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THE THINGS THEY SAY
Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go — American writer William Feather
SEARCH BOX NOW WORKS!
TODAY’S PAPERS
CARTOON OF THE DAY
Peter Brookes, The Times
Take cover readers, the DX once offered free insurance
What could possibly go wrong?
Former Expressman STEVE MILL found this remarkable document dating from the 1930s while sorting through family papers.
He said: ‘I doubt you could find any newspaper offering the same deal these days. I wonder if the Daily Express has any surviving records of this offer from 1931.
‘It occurred to me that perhaps I am the only person in Britain to possess this document. A rather remarkable find I think you'll agree.’
The Drone says: We think this sounds too good to be true. There has to be a catch doesn’t there?
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.
John Mulcock
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.’
The funeral service will take place at Woodvale Crematorium, South Chapel, Lewes Road, Brighton BN2 3QB at 11.30am on Friday 14th November 2025.
No flowers, but if you would like to donate in honour of John, please donate via www.justgiving.com to The Martlets Hospice or send a cheque made payable to The Martlets Hospice c/o ARKA Original Funerals 136 Islingword Road, Brighton BN2 9SH (01273 621444)
Mike Graham sacked over ‘vile’ racist post
FORMER Expressman Mike Graham has been suspended from his radio show on Talk following a 'vile' post to his Facebook page which he insists was hacked.
Graham, 65, was suspended from his breakfast show, Morning Glory, soon after the statement was published.
The post featured a picture of a statue of Churchill alongside a picture of a crowded Tube carriage, with the caption: 'Tell me we're not fucked by multicultural bollocks.
'Why are we surrounded by non-white people? Just fuck off...'
The post was accompanied by a picture of Sir Winston Churchill's statue by Big Ben next to the train picture, whose passengers included a woman wearing a hijab.
After receiving a wave of backlash, Graham deleted the statement and insisted the racist post was made as a result of his Facebook page being hacked.
But keen-eyed viewers were quick to point out that an almost identical photo of the statue of Winston Churchill had been posted on Graham's X account just moments before the Facebook post was published.
On Monday, the host of the Plank of the Week podcast wrote on his X account: 'On Sunday night my Facebook was accessed and a vile message was posted on my page without my knowledge.
'It contained words that I would never write and an opinion I don't share. As soon as I found out I immediately deleted the post and have taken steps to ensure my cyber security.'
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'.”
NEW TODAY
We may have mentioned before (Get away — Ed) that the BBC is the shittiest most deeply flawed organisation in the country. Forget Trump’s doctored quote, The Telegraph reports that the Beeb’s Arabic news service chose to ‘minimise Israeli suffering’ in the war in Gaza so it could ‘paint Israel as the aggressor’ according to an internal report by a whistleblower. Allegations made against Israel were ‘raced to air’ without adequate checks, the memo says. The paper says that one man who said Jews should be burned ‘as Hitler did’ appeared as a guest on BBC Arabic 244 times in 18 months. Another who described Israelis as less than human and Jews as ‘devils’ appeared 522 times in the same period. You’re paying for this remember.
Apropos the above, newsreader Martine Croxall has been rebuked by the BBC after being found to have breached impartiality rules when she pulled a face and changed ‘pregnant people’ to ‘women’ during a live broadcast. The Beeb’s Executive Complaints Unit has ruled that her facial expression suggested a ‘controversial view about trans people’. The ECU upheld complaints from 20 viewers saying Ms Croxall had fallen ‘short of the BBC’s expectations of its presenters and journalists.’
Voters in West Yorkshire must be reassured that their elected mayor has got their back, climate wise. Tracy Brabin, an air-headed former actress who appeared in Corrie and Emmerdale, has jetted a fuel-guzzling 5,760 miles to Rio de Janeiro to attend the C40 World Mayors Summit ahead of the cop 30 climate meeting. She’ll join London Mayor Sadiq (Net Zero Between The Ears) Khan ‘to share how they are rapidly cutting emissions whilst delivering good green jobs, affordable housing, cleaner air, and safer places to live.’ Brabin posted: ‘Mayors are the tugboats of change pushing tankers of government towards a greener world where no one is left behind.’ Well, that’s all right then.
