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THE THINGS THEY SAY
I like to have a martini. Two at the very most. After three I’m under the table, after four I’m under my host
— Dorothy Parker
TODAY’S PAPERS
CARTOON OF THE DAY
CUTTING A DASH: A fine example of the sub-editor’s craft from The Pratt Tribune in Kansas. Not.
WHY HYPHENS MATTER
Reach posts £165m loss, its worst in a decade, as digital readers desert ailing titles
FROM THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, 5 MARCH
BY MATTHEW FIELD
THE Daily Mirror's owner has slumped to its biggest loss in more than a decade after a collapse in Google traffic led to a steep drop in digital readership.
Reach, formerly known as Trinity Mirror, fell £165m into the red after warning of a "sharp decline in referral traffic" from the search giant.
The loss, which reversed a £63m profit last year, was driven by a £223m impairment charge following a decline in visitors from Google's search engine, which cut growth forecasts.
"The unhelpful referrer and macro environments have tempered our view on digital growth over the near term," said Piers North, Reach chief executive.
The loss for the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Express, Star and dozens of regional newspapers is the deepest of the Reach era.
The business was rebranded from Trinity Mirror in 2018 after the purchase of the Express titles from media mogul Richard Desmond.
Trinity Mirror last reported a similar-sized loss in 2014, when it fell £160m into the red.
The company has been grappling with Google's shifting algorithm, which has threatened traffic to free-to-read websites. Google's introduction of "AI Overviews", which give short descriptions of news topics, has left media sites scrambling to attract visitors as more readers turn to the search engine for information or advice.
Data from Ipsos for January showed that Reach had suffered a collapse in page views for some of its biggest local titles, which have suffered from Google's AI shift. Page views of Surrey Live tumbled almost 85pc, Leeds Live's page views fell by 77pc, and Bristol Live dropped just under 70pc.
Despite the falls, Reach hailed its own use of AI, claiming that a tool called "Guten", which rehashes stories from across its titles, is used for 26pc of its articles. The publisher has been forced to push into subscriptions for its red top and regional papers, adding premium subscriptions to titles including the Manchester Evening News, Liverpool Echo and WalesOnline.
Reach said it had so far seen about 15,000 subscribers to its premium subscription products and was targeting about 75,000 digital subscribers this year.
Last September, Reach announced 321 job cuts, including 186 editorial roles. At the time, it said it intended to create 135 new jobs, mainly in video production. Unions have claimed that Reach's decision to shut most of its printing presses has put more than 250 jobs at risk.
James Mossop dies at 89
One of the great sports writers, James Mossop of the Sunday Express, has died at the age of 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.’
OUT OF REACH
Newspaper sales figures will now be kept secret
DO you want to know the latest circulation figures for the Express, Mirror and Star? Sorry it’s a secret.
Print circulation figures for the titles will no longer be made public.
Publisher Reach has decided to keep its national newspaper ABC print sales numbers private.
This means they will be available only to ad buyers who agree to keep the data confidential.
Reach follows the Sun and Times publisher News UK, Telegraph Media Group and The Guardian, which have all kept their print figures private for more than four years.
The changes at Reach cover the following titles: Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, Sunday People, Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star, Daily Star Sunday, and Scottish titles Daily Record and Sunday Mail.
Reach’s Sunday tabloids, and the Sunday People in particular, had frequently led the biggest year-on-year circulation declines for a long time.
The company has not explained its decision but it goes without saying that if sales were going up it would trumpet that fact rather than hide it.
So now we’re supposed to be in thrall to the Boob Whisperer and the Plumber’s Mate, are we? Gone are the days when the scatty woman with the basin cut was the face of the Green Party. Eccentric but harmless. Now it’s malevolent and alarming. Make no mistake, the victory of Zack Crawley and Hannah Spencer in Gorton and Denton is one of the most significant by-election victories in a generation. The Greens’ appeal to the young is game-changing — as we shall inevitably discover. It’s tempting to dismiss their youth vote as transitory and naive. As I did. Until a recent discussion with a young rellie (with two degrees). Her thoughtful and detailed arguments in favour of Zack and Co’s, to me, unconscionable policies were more compelling than I would have liked. Watch this space!
