In 1987, the Express axed the William Hickey column, so its former editors held a mock funeral in Fleet Street (it was later sensibly revived). The Mail’s Nigel Dempster stands on the champagne-filled coffin of William Hickey, with Brian Vine, Alison Miller, Kim Willsher, John Roberts, Geoffrey Levy, Richard Compton Miller, Peter Tory and Christopher Wilson.

By CHRISTOPHER WILSON, one of the many former Hickey editors

Where's Berens?" thundered Derek Marks, awesome Express editor, bursting through the door.

 

"Er, at lunch, Sir,” whispered a timid William Hickey hack.

 

"Lunch?  LUNCH?!?  It's six o'clock and he's missed his ruddy deadline. Again!!" ranted Marks.  "WHEN did he go to lunch?"

 

"Last Tuesday, Sir."

 

Thus ended the reign of fabled William Hickey editor Richard Berens — old Etonian, scion of the banking family, chum of Princess Margaret, and frequenter of Boodles.  Another journalist life claimed by lunch.

 

While Berens ruled, the Daily Express was still broadsheet and the Hickey column occupied a whole half-page, creating stories which were followed by every other newspaper in the coming days. No surprise, when among his staff Berens could count Brian Vine, James Whitaker, Nigel Dempster, Geoffrey Levy and Ross Benson.

 

On the wall was a scoreboard labelled The Lead Machine which detailed who'd got the most lead stories in the column, and in the office — Berens aside, perhaps — there was a terrifying compulsion to beat each other, let alone the opposition.

 

Next to The Lead Machine a telegram from Peter Sellers. "Fuck you Berens — you can take your column, stuff it up your arse and crawl up after it."

 

Another satisfied customer.

 

Gathering gossip in the pre-celeb 1960s was a cut-throat business and you needed alcohol to take away the pain. Berens, featherbedded by his staff, had less to fear but took the medication all the same — mainly in the bar of Boodles, the St James's gentlemen's club where he'd sit and eavesdrop as his aristocratic chums confessed their sins. Then he'd slip away and print the gory details in next day's column.

 

This was a ruse that only worked for a while, of course, but while it did Berens reigned supreme — nobody could touch him for his toffs-in-trouble scoops.  But finally the penny dropped, and he was blackballed by his club for telling tales out of school.

 

But Berens couldn't break the habit of his daily taxi-ride to St James's, and thereafter took up residence in a bar around the corner from Boodles in Jermyn Street. But despite his repeated invitations the chums did not come to visit, and his name started to drop down the Lead Machine list.

 

About this time a young reporter called Benson joined the Hickey team.  He had a contact who was a chum of the Duchess of Bedford. Nicole Nobody, as the French tartiflette was known, was as sexy as they come.

 

Benson's contact relayed Nicole's noisy complaints that she was not being bedded by the Duke, and that he was spending all his time in Monte Carlo with his mistress.  "Ee 'as left me, all aloooone, is zis fuckeeing Wooburn Abbey," she wailed.  

 

Cue Hickey lead.

 

"The French would call it un arrangement," Benson typed, using up most of his French vocab in that short but telling phrase. It was curtains, he predicted, for the Duke and Duchess.

 

Next day Berens was in the office to collect his expenses when the phone rang.

 

"Hickey," he snarled into the mouthpiece.

 

"Mr Hickey, this is the Duke of Bedford.  I am sitting in my study at Woburn Abbey reading your column.  Unless my eyesight deceives me it says I have left the Duchess and am living in Monte Carlo. Perhaps you would care to call, to see for yourself and watch me lift the telephone to my lawyers."

 

Berens had made the fatal error of not instituting a phone-check to the Abbey, prior to publication, and asking for the Duke. In fact, as luck would have it, Ian Bedford had arrived home two days before. The story was all right, the timing was all wrong.

 

So off he went to lunch.

30 June 2025