As Remembrance approaches, a particularly poignant sculpture has been unveiled in Sheffield. The 8ft x 6ft 6ins artwork, titled ‘270’, is made of forged steel and features 270 individual figurines, each with a slightly different pose or ‘personality’. They represent the number of ‘pals’ from Sheffield City Battalion who were killed in the first 10 minutes of the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Artist Sam Sherborne, who was assisted by four blacksmiths, said: ‘That is arguably the worst 10 minutes in Sheffield’s history. One of the reasons I made it was to make the tragic event more than a sentence in a history book.’
What does this statistic say about contemporary Britain? ‘Victims’ is the word most mentioned in Parliament in the past five years, says Bagehot in The Economist. An astonishing 16,515 times. That’s more than ‘Brexit’ (10,797 times), ‘welfare’ (9,978) and ‘immigration’ (8,644). In Labour’s recent manifesto ‘victims’ featured 24 times. ‘Pensioners’? Only twice.
A record 449 British pubs and bars have entered liquidation or administration in the first 10 months of this year, analysis by City A.M reveals. It’s the highest in more than 20 years. Restaurants are also under pressure. There have been with a record 1,440 closures in the same period – 125% higher than a decade ago. Wetherspoon founder Tim Martin said: ‘Increased labour costs are, consequently, dramatically widening the pricing differential between pubs and supermarkets, to the anger and consternation of customers.’ Now the trade braces itself for another tax raid in this month’s Budget. As Guido Fawkes says: ‘Things can only get bitter.’
Humour is an ‘unacknowledged superpower in politics’, says James Kanagasooriam (try getting that in a s/c head) in The Times. People vote from the gut so Trump, Johnson and Farage are ‘plain funny’. The Reform UK leader’s humour is the wink-and-nudge banter of the beer-soaked local golf club; Johnson’s is more of the PG Wodehouse mangled-classical-allusion variety; Trump is master of the one-line put-down. But in all cases, many voters look at them and, however reluctantly, smile.
It’s all very Germanic but a museum in Düsseldorf has hired a guide to be ‘grumpy’ and ‘highly unpleasant’ to visitors. Art historian Joseph Langelinck rushes his customers around exhibits at breakneck speed shouting at them, indulging in excessive eye rolling and generally berating them. ‘I try to make them feel as ignorant as possible,’ he says. The €7 Grumpy Guide is a sell-out, fully booked until 2026.
Americans aren’t like us, are they? Lego, for Gawd’s sake, has cultivated a ‘devoted base’ of adult fans in recent years, says Te-Ping Chen in The Wall Street Journal. They go to extreme lengths to accommodate their precious bricks. Seattle architect Jeff Pelletier says he has designed more than 20 houses with dedicated Lego rooms. During one recent open house in the Hamptons, the seller charmed several potential buyers with his Lego Lamborghini and Ferraris. And a 55-year-old fan in Salt Lake City, has spent $100,000 buying Lego and renovating her house to fit it all in. ‘I kept wanting to make it bigger and better,’ she sighs. ‘It just feeds my soul.’
If you’re into ‘vibe coding’, congrats. Your preoccupation, meaning making an app or website by describing it to AI rather than writing the code manually, is Word of the Year, according Collins Dictionary. Others on the list include ‘aura farming’ (cultivating a cool, charismatic persona), ‘broligarchy’ (uber-rich tech bros) and ‘Henry’ (an acronym for ‘high earner, not rich yet’).
An 18-carat gold lavatory is being auctioned later this month with a starting price of around $10 million. Made by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, whose duct-taped banana sold for $6.2 million last year, the fully functioning 100kg solid gold loo is the ‘twin toilet’ of the one that was stolen from Blenheim Palace in 2019, says Zachary Small in The New York Times.
Brown rats have been filmed standing on their hind legs, plucking bats out of the air and eating them. According to the journal, Global Ecology and Conservation, the novel behaviour, observed in Germany, is a remarkable example of the rodents’ ability to make the most of their environment and demonstrates they are clever and capable of learning complex tasks. Now the bad news: The two species could be exchanging pathogens — interactions that could eventually trickle down to affect human health.
A so-called columnist’s excellent piece about the Mail (see above) prompts my Guide and Mentor to recall when he worked in features on the Northern Express and was on the rota as Hickey Sub. He says: ‘Ron Baker, the Features Editor, said a student from Leeds was coming in on work placement and would contribute Aside Lines for the page and asked me to look after him. Ron added: “I’ve forgotten his name but he’s Peter Dacre’s son.”’