Apropos the above, the Greens’ Hannah Spencer built a diverse electoral coalition in areas where almost a third of her voters were Muslim and her party’s leader is Jewish, Fleet Street Fox points out. ‘As a plumber, she will be used to effluent so should fit right in at Westminster, where all that hope will soon be drained from her and, hopefully, she finally realises having that much hair is incompatible with our dilapidated sewage system. One day someone will have to extract most of her from a plughole.’ It’s also worth noting that, in a constituency where so much noise has been made about how Muslim people vote, they picked a lady plumber and let Monster Raving Loony’s Sir Oink do his thing.
Remember the MPs’ exes scandal of 2009? The Telegraph highlighted widespread misuse of allowances and expenses, ranging from a tin of dog food, to a lightbulb, to £90,000 spent on the upkeep of an MP’s country estate. And who can forget the infamous ornamental duck house? Public anger resulted in numerous resignations, sackings, de-selections, and even jail sentences. Some 392 politicians were ordered to repay £1.3million of misclaimed expenses. But then came Westminster’s revenge against the uppity Press: Leveson, Elvedon, Weeting and the emergence of Hacked Off, Shit Grant and Shit Coogan. Fifteen years of frosty relations between police and journalists followed when hacks were seen as a corruption risk. Now, though, a welcome u-turn. New guidance from the College of Policing encourages police officers to interact with journalists at all levels, allow for off-the-record briefings, and explicitly protect the right of journalists to cover public incidents without interference. What was that all about?
The collateral damage caused by our useless Chancer of the Exchequer becomes more obvious by the day. Nearly 6,000 owners of high-growth businesses have left the UK in the past two years, say Emma Dunkley and Emma Agyemang in the FT. That’s around double the number who have moved here. Wealth manager Rathbones, which analysed Companies House filings, found that the top destination was the UAE, followed by Spain and the US. Overall, Britain saw a net outflow of 16,500 millionaires last year, a loss amounting to $91.8bn in investable wealth. Some 40% of respondents in the FT’s annual bonus survey said they were considering quitting because of high tax rates, despite expectations of a ‘bumper bonus season’.
And it’s not just here. A record number of Americans are quitting the Land of the Free to live abroad. At least 180,000 relocated overseas in 2025, according to the Wall Street Journal. Now US departures are above arrivals for the first time since 1935, meaning up to nine million Americans are now expats. The American population of Portugal grew more than fivefold from 4,768 in 2020 to 26,000 in 2025. The number moving to Ireland more than doubled from 2024 (4,900) to 2025 (9,600), while British citizenship applications from US nationals grew to a record 8,790—42% more than the previous high of 6,192 in 2024. Why seek greener pastures? A lower cost of living on a US income appeals, as do sangria lunches a Euro lifestyle and social-safety-net perks. Concerns about the US political climate are also cited.
As the Ukraine war enters its fifth year, can we really believe Russian bullshit propaganda? After all, up to 1.2 million Russians have been casualties and now, according to Verity Bowman in the Telegraph, corrupt Russian commanders are charging soldiers up to £30,000 to avoid being deployed to the front lines. Those who refuse are sent on operations that are effectively kamikaze missions. There are also widespread reports of officers stealing crucial equipment – drones, electronics and other weapons. Then they force soldiers to ‘donate’ part of their pay to be able to use them.
Don’t like to mention it but how’s your seasonal ‘house burping’ coming along? Everyone should be doing it whatever the weather, says Amber Raiken in The Independent. The idea, based on the German practice of ‘lüften’ or ‘airing out’ involves opening all your windows, even in the dead of winter, to let fresh air in and the old stuff out. Just 10 to 15 minutes of this a day is thought to help reduce mould, contaminants and built-up carbon dioxide. Nice to know these things, isn’t it?
