Lost and Found:  The Bulletin Box

TERRY MANNERS has finally come clean about the whereabouts of the infamous bulletin box which provided some Daily Express sub-editors with a lot of fun back in the 1980s.

He writes: I thought the Daily Drone might like proof that the legendary Editor's bulletin case ... created by Arthur Christiansen ... did not die along with so many treasures of those wonderful Fleet Street days.

As the editor of the Daily Drone knows so well, in later years not all the bulletins came from the Editors - and in Christopher Ward's time the secret of slipping bulletins into the case without needing the key, was cracked by a certain journalist who gave us endless hours of fun ... and had Ward reaching for his Rennie tablets.

The last official bulletin locked in the case for posterity  contained the following appointments on 5 April 1989 and was signed by Nicholas Lloyd, long before the heady days when he was made a knight of the realm and never turned right when he entered a British Airways flight again.

      The announcement was:

       BRUCE TURNER is appointed Assistant Systems Editor.

       JOHN SEBASTIAN is appointed Assistant Features Editor.

       MIKE COWTON is appointed Deputy Chief Sub.

       STEVE MARTIN is appointed Assistant Chief Sub.

I bought the board from Mike Dean and Struan Coupar for a fiver in the last week before the move from Fleet Street in 1989. It hangs in my study. For me the Fleet Street days were the best ... I don't think some people realise what they missed. And sadly never will. We lived in the Street of Shattered Dreams ... but it is all just a dream now.

COMING SOON: We name the guilty men! Thirty years on, the editor of the Daily Drone tells the truth about the Alternative Bulletins


© 2005-2022 Alastair McIntyre