PigmentOfTheWeek: Xanthommatin, which allows octopuses to camouflage and gives monarch butterflies their vibrant wings. Now researchers have devised a method to produce unprecedented quantities of its colour-changing power which could have broad applications, from defence technology to sunscreen.
TheThingsTheySay: ‘It was like knowing you were going to be very incompetently mugged in three weeks’ time but having to listen to a speech from the mugger about the context of it all.’ — Marina Hyde in The Guardian on our Rache’s breakfast Budget briefing.
ThisSportingLife: NFL ‘legend’ Tom Brady has revealed that his dog, Junie, is a clone of his late dog, Lua, which died in 2023. Brady worked with a biotech company in which he’s an investor to give his family ‘a second chance with their beloved pet’. All together now…
It’sOnlyMoney: The successful candidate for head of diversity at Newham Council in London – which carries a salary of up to £71,412 – describes her interests as ‘black women’s issues, the politics of beauty and desirability and the intersection of race, gender and fatphobia’. Newham raised council tax by 9%. Treasury Minister Torsten Bell spent £900 of public money on a desk, according to the Mail. Taxpayers also forked out £600 for three chairs for his office and he claimed more than £200 on his Parliamentary expenses for professional help to assemble the furniture.
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.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Stand and Deliver
By Hermione Orliff
NEW
Anyone who has been anywhere near a Fleet Street back bench knows that if you splash on a story the day after you didn’t splash on it, you’re in an undeniable catch-up, fuck-up nightmare. But the Mail, so fixated with hounding Rachel Reeves, twice splashed on her letting licence difficulties when major news stories were breaking all around them. As the Drone has pointed out, Andrew’s defenestration, the biggest royal story since the Abdication, took second billing to Reeves; the sensational train knife attacks didn’t even make Page 1. Next day, of course, Mail execs were frantically trying to shut the stable door. By then, alas, the horses had bolted. ‘Piss poor but this is what happens when you forget you’re a newspaper,’ says my wordsmith with an em rule, green eye shield and stubby Stephens Black Prince pencil.
What is it with Trump and Venezuela? I ask because the USS Gerald R Ford carrier group has just been deployed to the Caribbean, taking the total number of American troops in the region to more than 10,000. It adds enormous firepower to a force that already includes destroyers, F-35 fighter jets and a nuclear submarine. We’re told that the US is acting against ‘narco terrorists’ but further concerns were raised when officials at the Pentagon dealing with Venezuela were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements, says Phil Stewart at Reuters, even though they are already bound by normal secrecy laws. The highly unusual step is raising concerns in Congress, which says it has been kept uninformed about key details of the military build-up. Watch this space!
Farage and Co are facing a huge problem. Reform UK is promising to slash public spending, including major cuts to welfare. But there are 38 seats in Britain where more than half the population receive benefits, and 355 where 40% do, says Sam Ashworth-Hayes in the Telegraph. Which constituency is most reliant on handouts? Farage’s Clacton: almost 60% of adults claim at least one benefit. Great Yarmouth, won by Reform’s Rupert Lowe (now independent) is seventh. Richard Tice’s Boston and Skegness is eighth. So, to fix public finances, Reform must ‘take from its own voters’.
Our note about strange things happening in the world of business and finance is followed by the revelation that US conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway has stockpiled an astonishing $381.7 billion in cash — a company record — after another quarter of net selling equities and declining to buy back its own shares. The cash hoarding could indicate that CEO Warren Buffett, 95, is taking a more cautious approach to the current market or that he’s simply waiting for a better opportunity to arise. Whichever, the cash is enough theoretically to buy any one of 477 companies in the S&P 500.
Continuing our new series Don’t Say I Never Tell You Anything: Sightings of giant frilly-mouthed jellyfish around Britain have trebled this year to 310. Milder waters have drawn them northward. Despite their size – they can grow to nearly 3.5ft wide and weigh more than 77lb – their sting is too weak to do serious harm.
Justifiable outrage over Hadush Kebatu, the prisoner released by mistake, recaptured and then given £500 to ease his deportation (although he’ll probably be wading ashore near Dover any time soon). Rare, though, wasn’t it? Ahem. The Tories’ Robert Jenrick asked the Justice Ministry how often this sort of cock-up occurred. A minister refused to say but did concede: ‘The number of people who have been released in error since April 2025 cannot be provided because it would form a subset of releases in error data which underpins future versions of these Official Statistics.’ Eh? Fact: Statistics published in July show that 262 prisoners were released by mistake in the 12 months to March. Fact: It’s a 128% increase on the year before.