Another warning of the AI hell we all face. Burger King is piloting in the States an OpenAI-powered chatbot called Patty that will ‘live’ in employees’ headsets and tell tales if it thinks workers aren’t being friendly enough. But, of course, this is all being dressed up as a ‘coaching tool’. The AI is trained to recognise words and phrases like ‘Welcome to Burger King,’ ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ Patty will then grade a location’s friendliness on a constant basis.
Diving enthusiast Dom Robinson has bought a 3,300-ton, 330ft long cargo ship on Facebook Marketplace for a bargain £300. Trouble is, the SS Almond Branch is at the bottom of the sea near Dodman Point off the Cornish coast. No worries to Robinson who plans to use it as a diving site. The merchant ship, built in 1896, was sunk by a German submarine torpedo on November 27, 1917.
Talk about exotic! More Brazilian footy stars are being named after pop culture icons. Take the latest, 17-year-old Internacional forward Raykkonen He was born exactly nine months after Kimi Räikkönen won the 2007 Brazilian Grand Prix. He joins Caxias right back John Lennon, Atlético Goianiense legend Mahatma Gandhi, and, let’s not forget, retired journeyman striker Creedence Clearwater Couto.
Two British beaches feature on Time Out’s annual round-up of the 50 best coastal spots in Europe. Barafundle Bay in Pembrokeshire, reachable via a half-mile walk through woods and known for its ‘unspoiled curve of sand and gleaming clear blue water’ came fifth; Cornwall’s Kynance Cove, with hidden caves and a glassy green Mermaid pool, was 14th. In top spot, Portugal’s Praia da Falésia; second and third, Isola Bella in Taormina, Sicily and St Paul’s Bay in Rhodes.
I pass on, without comment, that the latest wellness trend in Japan is kanoke — renting a ‘cute coffin’ to lie in for 30 minutes. According to Casey Baseel in Japan Today, customers can choose between an open or closed casket while they listen to ‘healing’ music, watch a video or just close their eyes and relax. Satisfied customers, who pay around £9.50 for a half-hour slot, say they come out of the somewhat morbid experience feeling ‘unexpectedly positive and energetic’.
A ‘foster kitten’ being put up for adoption has a unique genetic quirk: another pair of ears. Dobby, a seven-month-old black cat (not a former Express Art Desk operative) was born with an extra set of ear flaps. Stephanie Brown, of Kitty Kat Haven and Rescue, of Alabama, says the extra ears do not adversely him and his hearing is normal. All together now…
Eat your heart out, Usain Bolt. New analysis of the T-Rex’s footprints suggest the dinosaur ran in a ‘toes-first’ style, making it 20% faster than original estimates. It would have beaten the sprinting superstar by a crisp 0.81 seconds over 100 metres.
ThisSportingLife: A player in Istanbul’s amateur league performed CPR on a seagull after the goalkeeper accidentally hit it with a long ball. He even put it in the recovery position, and apparently was able to resuscitate it before handing it over to medical staff.
TheThingsTheySay: ‘Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions.’ — Churchill.
It’sOnlyMoney: The only thing growing in Britain is the civil service: 549,660 bodies; wage bill: £21 billion not counting gold-plated pensions. Worryingly, the number of senior staff jumped by nearly 10,000 last year as junior admin roles fell by more than 4,500. So the civil service is becoming more top-heavy, not more efficient.
NIBS
Hickey ed sacked for
his addiction to lunch
FORMER William Hickey editor CHRISTOPHER WILSON remembers his predecessor Richard Berens, friend of royalty, habitué of Boodles, who was seldom spotted at his desk.
Legend has it that the recently late Tom Stoppard once wrote about a Morris 1,000 Traveller for The Western Daily Press. He described it as a "half-timbered car".
Eric Price reputedly scoffed later that it proved he would never have made a proper journalist. Allegedly.
