SHORT SHIFT: Put it in writing, old boy suggested Brian Hitchen

GARTH PEARCE has been rummaging through his records

I’ve always been a hoarder and collector of diaries and memos and this one emerged from the gloom in one of my latest clear-outs.  

It was written half a century ago in April, 1974 (I’ve finally dated it from diaries) on the  invitation of the then Daily Express news editor Brian Hitchen, who was clearly fed to the back teeth of whinging from a lowly know-it-all news reporter. It was at a point when the so-called revolution of DX80 by Jocelyn Stevens was going woefully wrong.

“Put it in writing, old boy,” he said. So I did. I didn’t hear another word and re-reading it today, I can probably see why.   

The only reaction was that Hitchen suggested that I move out of the newsroom altogether. An amicable separation. Later that year the editor Ian McColl also moved on and Alastair Burnet arrived.

The memo …