Artificial Intelligence is being used increasingly in American newspapers, a new study had found. Around 9% of articles published this summer were at least partially written by AI. University of Maryland researchers used AI detector Pangram to analyse 186,000 articles published online by 1,500 national and local newspaper brands. Some 90.85% of articles analysed were categorised as human-written, while 5.24% were classed as AI-generated and 3.98% were ‘mixed’.
Our old pal Norman Luck, LOTP, would have been enormously bucked by the news that AI can be used to create fake receipts for expenses. Software provider AppZen says such receipts accounted for about 14% of fraudulent documents submitted in September. That’s up from zero last year. ‘How shocking,’ says Charles Arthur in The Overspill. ‘Up until now every expense receipt has been absolutely 100% really incurred.’
Fitting laudatory tributes to one of the true giants of Fleet Street, the Mail’s John Edwards, who has died, aged 91. His reports from all over the world were legendary. As Paul Dacre said: ‘He was a brilliant popular newspaper journalist – at a time when such papers were read by tens of millions – because of his ability to make huge, often complex events highly readable to the man in the street.’ But he didn’t always get the story. Once he waited in vain for several hours at The Savoy for a promised interview with Sinatra. He got his own back though: the intro of his report on Ol’ Blue Eyes’s concert at the Royal Albert Hall read: ‘Sinatra came on to the stage wearing someone else’s hair …’
Did somebody say Just Uber Deliveroo? If you’re in the restaurant business you rather hope not. Today you can have almost anything – from a pizza to a Martini to an ‘expertly seared Wagyu steak’ – delivered to your door in minutes, says Ellen Cushing in The Atlantic. More than half of under 45s in the US order in at least once a week and 5% do so ‘multiple times a day’. And it’s ‘killing restaurant culture’. Chefs are turning to less interesting, less labour-intensive dishes which can easily be bunged into containers, and many have reworked their menus to avoid foods that go soggy in takeaway boxes.
Don’t fancy it myself but skijoring is booming among those who like mucking about in snow. This ‘high-adrenaline, low-temperature’ sport involves a horse rider pulling a skier through a snow-packed obstacle course at top speed, explains Madison Dapcevich in Outside magazine. Once largely confined to cowboy towns in the Rocky Mountains, the sport is about to have its first US pro tour and campaigns for Olympic status are under way. Actually, it’s been around for centuries. Scandinavians routinely travel on skis pulled by reindeer in winter. The technique was demonstrated, but not competitively, at the second Winter Olympics in 1928 in St Moritz.
At a time when royal events top the news agenda, another happening slips under the radar. The bronze statue Hercules and Achelous, which has stood outside Kew Gardens’ Victorian Palm House since 1963 when it was loaned by the late Queen, has suddenly been recalled by the Royal Collection, without explanation, and returned to Windsor.
Doctoral theses? What a load of bollocks. Some of the research funded – at taxpayer expense – by the Arts and Humanities Research Council is plain ‘bizarre’, says Arabella Byrne in The Spectator. Current projects include: Tracing the experiences of working-class, queer British South Asian women, 1970s to 1990s; Menstruation at the Movies: A History of Stigma and Shame from 2000 to 2022 and Animals as Builders: Exploring animal buildings as sites of agency, rights, and politics. Then there’s the unimprovable: Rub rub rub rub rub rub brush brush quiver oh hello, you: Queer Captioning as Material. Nope, me neither.
A spider thought to have vanished from the UK has been rediscovered on the Isle of Wight. Aulonia albimana, better known as the ‘white-knuckled wolf spider,’ was last spotted in Britain in 1985.
SportSnaps: Manchester United manager Rubén Amorim and one of his players, Portuguese international Diogo Dalot, are distant cousins. They’re both descendants of a celebrated 19th century circus artist. Jacksonville Jaguars kicker Cam Little broke the NFL record for longest field goal with a 68-yard kick against the Las Vegas Raiders.
UntouchedByHumanSub: ‘Andrew is entering unchartered royal waters’ - Mail Online (but correct in print edition, to be fair).