News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun and defunct News of the World, has agreed to pay “substantial damages” to Chris Jefferies, who was wrongly arrested in 2010 for the murder of Joanna Yeates, over the invasion of his privacy. (The Guardian)
Former media commentator Roy Greenslade and TV producer Paddy French have launched a crowdfunding bid to pay for publication of a new book looking at the exploits of former News of the World journalist Mazher Mahmood. (Go Fund Me)
BBC Middle East editor Raffi Berg is suing Owen Jones for libel over an article published on the Drop Site website about the BBC’s coverage of Gaza. Jones said he looks forward to “vigorously defending my reporting”. (Jewish News)
Stand and Deliver
By Hermione Orliff
NEW
However intense, brutal and damaging it is, the Iran war can’t last long, right? Don’t hold your breath on that. Since the end of World War 2 there has been a series of ‘limited operations’ that have been anything but. Trouble is, says Max Boot in The Washington Post, air strikes, such as those in Iran, rarely, if ever, bring down dictatorships. The problem with Iran is that it’s so huge — covering an area the size of France, Germany, Spain and Italy combined. Try achieving regime change overnight. And don’t listen to the politicians. JD Vance, a former Marine remember, says there is ‘no chance’ the US will be involved in a lengthy conflict. That’s what LBJ thought about Vietnam. That lasted 19 years, five months, 29 days. George W and Iraq (eight years, eight months, 28 days), Soviets in Afghanistan (nine years, one month, three weeks) and Russia’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, supposed to last days, four years and counting.
Apropos the above, how is Britain reacting to the war? (I say ‘reacting’ because we rarely lead these days). Apart from Badenoch’s assault, a packed Commons did not distinguish itself. Starmer was clad in full wet lettuce armour. Surely we deserve better than him. Davey? All sound and bollocks: inconsequential, shallow. The Mail’s Quentin Letts casted a customery beady eye on proceedings. He spotted Defence Secretary John Healey send a slip of paper up the back-benches to the young Labour MP Uma Kumaran. Ten minutes later Ms Kumaran asked Sir Keir a decidedly soft long hop of a question, reading it off that same piece of paper. What craven hacks these people are.
TheThingsTheySay: ‘This is not Winston Churchill we’re dealing with.’ — Donald Trump’s assessment of the twat Starmer.
Amid the Gorton and Denton aftermath let’s not forget that Your Party held its first leadership contest – on Zoom. Will Dunn, in The New Statesman, reports that the winner, Jeremy Corbyn, had a photo of his late cat, El Gato, in the background, while his rival, Zarah Sultana’s ally, Grace Lewis, 22, underlined the professionalism of the proceedings by joining the meeting from her car. One hopeful, on mute, appeared to be doing a spot of online shopping while another squinted at her screen, shaking her head beside a tartan ironing board. A third was having a cheeky vape. A rallying cry from one candidate went: ‘We want to win everyone to our side, except the far right’. Dunn cautions that, in Your Party, the ‘far right’ appears to encompass ‘Reform, the Conservatives, the Labour Party, the county of Surrey, Audi drivers and people who listen to The Archers’.
So that’s what it’s all about! More opportunities for ‘horizontal research’ by people working from home resulted in a whopping 291,000 additional births in the US in 2024, economists have found.
It must run in the family but Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor isn’t the only royal brat who let the side down, says Samuel Rubinstein in Engelsberg Ideas. William the Conqueror’s eldest child, Robert Curthose, spent so lavishly on ‘jugglers, parasites and harlots’, the last of whom sometimes stole his clothes in the middle of the night and ran off, that his younger brother had to capture him during the Battle of Tinchebray in 1106 to put the country out of its misery. Curthose languished in prison for 28 years until his death.
Tax economist Alan Cole used a prediction market site to bet his $342,195 life savings that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency would fail to shrink US government spending. Cole, 37, from Washington, won easily. His profit: $128,000 or 37%.
