Cheers Bob, our dear old reporter friend

IT WAS June 14, 1982, when the Falklands War came to an end but that night another war broke out — at the bar of the Upland Goose, in Port Stanley where the British Press were celebrating a British victory.

Instead of reflecting on their glory after filing their stories on time to their papers and agencies back home in Blighty, they discovered that only one of their reports had got through in time – from the pen of Evening Standard reporter Max Hastings. His copy on the fall and surrender of Stanley, was picked up all over Britain.

But it had been his task to see that all the reporters’ stories were filed at the same time.  If that wasn’t bad enough in the Goose that night, hacks were told that Hastings was claiming to be the “first man into Argentinian-held Port Stanley”.

The front-line boys of 2 Para were ordered to halt but Hastings simply walked past them and into the town, where he secured an interview with the Argentinian colonel in charge. That day he became a hero of the world TV channels.

But in the Goose, the hacks, including our late great reporter Bob McGowan and ITN’s Jeremy Hands were furious that their stories turned up two hours late. And they claimed that the Daily Mail’s David Norris was first man in. The anger grew as the pints went down.

“Ian Bruce of the Glasgow Herald picked up one of the many trophy bayonets lying around the bar and rushed off shouting obscenities in search of Hastings, pursued by the Press pack,” says Bob in his book Don’t Cry for me Sgt Major.

It was a short hunt. Bruce found the Evening Standard hack sitting in the back parlour of the hotel looking pleased with himself. Hastings’ screams filled the lobby and Bob dashed in to discover Bruce, shoulders arched bending over him, ready to plunge the bayonet into his chest. Bob and other reporters pulled him off as Hastings sat, shocked and ashen faced as Bruce continued to yell at him.

Bob writes that Martin Helm, who was minding the Press pack for the British Army, stepped in to make the peace, and confirmed the awful truth.

“Well, Max was the first one with the story of the surrender,” he simpered.

“Bollocks,” said the hacks, “we all sent our stories at the same time with him. He swore blind that he would take our copy as well as his own to the Marisat (satellite telephone).”

The problem was that there was only one seat available on the helicopter out to the fleet, Hastings had managed to get it and so the deal was done. It was a matter of honour for him to comply.

Martin was mumbling now and pleaded: “But Max told me he had an exclusive.”

“Crap,” the chorus replied. “What exclusive? The Daily Mail was here in Stanley first with 2 Para, their copy wasn’t sent either. What the fuck happened to Norris’s story? What the fuck happened to ours? Hastings promised he would take it all back to you people and make sure it was sent!”

What angered the newsmen most was not the fact that their copy had not been sent in time. That was bad enough. But the whole affair was overshadowed by a revelation by officers from the British Navy’s amphibious assault ship Fearless, who came ashore at Stanley.

“They told how much they had enjoyed reading the reporters’ stories in the wardroom. Their copy had been passed around at breakfast along with the toast, not having been sent to London first.

So, what happened to their copy? First, it had to be censored on the Fearless and then passed to any available ship with the Marisat satellite terminal on board.

Hastings claimed that his was the only story to get away before a blackout was imposed, so that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher could announce the victory to the nation before the Press. Hastings, anxious to get things moving, took his story to the Marisat ship himself, leaving the other stories with the censors.

It transpired that the Press liaison boys had misread a signal from London. There was no blackout on straightforward reports that Port Stanley had fallen, and the war was over. It was an MoD bungle.

Bob says: “A waiting audience of more than 50 million people in Britain were expecting on-the-spot accounts of a major British victory. They only got one on the day that mattered. It was hard in the circumstances to believe that this was all coincidence.”

Hastings was reluctant to relive the moment when he was named as the first journalist to walk into Port Stanley on the day of the surrender. “It was a journalistic stunt,” he admitted. “I’m not ashamed I did it, but I think after 40 years we’ve got better things to talk about.”

***      

THE DAYS WHEN BUFFALO BILL WORE BOW TIES 



Buffalo Bill Cody: Lived over a clothes shop

Former Express Editor Ralph Blumenfeld’s diary never ceases to fascinate me. Here is another entry from 1887, the year of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee.

“I visited Buffalo Bill today. He is living in rooms at 86 Regent Street over Hope Brothers, the clothing shop, where he finds himself embarrassed by an overwhelming mass of flowers that come hourly from female admirers.”

Blumenfeld tells how the legendary Indian fighter who killed 4,282 buffalo in 18 months, was appearing in his Wild West Show at Earls Court.

“He is having astonishing success, both artistically and socially,” he writes. “He can now wear evening attire and adjust a white tie with as much skill as he could skin a buffalo calf 20 years ago.