It’sOnlyMoney: UK taxpayers are shelling out £88 million for contraception in Pakistan, an investigation by the Taxpayers’ Alliance reveals. On top of £74 million promoting condoms, £13 million is being used for ‘identifying cultural barriers to modern contraceptives’. Heathrow detention centre is offering £31,500 for a hairdresser job to cut the hair of illegal migrants before deportation. Some may feel the only thing that they should be having cut is the amount of time they spend in the UK.
Mike’s new spy thriller
OUR old colleague MICHAEL EVANS has a new book out. Agent Redruth is a spy thriller and a sequel to Shadow Lives which was published in 2023, starring the fabulous unofficial MI5 spy Rebecca Strong.
The commercial artist and spy in her spare time gets caught up in a dramatic British intelligence coup when a top-ranking Russian intelligence officer working in a sensitive job in the Kremlin offers his services as a double agent.
He approaches Rebecca first whom he met and formed a relationship with in Shadow Lives.
Agent Redruth was published as a paperback by Rowanvale Books on July 31st. Mike has nearly finished a third in the Rebecca Strong series which will be called Spies from Moscow.
He told the Drone: “I wrote a big feature on the Agent Redruth subject matter — Russian assassination squads hunting down traitors — which appears in the Daily Express last week (my first piece in the Express since I left in 1986!).”
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)
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.
Daily Express sales
dip below 100,000
The Daily Express is selling fewer than 100,000 copies during the week, new figures reveal today.
And its Reach stablemates, the Mirror, Daily Star and Daily Record all saw double-digit declines in both weekday and Saturday newspaper circulations in September.
The Daily Express saw the biggest year-on-year decline in weekday circulation (down 19% to 99,861), according to the latest audited ABC figures, while the Daily Mirror saw the biggest fall in Saturday circulation (down 17% to 226,041).
The Daily Mail had the highest Saturday circulation (1,050,074), at least four times higher than the Daily Mirror (226,041), and almost double its own weekday circulation – demonstrating the widening gulf between weekday and Saturday UK newspaper sales.
Sunday papers had the biggest year-on-year circulation declines with the Reach-owned Sunday People down 24.4% to 38,108 in September and the Sunday Express down 20.9% to 93,754.
Metro saw the biggest month-on-month increase in circulation, up 32.9% to 891,386, after it slimmed down its free distribution in August to 640,497.
Martin Townsend dies at 65
FORMER Sunday Express editor Martin Townsend died on Friday, 17 October, at the age of 65. He had been suffering from pancreatic cancer.
He leaves a wife, agony aunt Jane O’Gorman, sons Benedict, 31, and Oliver, 29, and daughter Cordelia, 26.
Jane said: “He fought a good fight. He fought every step of the way. He never gave up and did not know it was the end until the end.”
Martin’s former SX colleague Camilla Tominey, said: “Journalism has lost a giant and a gentleman. I have lost a dear friend and mentor, to whom I owe so much.
"Those who knew Martin Townsend will remember him as a creative genius, a maverick editor, and an unparalleled scoop-getter.
"He also wrote like a dream. He cared deeply about his readers and always had the courage of his convictions.”
Black Lubyanka voted the world’s greatest art deco building
(As if we didn’t know …)
OLD Express hands have always known that their Fleet Street offices were one of the greatest art deco buildings in the world. Now it’s official.
Time Out has published a list of the best examples of the genre and the Black Lubyanka has come out top. The list was compiled with the help of art deco aficionado Dominic Lutyens.
Lutyens writes that the building’s exterior is ‘adorned only by gleaming, slimline chrome bands forming a subtle grid’, but the interior is far more glam. ‘Its lobby is sumptuously decorated’, he says, picking out highlights such as steel furniture designed by Betty Joel and gold and silver murals by sculptor Eric Aumonier.
As part of a redevelopment of the surrounding site the building, which is GradeII* listed, was entirely refurbished in 2000 by John Robertson Architects. The foyer was recreated largely from photographs and the façade completely upgraded. The concrete portal frame structure, designed by Sir Owen Williams, was preserved.
London was the only city to boast three entries in the list. Also listed were Eltham Palace and the Hoover building.
Friends pay tribute to Maurice Hibberd ‘one of the good guys’
WE are sad to report that Maurice Hibberd, a former picture editor on the Daily Express and a noted photographer, has died at the age of 88.
