DAILY DRONE
LORD DRONE’S MIGHTY FLEET STREET ORGAN,
THE WORLD’S GREATEST ONLINE NEWSPAPER
CONTACT EDAILYDRONE@GMAIL.COM
DAILY DRONE
LORD DRONE’S MIGHTY FLEET STREET ORGAN,
THE WORLD’S GREATEST ONLINE NEWSPAPER
CONTACT EDAILYDRONE@GMAIL.COM
QUOTE OF THE DAY
The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously and have somebody find out — Oscar Wilde
THE ALTERNATIVE MEDIA DAILY
Our proud motto: We may not be first with the news but we’re always wrong.
BY ROYAL DISAPPOINTMENT
Funny Dud, I thought, funny, another bloody Tory MP’s been caught with his trousers down
Pete: I was in bed last night, just about to drop off, when suddenly, 'tap, tap, tap' at the bloody window — you know who it was?
Dud: Who?
Pete: Bloody Mark Menzies, all chained up, yelling ‘Peter, Peter, l've got in with bad men and I need £5K out of petty cash, please help.’
In praise of the Cheshire Cheese, a Pedigree pub
if ever there was one
Pursued by a Bear
Six-second Shakespeare (Beware spoilers)
3 Cymbeline
King of Britain banishes his daughter Innogen's husband, a bloke with the weird name, Posthumus, who then accuses her of being unfaithful and a bit of a tart. She does runner and becomes a page in Roman army as it invades Britain. Everyone puts on some sort of disguise which, being Shakespeare, is a bit of a shaker. Revelations abound and only one person dies (that makes a change). Oh, and two brothers, kidnapped in infancy, turn up. - Solly Quilley
With thanks to Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
COCK-UP FOR THE CUP Express football ticket competition that went from bad to worse (no change there then…)
Expressman CHRIS GILL remembers a Daily Express World Cup tickets competition when everything that could go wrong did go wrong but was disaster averted?
Can you help Katy?
KATY EASTHILL writes: I’m currently studying a masters in History of Design at the V&A/RCA, for my dissertation. I'm exploring how the introduction of colour printing may have changed the design of the front pages of tabloids, in particular The Sun.
I was reading the Vic Giles obituary on the Daily Drone and a few other articles and it's clear you're very much connected with people that were working in the industry at the time. I would love to speak and interview people that would have experience working during this period. I am looking at 1984-1998 mainly and would love to speak to graphic designers, photographers, typesetters, journalists etc anyone who would have been aware of this technology shift. If you could help me at all reach out to anyone I would be hugely grateful.
If you can help, email Lord Drone at edailydrone@gmail.com
By Hermione Orliff, our girl with a finger in the dyke holding back
a tide of effluence
Old batteries fall from outer space through roof of house in Naples, Florida. NASA collects debris and confirms it’s from International Space Station.
Comic book featuring Superman’s first adventure sells for record $6 million.
Angela Rayner defends having boob job: ‘They looked like two boiled eggs in socks,’ she moans.
It’s official: dung beetles are (surprise) biggest defecators in animal world, experts reveal. Queens of pee: cicadas.
New PM Liz Truss’s reaction to Queen’s death (‘Why me? Why now?’), revealed in new memoir, eerie reminder of the Great Great Ancoats Stone Sub Disaster.
Robin Hood has been played by 30 actors in films and on telly since Robert Frazer first took a bow (see what I just did there?) in 1912, research reveals.
Sports hacks vote for Cliché of Season. Outrageous Dummy, Wicked Deflection, Sniping/Mazy Run (especially applied to scrum halves) and He’s on Fire figure highly. But winner is…They’ve Literally Got a Mountain to Climb Now.
Outrage in Italy over telly ad featuring nuns eating crisps at communion. One blessing, though: Gary Lineker excommunicated.
More job stats from BBC: there are 22 Senior Weather Presenters, 18 Weather Presenters and 11 Local Weather Presenters.
Chunks of gold moulded into shape of machine parts and painted silver seized in $10.7 million raid on cargo plane in Hong Kong.
US imposes dramatic limits on perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances in water. About time, too.
Continuing my (irony-free) list of lady scribblers’ exotic names: Inge Van Lotringen, Rachel Rickard-Straus, Teresa Levonian-Cole, Nicky Rampley-Clarke, Georgie D’Arcy Coles, Camilla Ridley-Day.
Chechnya bans music that’s too fast or too slow. Tempo must be between 80 and 116 beats a minute which outlaws most Western pop and dance numbers.