A Ruddy Rural Rustic writes: ‘O, to be in England now that March (You mean April, dolt — Ed) is there! Driving through the sylvan fields of Lincolnshire and being treated to an aerial spectacular high above by the Red Arrows; then being halted by emergency lights on the A15 at RAF Waddington to witness the Hawk trainers finishing their impromptu display by landing one-by-one across the road just yards away. Heavenly!’
A software engineer set up his robot vacuum cleaner so that it could be steered via his video game controller, only to find he had inadvertently hacked into nearly 7,000 similar models around the world. Sammy Azdoufal was able to access live camera feeds, microphone audio, maps and status data from tech giant’s DJI robots in 24 countries, without their owners knowing. Rather than making use of this new robot army, he fessed up and DJI fixed the vulnerability.
The world’s tallest mural made of plastic bottle caps has been unveiled in San Salvador, reports Jesús Maturana in EuroNews. Based loosely on the Mona Lisa, the gigantic Gioconda, erected in Zacamil, a neighbourhood of Mejicanos, is more than 13 metres high and built with around 100,000 lids recycled by the local community. Óscar Olivares, the Venezuelan artist behind the project, worked with litter pickers, volunteers and local organisations to complete the work. It reinterprets Da Vinci’s masterpiece as a woman with a dark complexion and curly hair, dressed in the colours of the Salvadoran flag.
Courageous call from organisers of Shambala, a meat-free music festival in Northamptonshire, for gamely (SWIJDT?) arranging a vote on whether to have venison on the menu. Alas, the proposal – to address a surge in the local deer population, which is ruining ecosystems – didn’t go down well. Siddy Bennett, a vegan singer-songwriter, says the smell of dead deer being cooked would ‘lower the vibrations of the festival’. Bless.
There was much chuntering when 20-over cricket was introduced to the first class game back in 2003. ‘Mickey Mouse’, ‘Slogfest’ ‘Mindless Betrayal’, ‘Death Sentence For Tests’, ‘WG Spinning In Grave’ etc. Those, brought up playing the format at school or for village teams on long summer evenings, felt a tad baffled. Then, golly gosh, what moaning and tutting from Werther’s-sucking members in pavilions up and down the country when the first T20I was played 21 years ago! Yet has the great game been harmed? Forget the financial balm to the grassroots, the cricket itself has actually been enhanced. In batting, the reverse sweeps, the scoops, the whoops, the up-yer-bums have even been adapted, to advantage, into Test cricket. Fielding has improved markedly. But what cricket-lovers everywhere should really applaud: T20 has saved the spinner. The twirler, seemingly destined for the scrapheap, is back. In England’s recent World Cup victory over New Zealand, two quicks bowled only 27 balls for the Kiwis; Archer and Curran three fewer.
ThisSportingStrife: Matt Waldron, a pitcher with the San Diego Padres baseball franchise, is having to take indefinite leave because he is ‘indisposed’. In most workplaces in the US you can’t even ask why someone is going to see a doctor. But in baseball, your boss feels able to tell the media: ‘This guy needs a few days off because he has an infection in his rear end: his butt is really barking.‘
UntouchedByHumanSub: Huge piles of manure have been dumped just ‘a stone’s throw’ from Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s home by workers on the Sandringham Estate, says the Mirror. Actually, it was more than 200 yards away. Some throw! ‘Royal Ascot…the prestigious horse-racing event in June.’ — MoS.
TortureTittleTattle: Intensive research by Physiotherapy Inquisitors at the Tomás de Torquemada Institute, Córdoba, reveals that the Lying Flexion is the most painful post-operative knee exercise known to man.
TheThingsTheySay: ‘Diana thought of Fergie as a sister. They eventually fell out over a borrowed pair of shoes and claims that one of them had given the other a verruca.’ — Former BBC hack Jennie Bond’s footnote on royal friendships in the ST.
NMPKT: The average American scoffs an estimated 46 slices of pizza a year. Sales were $43.3 billion in 2023.