His daughter Kerry Robinson posted on Facebook: “It is with sadness that I share the news of the passing of Maurice Hibberd.
“He introduced and helped many young photographers and reporters find their feet in Fleet Street and always considered himself to have the best job in the world.
“He had been suffering from ill health for sometime and died this morning.
“Mo”, dad, will be missed by his extended family and friends. He leaves behind his wife Margaret who cared for him through difficult times.
The funeral will be held on Friday 29th August at St. Mary’s Church, Horsell, Surrey, at 10.30am, followed by a reception at the Gorse Hill Hotel, Woking.
Mark Bourdillon said: “Such sad news. I’ll be always indebted to that lovely man for the introductions he gave me as a newbie in my very early days in Fleet Street. Maurice really was one of the good guys.”
Jim Steele wrote on Snapperweb: “In 1986 l was in my final year at photography college, I wrote to every picture editor on Fleet Street asking for advice.
“Maurice was the only one to respond, phoning me direct. We chatted for about an hour, talking about the business, finishing with him inviting me to visit with my college portfolio which I duly did.
“I’m sure dropping his name to my first boss, Tommy Hindley when I went to apply for a job at his agency didn't do me any harm and I got the gig that set me on my way. True gent.”
KELVIN SPIKED MY SPLASH
(Another case of F for you know what)
CHRISTOPHER WILSON was elated. He had a great story about Selena Scott replacing Anna Ford as ITN News At Ten’s token woman. Big news in 1980.
Trouble was, Daily Express night editor Kelvin MacKenzie didn’t like the story and a row ensued. But Kelvin being Kelvin they were pals again by the following day.
DRONE SUBS TAKE A BREAK
By BOB HAYSTACK, Late Stop
If you have ever wondered why the World’s Greatest Online Newspaper is littered with with errors and spelling mistakes, here’s a clue.
This pic, taken late last night near the Daily Drone offices, shows our subeditors enjoying a ‘rest’ after a longish session in the pub.
Star of the show must be the Chief Sub relaxing in the street and grasping for his bottle of Peroni. Lying in the gutter (but looking at the stars) is the Deputy Chief Sub being dealt with by the police after offering both of them a kiss.
As usual today’s issue of the Drone has been prepared for your delectation by the editor who has yet to go on his break.
Are Express journalists being ordered to lie on pain of being sacked?
The Express, once so rigorous in its reporting and editing, has again been caught misleading its online readers.
The Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) has ruled that the Express website broke the Editors’ Code in articles about Government economic policy.
It is the seventh time this year that IPSO has rapped the Express for inaccurate or misleading headlines.
So what’s going on? Reading the catalogue of cock-ups in Press Gazette, it is hard to attribute so many blunders to honest mistakes.
A charitable view would be that journalists are required to produce so many stories in such a short time that the facts become collateral damage.
But there is another, more sinister, explanation.
Could it be that reporters and news desks are coming under pressure to “build” stories that executives calculate will attract “clicks” on the site?
Or, to put it another way, are they being encouraged to lie on pain of being fired?
Back when the Daily Express was a proper newspaper, with well-trained reporters and alert and sceptical sub-editors, any of the mistakes catalogued in the Press Gazette would have resulted in the offender being sacked.
Might it now be the other way round? That the only way to keep your job is to corrupt the facts of a story and bend the truth?
In any case, Reach will discover that lying to readers has consequences. Plunging sales of the newspapers will eventually leave the company reliant on its websites.
And that will expose the empty cynicism of its click-bait strategy.
Every journalist knows that a news organisation is only as good as its stories. Some of those on the Express website fail on every measure.
Before there were subs …
A dust-covered TERRY MANNERS has emerged blinking in the sunlight from the depths of the British Library after unearthing this gem from the Huddersfield Chronicle, September 3, 1853.
It was clearly before subs were invented — the story is in the final sentence and the headline? Words fail.
A glass and a halfwit in every Tory bar
BONFIRE OF THE WRAPPER WRITERS: This chocolate bar masquerading in Cadbury livery was available at the Conservative conference in Manchester. What a pity Kemi Badenoch didn’t check the spelling before she signed it.
IT’S ALL GONE QUIET — GOOD JOB THE DRONE HASN’T
Mike’s still in the doghouse
OUR old chum Mike Graham has been lying low following his standoff with TalkTV bosses over a so-called racist post.