Country star Morgan Wallen arrested in Nashville for throwing a chair from top of six-storey building.
Thinnest watch in the world unveiled. Bulgari’s new Octopus Finissimo Ultra COSC is only 1.7mm thick, same as 20p coin.
Video of goat sitting in seemingly inaccessible cave viewed 10.6 million times on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Economist reader appeals for phrase ‘formerly known as Twitter’ to be banned. Claims it has been used 1,575,910 times since name change: that’s 6,303,640 words, almost as many as Drone’s so-called columnists’ weekly output.
How Eddy hit the Post
EDDY Shah found fame by taking on Fleet Street’s Bolshie printers by opening Today newspaper but it is perhaps forgotten that he opened a second title, The Post.
The paper was based in Warrington and edited by former Daily Express and Star man Lloyd Turner. It lasted just five weeks, closing in December 1988. Shah later admitted that it was a big mistake.
GEORGE DEARSLEY was there at the start.
My wordless
interview with
Max Aitken
By KEITH GRAVES
Mentions in the Daily Drone of Max Aitken and his destruction of the Daily Express reminded me of an incident in 1967 when I was a reporter in London.
I was assigned to cover a by-election in Leicester. It was a ‘safe’ Labour seat but, I was told, the Conservative candidate, Tom Boardman, a wartime hero, was a friend of Max, hence the Express’ interest.
I was told Max himself wanted to see me before I headed north. He was something of a mystery figure because it appeared no-one below the editor, Derek Marks, had ever met him.
So when I returned from my ‘meeting’ there was much interest from my colleagues about what had occurred. I had been up there on the top floor for some time.
Naturally I made much of my ‘discussions’ with the chairman. The reality was that I had been kept waiting by his two secretaries, who clearly did not approve of mere journalists sullying their office, before being told I could enter. I was introduced as ‘Mr Graves the reporter’.
I stood there for several seconds until Aitken, without appearing to look up, said ‘I want Tom Boardman to win.’
Another few seconds passed and it was obvious my presence was no longer required and I backed out. When I returned to the newsroom I made much of those few seconds during which I cannot remember uttering a single word.
Boardman did win in a surprising upset. But not, I fear, because of my reports but because of his Labour opponents ineptitude.
ON OTHER PAGES
Former Reach editor-in-chief Lloyd Embley has joined a digital PR and campaigns agency that has undergone a management buyout. (Press Gazette)
Journalists at Scottish broadcaster STV have postponed a planned strike pending talks resuming between management and the NUJ. The scheduled strike on 1 May is currently still planned. One strike day has already taken place over pay.
The New York Times has ended a probe into who leaked details of an unaired episode of The Daily podcast about the Israel-Gaza war after it was unable to come to a definitive conclusion. Staff have been told they need "to maintain confidentiality during the reporting and editing process". (The Daily Beast)
Mehdi Hasan's new outlet Zeteo has officially launched (after weeks of a soft launch). Greta Thunberg, Naomi Klein and ex-CNBC chief Washington correspondent John Harwood are among the first contributors. Press Gazette spoke with Hasan last month about his plans for the publisher. (Zeteo)
Almost two years on, UK authorities have responded to a Council of Europe alert about then-Home Secretary Priti Patel's trip to Rwanda which the Guardian, FT and Mirror were allegedly blocked from attending. (Press Gazette)
The Atlantic has announced it has reached one million subscriptions and is now profitable. It said revenue is up more than 10% year-on-year and subscriptions were up 14% in the past year. (The Atlantic)
Metro has paid tribute to its parenting columnist Sarah Whiteley, who died earlier this month aged 39. She was a regular freelance for the site for the past two years. (Metro)
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has hired Hannah Summers as a full-time family court reporter in what it says is a first for the UK. Summers will lead TBIJ's Family Court Files investigative series for the next two years. (TBIJ)
Petrol bombs were reportedly thrown at the media after an Easter Monday commemoration event in Derry. The NUJ said: "Photographers and reporters are entitled to report on such events without without threat or intimidation." (Belfast Telegraph)
Inside story behind the shock arrest of Ulster
MP Jeffrey Donaldson
(Plus one fact we cannot reveal)
The arrest of Sir Jeffery Donaldson MP, has rocked Northern Ireland politics and led to his resignation as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party.
ALAN FRAME has the facts behind the arrest of Donaldson and his wife in a dawn raid on their home in County Down on March 28. The alleged offences are sexual in nature.
More than that we cannot reveal but the story is nonetheless fascinating.