It’sOnlyMoney: Forget Chagos (If only we could, pet — Ed), Britain, which has a growth rate of 1%, is also giving £45 million a year development aid to Mauritius (growth rate 4.5%). Eh? As Lord Horam, vice-chairman of the all-party Chagos Islands group, says: ‘It’s likely Mauritius will overtake the UK in GDP during the next 25 years… This must be one of the most generous giveaways in British diplomatic history — and one that is entirely unnecessary.’
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
ONLY IN THE DRONE
Our great columnists
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.
OUT OF REACH
The ones that got away
THREE’S COMPANY: Bob Watson, Shaggy Shearer and Dolly Dalton
By BOB WATSON
DOOMED news blooper group Reach may be hurtling towards oblivion —but it didn’t stop a select band of former hardy Daily Express subs from raising a glass to the good old times on Monday.
They convened at The Kings Arms in Roupell Street, a salubrious back-street boozer in the shadow of the London Eye and Waterloo station.
One cynical hack — who spent more than 20 years at the paper when it was reputedly the world’s greatest organ — said there was undoubtedly more at the gathering than in the decimated Express newsroom after Retch’s countless cuts down the years.
He sighed: “We Expressians always knew how to party so it was nice to have a wet re-run with a few old chums along with a few laughs. It was slipping down a treat by the end!”
The star studded line-up included Collette Harrison, Nick “Dolly” Dalton, Chris “Shaggy” Shearer, Andy Jones, Jon “Smudger” Smith, Tony “Boggy” Reid, Bob Watson, Ray Williams, Bill “Hat and a Hat” Dickson, Rab Anderson, Allison Randell and Andy Waller.
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.”
Hot metal, hot off the press
PETER PHEASANT, pictured, who retired as night editor of the Nottingham Post five years ago, has turned his talents to writing.
His debut novel, Manfishing, is about the exploits of an ambitious young reporter on a weekly newspaper in the dying days of hot metal.
Manfishing is set in the fictional Midlands town of Brexham when stories were bashed out on typewriters in smoky newsrooms, long before the age of the internet.
It follows the exploits of Simon Fox, a small-time reporter with big ideas. Anything that’s fit to print makes the pages of the broadsheet Brexham Bugle, from court cases and council reports to weddings and whippet racing.
As Fox seeks out the next front-page scoop, he meets a cast of colourful characters, including a disabled pensioner who is being terrorised out of his home and an Auschwitz survivor pleading for help to save her sick grandchild.
But he knows nothing of the secret alliance between a corrupt detective and a violent skinhead.
Meanwhile, Fox is grappling with tragedy at home. And when the Bugle’s century of independence ends with a takeover, he is on a collision course with the new owners.
Stand aside le Carré, Seed’s written another spy thriller
"Where The Past Lies" is the fifth political thriller from ex-Daily Mail and TV journalist, Geoffrey Seed.
Former Mirror executive, the late Revel Barker, published Seed’s debut novel which led an Amazon best-seller list for three months.
Seed's wife says writing books is just his way of pretending he's no longer on the road. This is his side of the slur.
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.
A Gran tale about Fleet St
Another day, another great book, this time a tale about Fleet Street by former Daily Star columnist Cathy Hollowell.
Beginning as an apprentice reporter on the Brighton and Hove Gazette in 1968, she worked her way through national agencies, night shifts at the Daily Mail, and the Daily Express before landing her dream job on the Star, interviewing extraordinary people from every walk of life.
Hollowell, who wrote under the name Cathy Couzens, now lives in Texas, with her husband, Don.
Forsooth! Here’s a clue, you silly arses
Another headline question to which the answer is No
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.
The things they used to say on the 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'.”
A TOPPING TALE IN THE TIMES
WE wouldn’t normally feature a story about farting in the Drone but if it’s good enough for The Times it’s good enough for Lord Drone’s mighty super soaraway organ.