Mike has been suspended from the station following a 'vile' post criticising “non-white people” which appeared on his Facebook page. He insists he was hacked.
Whether it was anything to do with having a few drinks while spending the day recording his cancel culture podcast with Kevin O’Sullivan remains to be seen.
What also remains to be seen is whether anyone looks into one particular anonymous X account. This burner account posts things a little bit more extreme than what Mike was moaning about over on Facebook, reports Popbitch.
Recent retweets include theories that black men “aren’t like us”, that abortion is murder and that there is an Islamic takeover of the West. The pinned tweet names Labour’s reform of the Lords as the moment the “nation was broken”. All pretty normal stuff, then.
There’s nobody recognisable in the profile pic, but some Talk colleagues have long suspected who might be secretly tweeting.
The proof? They don’t have anything that actually holds water, but they do point out that the profile avatar looks suspiciously like Mike Graham’s golden retriever Ziggy.
The powers that be have demanded Mike hand over his phone but last time we heard he was holding on to it. Whatever next?
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)
SAVED FOR THE NATION
How our man Wilson rescued the only monument to UK journalism from being ground into powder
You may never have seen this magnificent sculpture but the fact that you can still visit it is down to one man — former Hickey editor CHRISTOPHER WILSON.
The monument, confusingly called The Three Printers, was sculpted by Wilfred Dudeney in 1954 and represents not three printers but one.
It stood for years in New Street Square, off Fleet Street, until Wilson noticed it had disappeared.
Some swift detective work located the statue in a Watford builder’s yard awaiting the crusher.
WHEN THE EXPRESS USED ITS LOAF
HOW PRESCIENT DO WE HAVE TO BE?
Just a day after we asked why there were so many black people in TV adverts it makes the national news
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has criticised Reform MP Sarah Pochin for what he called "racist" language after she complained about adverts being "full of black people, full of Asian people".
The Runcorn and Helsby MP apologised for her remarks, which were made during a TalkTV phone-in on Saturday, saying they were "phrased poorly" but maintained that many adverts were "unrepresentative of British society".
Speaking on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Streeting claimed Pochin had only said sorry "because she's been caught and called out".
The Right-wing MP was speaking after Drone columnist HELENA HANDCART first brought the matter up.
This is positive proof that your Non-Stop Super Soaraway Drone sets the big agenda!*
That’s enough superlatives — Ed
WHAT AN INSULT
Reach journalists who tuned into staff meeting to learn their fate are instead urged to buy a ‘beauty box’
Morale at the Reach national newspapers have plunged to rock bottom as the few remaining journalists fear for their jobs.
The publisher of the Express, Mirror and Star titles has announced it will cut hundreds of jobs as it pivots to video and plans to share more content across its titles.
There will 321 redundancies and 135 new roles in the shake-up.
One worried staffer told the Drone: “Those of us still currently employed at Reach were invited to a Town Hall with [Reach CEO] Piers North to update us on ‘Q3’.
“Someone called Emma popped up to tell us about ‘brand diversification’ including advent calendars and something called a ‘TikTok Viral Beauty Box’ which apparently are all selling fast — so staff who had tuned in to find out if they would be homeless by Christmas were urged to put our orders in straight away.
“Apart from anything else we have such a huge workload now we don’t have time to listen to such guff — I logged off the ongoing meeting to contact the Drone instead but my nose isn’t far from the grindstone. It’s so insulting.”
All Assistant Chief Sub-Editors on the Express have been put into a pool with downtable subs on both papers and a committee of chiefs are deciding who stays and who goes.
Only the Deputy Chief Subs from both titles (including the Sunday Mirror) are in a separate pool of six and two were going to be culled, but two volunteered and one was promoted to replace the Mirror chief who has taken voluntary redundancy.
Our contact said: “We’re not expecting to have much longer even if we don’t get the elbow this time.”
THE POWER OF DRONE
Palace acts TWO DAYS after we called for Prince Andrew to be stripped of all his daft titles
Alan Frame’s column on 14 October
Here’s proof that the Daily Drone is read in the highest social circles — including the King.
Just two days after our columnist Alan Frame suggested it was time to remove Prince Andrew’s titles the Palace acted — and did just that.
Fleet Street caught up last night …
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 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—2025
