British Journalism Review
Vol. 10, No. 4, 1999
Students of media studies at our myriad universities, for whom, let it be said right away, this book is essential reading, will find it is remarkably forthcoming on the subject of pubs.
Alan Watkins, who writes a gravely important political commentary in The Independent on Sunday, and is probably the best practitioner of that art form since Hugh Massingham had his devoted following on page one of The Observer, has chosen to write his whole chapter on Fleet Street’s watering holes. He describes the King and Keys (formally, students should note, the Kings and Keys) as “a complete hellhole. Fights were not uncommon.” There is further enlightenment from Francis Wheen. He says the King and Keys was “a ghastly bearpit where wild eyed savages swore and fought and extinguished their cigarettes in other people's glasses of whisky: an outsider would have been astonished to learn that these Bohemian bruisers were all employed by The Daily Telegraph, that champion of middle-class respectability.”
The Stab, Poppins, El Vino’s and all the rest are lovingly recalled, but students inspired by such nostalgia to choose what is now misnamed Fleet Street as their profession should be warned. Enter the evil Murdoch. Hardly a kindly word is said about him (in fact I think not one) in all these essays by the great and mostly good from universities that were never polytechnics. The most damning condemnation of our contemporary Citizen Kane comes from Francis Wheen who recalls what hacks used to call the shock news that he had banned all alcohol from Wapping after bussing his staff there to defeat the print unions. Beaverbrook banned alcohol too, but let us not spoil a good story. Wheen's description of life today in Wapping or Canary Wharf would certainly have inspired me to fight to the top on, say, the excellent Banbury Guardian and leave it at that:
"The Prisoners of the Fleet exchanged the old Victorian penal colony of Chesterton’s imagination for offices that look like privatised jails, even down to the Group 4 security men. In the joyless offices of today, journalists arrive at their workstations bright and early, without a hint of a hangover, log on to the computer and spend the next nine hours or so gazing at their screens in a kind of trance before heading home. For all the difference it makes, they might as well be on an ice-floe in Antarctica.”
Students, please note. I have deleted three sentences there without so much as three dots. Unprofessional, really. Yearning for the good old days is a dominant theme of this work. Thus Stephen Fay, in his chapter on getting the sack, refers to “the last, golden years of overmanning” when Peter Jenkins, then of The Guardian, used to say that you could fire half the staff of the Sunday Times, and, since the quality of the work was uniformly high, it wouldn’t matter which half. In the four decades of Lord Hartwell’s benevolent management, “the only case anyone can now recall of a sacking was of a lady reporter who was so drunk after lunch that it took two strong men to shoehorn her into her desk.” I recall Lord Beaverbrook’s reaction when Harold Keeble, our layout genius, had persuaded me to publish a group photo of all 60 of our staff photographers to demonstrate “picture power in the Express.”
The Old Man, as all the journalists referred to him (to the inferior beings in management he was always “the Lord”), yelled into his dictaphone to the joint chairman, “Mr Blackburn, Mr Blackburn. 60 photographers! 60 photographers! You’re all mad on the Express.” He was, in fact, delighted. His pretence of a concern for economy was demonstrated by his habit of sending his countless, almost invariably irritating, memos on tiny strips of paper. It never extended to possibly the largest team of staff photographers and foreign correspondents in Fleet Street’s history. Some misguided soul suggested to him a purge on expenses, which he bullyingly backed by almost shouting at me one day. “Certainly,” I said in a Sir Humphrey-like manner, “but may I suggest we omit certain names from this exercise ?” and listed such famous reporters as René MacColl, Chapman Pincher, Peter O’Sullevan and Percy Hoskins, the best crime man this century. “Mr Blackburn, Mr Blackburn,” the Old Man shouted into his machine, “check all names with Mr Edwards before we start the purge.” It never happened. Some people can never understand why people not of his ludicrous political persuasion enjoyed working for this old-fashioned Fleet Street tyrant.
“Brighter media students (be cheered, I say to them, Alastair Campbell was one once) will have noticed that the last long paragraph refers to nothing that appears in the book. This is traditional, they will learn. A. N. Wilson recalls (nostalgia, again) the great Sunday paper reviewers like Harold Nicolson who would “occasionally get round to mentioning the book in question.” He tells how he asked “the historian Paul Johnson” – I almost instantly realised he was referring to Paul Johnson – to review a book of 800 pages on a learned subject. A. N. Wilson’s secretary forgot to despatch the book, and Johnson reviewed it unperturbed with “observant comments on its merits and faults.” This story, I suspect, comes under the heading hyperbole, like tales repeatedly told and improved upon in the King and Keys before the fighting routinely broke out.
There are several such to delight sentimental insomniacs. One of the best old Fleet Street raconteurs I did actually read in this work is Christopher Munnion, who covered all the most headlineworthy bloodbaths in Africa for 25 years. Though some of his tales made me instinctively want to call for another round, several had a terrifying ring of unembroidered truth. He describes being locked up in Idi Amin’s military prison where Ugandan cellmates were dragged two by two to be sledgehammered to death in the yard outside. On another trip, in Nigeria, a BBC film crew was persuaded to film the execution of a young officer who had made the mistake of murdering an Ibo in the media’s presence. The young, blindfolded officer heard the order “Ready, aim...” when the sound engineer cried “Oh, shit...hold it.” His batteries were flat and the execution was delayed while they were changed.
Students, please note. I mention this nightmare incident because it holds one’s attention. As is not quite so true of Fiammetta Rocco’s master class on how to interview. One thing she did reveal may intrigue people. She interviewed Prince Philip for a profile on condition that she kept secret that she had. So how come, a diligent editor would ask, she is now telling us? Another lady contributor is Amanda Platell. Her account of sexism in Fleet Street is arresting; or, rather, should lead to arrests. She describes how her news editor repeatedly tried to make her sit on his lap. “I can still clearly remember,” says Ms Platell, “the moment men I worked with stopped making passes at me – it was the day I became deputy editor of Today” Unfortunately, the paper folded, which may explain her later unexpected departure to Tory Central Office.
There are no accounts of distressing discrimination against blacks, possibly because there are as few working in phantom Fleet Street as drive our trains. Some positive discrimination, as in television and advertising, might yield sales, good stories and possibly a great editor.
Henry Porter, in a chapter on newspaper editors, says their life-expectancy is commonly shorter than that of a dormouse. Leafing again through Harold Evans's unequalled guide to brilliant photo journalism, Pictures on a Page, I was reminded that he edited the Sunday Times for 14 years. Come to think of it, that was a year or two longer than I edited the Sunday Mirror. Students, be assured: It is possible to outlive a dormouse so long as you know, as one of my very able deputies, famous only in the King and Keys, put it, how to keep the rules apart.