But the following item in the TMS Diary yesterday is too funny not to share:
WIND OF CHANGE
The era of gender-neutral lavatories has its perils. The cricket commentator David Lloyd says he recently went into one and was embarrassed when he suffered a stentorian attack of flatulence.
Such things might go unremarked upon in the gents, but it would be dreadfully embarrassing if a lady were present. Lloyd was comforted and amused, therefore, when the woman in the next stall piped up and said: "Is that you, Maureen?"
The Drone picture desk was asked to provide a suitable illustration for this story but we are not sure the result, left, is entirely appropriate.
Go on, dear reader, you decide — oh and apologies to all Maureens.
A PLAGUE ON YOUR PLAGIARISM
Daily Express nicked our stories, say two writers
Two journalists have accused the Daily Express of plagiarising their stories and publishing the copy under another reporter’s byline.
Daniel Puddicombe, a freelance journalist, said he is livid after his Telegraph feature on a coast-to-coast train in Mexico was was apparently copied by the Daily Express site. The piece is under another journalist’s name, and was published six days after The Telegraph.
Puddicombe said he is certain it is his work that has been lifted as he is “the first and only non-Mexican journalist who travelled on that railway line and to have been in contact with the military and the Navy”.“There is absolutely no chance that anybody else could have done that,” he told Press Gazette.
He added another piece he wrote for the Telegraph about “Portugal’s Presidential Train” has also been “recycled” for the site, but it “at least references me and my original piece”. This second article did not appear to be written by AI, according to Pangram.
Both of Puddicombe’s articles lifted by the Daily Express were published on 18 October. He received an offer of £100 per article after reaching out to the Daily Express, which he declined and described as an “insult” as “less than one-third” of what he was paid per article.
Another journalist, who asked not to be named, claimed the Daily Express lifted their piece and published it under someone else’s name. It did refer to the journalist’s original work, but they were prompted to invoice the Daily Express by a journalist Facebook group. They were again offered £100.
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.
Express sales plunge after puzzles redesign cock-up
SALES of the Daily Express have haemorrhaged after an ill thought out redesign of its popular puzzles pages.
Frustrated readers deserted the sinking ship after changes to bring puzzles in line with the Mirror to save cash.
Bosses were forced into an about-face and published a grovelling apology promising to restore puzzles into their old format.
What the powers that be have failed to understand that readers hate redesigns, taking the view that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
The Express has undergone many rejigs over the years, including a switch from broadsheet to tabloid which did little to stem the relentless plunge in circulation.
Meanwhile they can’t even get the Page One blurbs right with one reading: “FREE Family size bottle at of Coca -Cola.”
An insider told the Drone: “Everyone is struggling with this new regime. The subs are swamped.”
That’ll be all my good man: Daily Mail’s butler retires after 46 years of service
THINGS are getting serious at the Mail, not only have they made 16 reporters on Femail redundant, they have also lost the services of the in-house ‘butler’.
The gentlemen’s gentleman, who padded round Northcliffe House with a silver tray laden with pink gins, has retired after 46 years. He was known as the Fleet Street Jeeves, a misnomer if there ever was one, because Jeeves was never a butler, he was a valet.
There is no word yet if the butler will be replaced but the Drone understands that Jacob Rees-Mogg doesn’t have much on his plate at the moment.
In other news, The Mail’s putative purchase of the Telegraph hasn’t even been announced as a done deal yet, but DMG’s bosses are wasting no time marking their territory.
Up on the second floor of DM towers, staffers have noticed a new publication has been added to the lightbox of the organisation’s titles.
Right next to the logos for The i Paper, Metro and Weekend Mail - welcome to … The Telegraph!
Observer Sport hits rock bottom with this daft front page
Look, we on the Drone enjoy schoolboy humour as much as the next man but this front page of this week’s Observer sports section has crossed the bounds of acceptability.
It’s not funny, it’s not clever and it has no relevance to the story to which it refers, England’s poor cricketing performance so far in the Ashes in Australia.