ONLY IN THE DRONE
Our top columnists
Among the best kept secrets of the last war as D-Day approached were five code words known only to a few. They were:
Utah and Omaha, two of the beaches where the landing would take place.
Mulberry, the name of the artificial harbour to be used after the invasion.
Neptune, the overall plan for naval operations.
Overlord, code for the entire invasion.
So how come all of the words appeared as answers in a succession of Daily Telegraph crossword puzzles?
On May 3 it was Utah; on May 23 Omaha; Mulberry featured on May 31 and on June 2, only four days before the invasion, Neptune and Overlord appeared.
Full marks to whoever spotted this and sent Smiley and Co scurrying around to 135-142 Fleet Street. After what have been described as ‘intensive and extensive’ investigations, the crossword compiler was found to be completely innocent of espionage. He had no knowledge of secret codes, let alone D-Day itself; he had chosen the words at random.
Coincidences: we’ve all experienced them; some are purely whimsical while others can be disturbing. But what are they all about? Carl Jung tried to explain the phenomenon and there is even a mathematical equation: k(y=mx+c) Nope, me neither.
Psychologists Johansen and Osman came up with this definition 10 years ago: ‘Coincidences are surprisingly low probability pattern repetitions that, at first glance, appear to have all the key features of being causally structured but that, when searching our mind, we fail to come up with a causal explanation so end up putting them down to chance.’
There’s no doubt though that the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy have remarkable and spooky coincidences.
Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846; Kennedy in 1946. Lincoln became president in 1860; Kennedy in 1960. Both lost a child while living in the White House.
Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy who told him not to go to the theatre where he was shot; Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln who warned him against going to Dallas.
Alan Smith
ALAN SMITH, a former Daily Express sports sub in the 1960s has died aged 90.
He later became deputy sports editor on The People, and Man of the People columnist. His funeral has taken place.
News in Brief
Why we weren’t ready for Eddy
Only here for the Behan
Irish writer Brendan Behan was once invited to Oxford to take part in a debate about the difference between prose and poetry.
His opponent spoke for almost two hours. Behan rose to his feet and promised to be brief. He recited an old Dublin rhyme.
There was a young fella named Rollocks
Who worked for Ferrier Pollocks.
As he walked on the strand
With a girl by the hand
The water came up to his ankles.
"That," declared Behan, "is prose. But if the tide had been in it would have been poetry."
DRONE TV
Fleet Street history in 18 minutes
Palaces of the Press
This pic of the Daily Express building in Manchester was posted on Facebook by Pat Wooding.
The photo, probably taken in the 1950s, was spotted by Nick Jenkins who commented: ‘At least the Express building is still there — unlike the fine old Mail building on Deansgate. The DX offices have been converted into flats.
Nick has written a fascinating account of ‘newspaper palaces’ for the British Journalism Review. READ IT HERE
By George, it’s our George starring as, er, Boy George (pity about the moustache)
By GEORGE DEARSLEY
It’s April 1984 and I’m squashed with several other Fleet Street journos in a doorway yards from the Libyan Embassy in St. James Square, where a day earlier WPC Yvonne Fletcher was fatally wounded by an unknown gunman.
The adrenaline is pumping. Could we also be shot? We’ve just had a row with television’s bouffant newsman Michael Cole who tried to push in and was roundly told to Foxtrot Oscar and find his own doorstep.
Suddenly a colleague hands me a message from the Daily Star newsdesk ordering me to go to another location. I’m excited. Have we been given some secret information about the Met Officer’s murder? It could be a front page story.
I’m whisked away in a black cab to the address … which turns out to be a top beautician’s salon. Apparently Boy George has just launched a new make-up range and because we share the same name I’m to be made up like the androgynous singer.
I was fuming to miss out on the world’s top news story. When the woman wanted to shave off my moustache I adamantly refused. The stunt made nearly a full page.
And two years later when I left the paper my colleagues framed it as a leaving gift. Looking back, maybe I should have been Karma (Chameleon) and lost the tache.
Proof that crime is nothing new
If you think crime today is bad and getting worse you might find reassurance from this front page of the Daily Sketch from December 1945.
A man shot dead in a Glasgow railway station and bandits escape during a ‘fantastic chase’ in Leatherhead. Yes, that’s Leatherhead in quiet, leafy Surrey.
The tabloid Sketch was founded in Manchester in 1909 by Sir Edward Hulton. It was owned by a subsidiary of the Berrys' Allied Newspapers from 1928. The company was renamed Kemsley Newspapers in 1937 when William Berry, Lord Camrose, withdrew to concentrate his efforts on The Daily Telegraph.
