhill (paper) and Martin Robinson (website).
And, since this story was published, it appears there are actually THREE.
Michael Hellicar reports: “Inderdeep Bains, until last week bylined as the paper’s deputy chief reporter has been promoted to Chief News Correspondent — thus chief reporter by another name.”
But who's really chief? The apparent solution, since the paper's reporters continue to look dismissively upon their online counterparts: make Sam Greenhill 'THE Chief Reporter' by title, so everyone knows he's the main one.
We’re sure that makes Martin Robinson feel very good about his status — which is presumably half the point...
Elsewhere, former Daily Mail exec Gerard Greaves has fled to the countryside and is apparently pissing off his stuck-up Cotswolds neighbours. Namely, about his huge parties, where everyone gets hammered on champagne. Particularly as Gerard occasionally attends the local church and works as a bell ringer. Gosh, the horror!
APRIL FOOL’S COCKUP
A dwarf at reception asking to see the Editor? Pull the other one say Mail
staff (exit a disgruntled Warwick Davis)
Actor Warwick Davis found himself unexpectedly in the tabloids last week as he was spotted out with a new girlfriend following his wife’s death a year ago, writes Popbitch.
Davis was apparently unhappy about the coverage, so he rocked up at reception at the Daily Mail on April 1st, asking to see the editor.
Reception dutifully called up to the paper, whispering that there was a famous dwarf at reception demanding to talk to the editor about a story.
The journalists upstairs rolled their eyes, told them something like “yep, great April Fool”. So no-one took any notice of the request.
After about another 15 minutes with no attention, Davis got back into his car and left, headed towards the US Embassy, where he was spotted attending an appointment shortly after.
Who the hell is that man gatecrashing our quiet lunch? McEntee? Nuff said
MAIL diarist John McEntee really put his foot in it when he arrived late at a lunch to celebrate his cousin Catherine’s 50th wedding anniversary with husband Mick.
So when he saw all the guests sitting at dining tables he wasted no time in addressing the assembled company.
But there was a hitch as the former William Hickey editor admitted.
He said: “l arrived late and all were seated including the happy couple their children Gareth and Andrew and two grandchildren plus childhood friend Majella Sullivan and her husband Nick. The upstairs room was chocka block with about 60 covers.
“Before the food was served and without Catherine I dashed to the front of the room banged a wine bottle with a spoon and called for silence.
“Addressing the throng I described growing up in Cavan with my cousin and how wonderful it was to be here with her family and friends marking her splendid milestone with Mick.
“I called for a toast just noticing out of the corner of my eye the lovely Catherine with her head in her hands. Returning to my seat nothing was said. Then during the dessert course I noticed that the room had emptied down to three large tables containing Catherine's invitees. Behind me were dozens of empty tables.”
Catherine explained: “They weren't part of our party. They were just people I don't know having lunch.” Doh!
DRONE PICTURE SPECIAL
My chum and colleague Ivor Davis, famed West Coast reporter for the Daily Express
Ivor Davis drives a robot in his car in pursuit of a story in 1984
BY PAUL HARRIS
THE death of Ivor Davis made me think of my life as a photographer from Barnstaple, North Devon, where I lived for 29 years too frightened to try and compete with Fleet Street.
In 1975 I sailed with my car to South Africa where there were lots of jobs as many white families were fleeing the country because of the fear of war.
I ended up in The Rhodesia Bush War but it was Terry Fincher who got me to Hollywood and Ivor Davis who enhanced my career in California.
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