In fact it doesn’t refer to cricket at all and the pic has no connection with the sport.
The rest of The Observer was well subbed and attractively laid out so maybe the Sports Editor and his minions should go back to journalism school.
As more and more experienced journalists are shown the door, this is the sad result.
YOU READ IT HERE FIRST!
Caroline Waterston to step down as Mirror editor just as we predicted
Chloe Hubbard, left, is replacing Caroline Waterston
THE news that Mirror editor-in-chief Caroline Waterston was on the way out — was broken by the Drone THREE DAYS before it was officially announced.
Waterston, who will leave at the end of the year, had been in the job for less than two years. She will be succeeded by Chloe Hubbard, who has been UK editor at The Independent since the start of this year.
Hubbard’s start date will be announced later. Her remit, like Waterston’s, will also mean leading Reach’s magazines team including OK!.
FIRST WITH THE NEWS (FOR ONCE): Our original story
Waterston’s departure comes shortly after a shake-up at Reach that saw Express editor-in-chief Tom Hunt become editorial director (brands), with the editors of the Mirror, Express and Star reporting to him. They remained “responsible for maintaining and developing distinctive brands with growing, loyal audiences”.
The Mirror was understood to have been among the hardest-hit titles by redundancies at Reach this autumn.
DRONE TV EXCLUSIVE
On film: The London Evening News office from 50 years ago
STEVE MILL has produced some grainy footage of the Evening News newsroom from the mid-1970s which the Daily Drone is proud to publish.
Steve said: “There was a fair bit of jiggery pokery to get the video from an old dvd recorder hard disk, and you'll no doubt have experience with file sizes, quality and compatibility. Hope the file type is workable.”
It is workable and we extend our thanks to Steve for completing this task which we know from past experience how difficult it can be.
McEntee and chums, out on the toot again
It’s a grand life being a Daily Mail Diarist. Just ask John McEntee, pictured left, who writes the Ephraim Hardcastle column.
Dash off a few pars, leave the subs to clean it up, and saunter off to the pub.
This is the life of John McEntee, who wrote on Facebook: “After Richard Compton-Miller’s funeral in the Temple Church there was a grand reception nearby where we raised numerous glasses to Rochard [sic].
“I made the mistake of sneaking downstairs on arrival ignoring the cloakroom and availing of the disabled toilets. I dropped my trilby into the nearby washbasin as I commenced to Pee and heard this gurgle as the single tap automatically activated and gently filled my upturned hat.
“Did not diminish the joy of seeing my old friend and Daily Mail legend Geoff Levy with the evergreen Liz Brewer, My colleague Helen Minsky and the inestimable Adam Helliker. Lovely afternoon of memories and refreshment.”
I think we all felt refreshed for that. Thanks John.
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.
FRONT PAGES FROM 1997
How papers change yet strangely stay the same
THE DAILIES
THE SUNDAYS
There have been big changes in newspapers in the 28 or so years since these front pages were printed in 1997 but they are still recognisable today.
The Times, The Independent and The Guardian were all broadsheets and the tabloid/compact titles had mostly dropped the definite article from their names. Quite what the point of this was unclear to most of us at the time. If the powers that be thought it would increase circulation it didn’t. Readers dislike change and the experiment was dropped.
The Sundays all look much the same today, except that the News of the World was retitled as the Sun on Sunday. The Sunday Business was turned into a magazine in 2006 and later merged into The Spectator which converted it into the monthly Spectator Business magazine.
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.
SPOT THE DUMMY
STARMER
LORD CHARLES
DUMMY
STARMER
This is not much of a competition, is it readers? The facts speak for themselves and there’s no budget for a prize.
But as there’s not much happening news wise (apart from Reach predicting annual profits of at least £99m for 2025 despite a 1pc fall in digital revenues) we thought we’d bung these pix in for a laugh.
We admit we should have splashed on the Reach story but it’s a bit boring. We showed it to Lord Drone and he still hasn’t woken up.
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.
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