The paper, which supported the Conservatives, struggled through the 1950s and 1960s, never managing to compete successfully with the Daily Mirror, and on Tuesday 11 May 1971 it closed and merged with the Daily Mail.
Pub fun with Mad George and Big Julie the stripper
Where there’s a will there’s a wayzgoose
Maundy Thursday was a popular day in the old Fleet Street calendar. Papers were not published on Good Friday so everyone got a day off on the Thursday. Trips to the seaside in charabancs were the order of the day and drink played an important part. Such an outing was known as a wayzgoose.
Three former Express hacks revived the tradition by meeting for lunch at a lakeside pub near Lincoln. Chris Williams, on day release from Glasgow, joined Roger Watkins and Terry Manners, who was in fine form after a couple of schooners of Malbec and R.White’s.
How Sefton Delmer of the Express fought Nazis with Black Propaganda
Expressman Sefton Delmer created Black Propaganda on behalf of the wartime British government and used fake news to fight the Nazi regime.
Through postcards, court documents, and pirate radio programs, Delmer and the rest of the secret service infiltrated the minds of the German people, using violence, sex, and death in their stories to subtly break down the morale of the Nazis. So, who was Sefton Delmer? And why was he the only man who could have become the true master of Black Propaganda? His story is told in a new book How to Win an Information War.
What possessed Dearsley of The Sun to dress up as a woman?Pursuit of a good story of course
POETRY CORNER
The Splash Sub and other verses by Pat Prentice
Sour grapes for Pilger’s wine
Better known for his investigative journalism, film-making and campaigning, obituaries to John Pilger didn't make much of his talents as a winemaker – and with good reason, reports Popbitch.
Many years ago, John invited a bunch of friends out to his house in Italy. They were sitting on the patio, opening a bottle, when Pilger announced "That's my vineyard at the end of this garden. The wine you are drinking comes from there."
"Hmmm," said one of his cattier friends, taking a sip. "Doesn't travel well, does it?"
ALEX COLLINSON writes: I’m reminded of a magic moment on Mirror features back in the days of glue pots, scissors and copy paper. A sub took to making wine at home and tried to flog bottles of the hideous brew to colleagues, which prompted one wag to post a comment on the features noticeboard: What’s the difference between Kev’s Valpolicella and a bucket of camel urine? Answer: the bucket.
PETER MICHEL adds: There was a lovely follow-up to that magic moment at the Mirror. The following day someone pinned up a picture of Henry VIII with him saying: "I was having trouble dissolving the monasteries until I discovered Kev’s Valpolicella.”
DON JOHNSTON spotted this letter from Henry Scott-Irvine in the Guardian Media:
Two decades ago I found myself using an internet cafe in Clapham, south London, when my laptop crashed. A quarter of an hour later a man logged on next to me. It was John Pilger.
He explained that he was almost certain that he was being tracked by “the powers that be. Those around us from on high.” I went on to meet the very affable Pilger there several times. I told him how much I admired The Quiet Mutiny (1970), his first film, made for Granada ITV’s weekly series World in Action, about US conscripts in the Vietnam war.
Its helicopter and Miss America pageant sequences later inspired more glorified versions in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979). The Quiet Mutiny also led to Barry Levinson’s Good Morning Vietnam (1987) about the DJ Adrian Cronauer’s satirical antics on air to the frontline troops, as played by the late Robin Williams. The real-life Cronauer opens The Quiet Mutiny in full throttle, yelling: “Good Morning Vietnam!’’
MAXWELL: Banana skins? Coffin wedged in a plane’s hold? Sorry, this
is the REAL truth about Captain Bob
Larger than life, and in death
Truth about the old rogue’s death (it’s totally bananas)
The Express may not be first with the news but it’s always wrong
Now where have we heard that slogan before? Hint: See top of page
GET TATCHELL!
Dacre’s order to reporter Hall
By-election candidate Peter Tatchell needed to be neutralised by the Daily Mail. Not only was he standing for Labour in the 1983 Bermondsey by-election but he was also — horror of horrors — a homosexual.
Paul Dacre, then the paper’s news editor, knew the man to bring him down — freelance reporter ALLAN HALL. Consequently Tatchell lost the Labour seat and Liberal Simon Hughes won by a landslide. It also gained Hall won a six-month contract with the Mail.
The Daily Drone is published, financed and edited by Alastair ‘Bingo’ McIntyre with contributions from the veteran journalists of old Fleet Street, London’s boulevard of broken dreams, Manchester and points North. Dedicated to scribblers everywhere.
©Lord Drone, Whom God Preserve 2005-2024