“And he is possessed with a sense of humour too. He laughs at himself and at the snobs who are attracted by his titles and his prairie hair. His fireplace mantel shelf is covered with invitations to Colonel, the Honourable W.F.Cody. Little do they know that the highest rank he ever held was that of a scout-sergeant.

“The title ‘colonel’ was bestowed on him by the Governor of Nebraska when he made Bill a member of his local staff at the State Legislature, which is like the Essex County Council. They all take the title of ‘honourable’.

In his book about his life, Buffalo Bill wrote: “Presently the moon rose, dead ahead of me; and painted boldly across its face was the figure of an Indian.

“He wore this war-bonnet of the Sioux and at his shoulder was a rifle pointed at someone in the river-bottom 30 feet below; in another second he would drop one of my friends.

“I raised my old muzzle-loader and fired. The figure collapsed, tumbled down the bank and landed with a splash in the water.

“Someone shouted: ‘Look, little Billy’s killed an Indian all by himself!’

“And so began my career as an Indian fighter.”

     

OUR NEIGHBOUR WHO SLEPT IN A SHROUD



Mrs Salmon’s waxworks in Fleet Street

SHE slept in a burial shroud; made glass eyes and created life-size dolls of living people using clockwork to make them move.

But few people today have ever heard of the woman who was as much part of Fleet Street history as its newspapers were to become. She was the original Madame Tussaud, launching her business with her husband in 1710.   

Her name was Mrs Salmon, and the sign of her waxworks at the front of the Horn Tavern, 17 Fleet Street, bore a salmon fish and was guarded by an effigy of an old, grey-haired match woman named Ann Siggs, who lived and worked on our patch.

Ann had crutches, wore a gingham gown, with a muslin apron and mittens up to her elbows and carried a basket of matches in one hand and crippling bills in the other. At her side, guarding the strange chambers, was a burly wax Beefeater carrying a truncheon, with a sword at his waist.

Once inside, visitors were charged 6d (pence) to view a variety of famous and sometimes horrific scenes over two floors. For Mrs Salmon, with a reputation as being eccentric, was a talented clockwork toymaker who had a skill for creating famous faces and horrific but true scenes from history.

Her works included King George III, Queen Charlotte, and the Prince of Wales. She also featured Dr Samuel Johnson; Admiral Horatio Nelson, and political opponents William Pitt and Charles James Fox, who all moved like clockwork toys.

A clockwork waxwork of English soothsayer and prophet of the 1600s, Mother Shipton, tried to kick visitors as they left. Crowds were always at the door and the exhibition was featured several times in the Tatler and the Spectator.

Mrs Salmon appreciated publicity and wrote her own handouts for her 140 works which she handed out in the street. One said: “Scenes follow the histories of royals such as King Charles walking to the fatal scaffold attended by the Bishop of London; the lieutenant of the Tower with the Executioner and guards waiting on our royal martyr. 

“The Overthrow of Queen Voaditia [Boadicea], and the Tragic Death of her two Princely Daughters. All three had their heads shaved and were imprisoned, flogged, tortured and sexually assaulted.

“The Rites of Moloch: Women who offered up their first-born infants to a god whose cult sacrificed children in a furnace set inside the belly of a bronze bull.

“Margaret Countess of Heningbergh, lying on a Bed of State, with her 365 children all born at one birth, and baptized with the names of Johns and Elizabeths”.

Mrs. Salmon ran the business until she died in 1760 and the waxworks moved but in 1831 thieves broke into the building and stripped effigies of their finery, smashed half of the figures, and threw the mangled pieces into a pile that touched the ceiling.

Salmons closed. Madame Tussauds opened in 1835 in Baker Street and included a Chamber of Horrors.

     

BORN IN A CAVE THAT BECAME A LIVING GRAVE    

Mother Shipton was born in 1488 in a cave on the banks of the River Nidd, in Knaresborough, Yorkshire and was England’s most famous prophetess. She died in 1561, aged 73, and foretold the fates of several rulers, as well as the invention of iron ships, the Great Fire of London in 1666, and the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

She had grotesque looks, and some people feared her. Her nose was large and very crooked, her back bent and her legs twisted. Just like a witch. 

Others taunted and teased her and so stayed in her cave, with its petrifying well, studying the forest, flowers and herbs and making remedies and potions with them. The well had ‘magical’ properties and its mineral waters turned everyday things into stone, including, it was said, people.

I first learned about her at a party where I struck up a friendship with magician Paul Daniels and his wife, former dancer Debbie. Paul was an avid follower of Mother Shipton. He was bursting with facts about her life. Some years later, I was in Knaresborough and visited the cave, only to learn that Paul had bought it and all her worldly goods on show.

*****    

TERRY MANNERS 

23 September 2024