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THE THINGS THEY SAY
I had a maxim in government: if the legal advice says no, get a better lawyer — Michael Gove
TODAY’S PAPERS
CARTOON OF THE DAY
DAVE BROWN, Indie
GOOD NEWS (we think) Daily Star gets cash boost from website robots
THERE’S good news at last for the Daily Star. It has become one of the biggest sources of online advertising revenue for Reach.
The paper’s senior reporter Adam Cailler now works full-time on tailoring content for web portal MSN.com which, like Yahoo, republishes content from a variety of publishers and shares ad revenue with them.
MSN.com is the third-biggest English-language news website in the world and has been edited by AI-driven robots since 2020.
It is possible for publishers to earn higher rates via advertising from content published on MSN than on their own sites because MSN operates its own advertising system based on first-party data from logged-in users.
The success at MSN comes amid plummeting Google Discover referral traffic hitting digital revenue at Reach, with overall page views down by 8% in the second half of 2025 across the network.
Cailler has spent the past six months dedicated to managing Daily Star content on MSN, which he said at times surpasses the brand’s own website in terms of article views.
“I’m not just the first at the Star, I’m basically the first at Reach to just be dedicated to nothing but MSN for a job,” he said.
The role came about after Cailler realised a lot of Daily Star content could not be automatically fed through to the platform due to its strict filters.
“Thus my six-month journey through the joy of MSN and trying to figure out their filters and monitoring and making it… quite a big earner for us. And it’s just developed from there.”
His role involves monitoring what is working on MSN over a 24-hour period, tailoring content and commissioning stories aimed at this specific audience.
Source: Press Gazette
Ivor Davis dies at 87
ONE of the big stars of the old Daily Express, West Coast correspondent Ivor Davis, died on Sunday 29 March surrounded by his family in Ventura, California. He was 87.
The Express assigned him to cover the Beatles in 1964 when the toured America for a month. His wife, Sally Ogle Davis, died in 2012, and they had two children Gideon and Rebecca. In 1969 Davis co-wrote Five to Die, the first book ever published about the Sharon Tate-LaBianca murders, and covered the trial for the Daily Express.
As a foreign correspondent, he traveled throughout the western hemisphere covering riots, floods, earthquakes, and politics.
As Editor-at-Large for Los Angeles Magazine, he and Sally wrote more than 100 major magazine and cover stories. In 2019, he wrote about his journey with the Manson Family title Manson Exposed.
Davis was the best selling author of books about his travels with the Fab Four —“The Beatles and Me On Tour” and three books about his experiences with the Charles Manson murder case. His latest book is “The Devil in My Friend —The Inside Story of A Malibu Murder”— about a friend who turned out to be a murderer.
John Smith told the Drone: “Sad news about Ivor Davis, and farewell to another of Fleet Street’s greats. Our paths often crossed when I was New York correspondent for the Daily Mirror back in the sixties.
“He was fiercely competitive when chasing a showbiz story, but always amiable and cheerful company, ever ready to give me guidance when coping with the Hollywood scene that he covered so brilliantly for so many years.”
Lord Bothermore not bothered over losing fight for Telegraph
There’s been a lot of schadenfreude in the media in the last couple weeks over The Telegraph’s sale to Axel Springer rather than the Daily Mail, writes Popbitch.
Despite months of pursuit, we’re told DMGT proprietor Lord Rothermere is pretty sanguine about the loss.
But all those brutal cuts to the Mail to make enough cash to buy their rival might not be wasted, as rumour suggests he’s set for a divorce and fears being taken to the cleaners.
While Claudia (Lady Rothermere) has been on a personal journey backing Reform with a fair bit of dosh, Lord R has been heading in what appears to be another direction, as photos of him attending Rupert Murdoch’s 95th birthday with a different blonde on his arm can attest.
FYI: Their DMGT heir apparent son Vere is getting married this summer, which might make the family circus a tad awkward.
Fleet Street in the mist
Looks eerily quiet, doesn’t it? This slightly moist pic of Ludgate Circus taken from the foot of Fleet Street dates from 1972 and found by Terry Manners in his dusty drawers.
The photo was snapped by City copper PC Lew Tassle walking home after his beat in EC4.
He would have been standing outside the Albion so one can’t help wondering whether he had slipped into the pub for an out-of-hours snifter. Just about everyone else did.
PC Tassle often displays his pictures in the wonderful Spitalfields Life website which opens a window to how London used to be.
Even as his acclaimed forensic filleting of the sexual and financial incontinence of Andrew
M-W and his ex-wife, is flying off the shelves, Andrew Lownie is said to be turning his attention to the late Prince Philip. Can’t wait. Some of the revelations in Entitled, his exposure of the Yorks, are truly astonishing. The disgraced duke and his chaotic partner spent (other people’s) money like water. Their profligacy was obscene. Yet, as an executive on another Fleet Street paper points out, little was done to highlight it. He tells me: ‘Apart from references to Airmiles Andy and to Fergie’s endless struggles with debt, we were strangely restrained. I, as a fairly senior exec at the time, was complicit in this failure to skewer them. Why were we so toothless?’ He said that reading Entitled made it clear: ‘Lownie writes of one occasion when the great and good were partying with the Yorks at a Mediterranean villa, no doubt sipping something cool and effervescent in the mimosa-scented gloaming: the guest list included my editor and his wife.’ Pequeño mundo, ¿No?
What a shambles is the House of Lords, a haven for hasbeens and neverwases. Every new government promises root and branch reform and then every new prime minister realises it’s both a dumping ground for useless herberts and a useful lure for a spot of arse-licking. Under Lords rules, peers must attend at least one sitting in each year-long parliamentary session to keep their seat. Two of them have just managed to do that. Boris Johnson appointees, newspaper proprietor Evgeny Lebedev and former cricketer Ian Botham each managed to make it to seven of the 625 sessions of the upper house that took place from the start of 2022 to the end of 2025. That’s an attendance rate of 1.12%. They’re having a giraffe, aren’t they?
While Trump is causing mayhem throughout the world you may wonder where is the opposition — the Democrats — in all this. Maybe it’s the Biden legacy but, as Noah Smith points out on Substack, a recent NBC poll put the party’s net favourability rating at -22%, below that of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (-18%), the Republican Party (-14%) and even Trump himself (-12%).
A so-called columnist bewails the increasing traffic jeopardy in London. He tells of pausing, tremulously, at traffic lights while walking amid the maelstrom of bikes, scooters, delivery vans, cabs and outriders from Papa Johns. I sympathise: I’d be just like a skittish fawn hesitantly deciding whether to risk entering the Deep Dark Wood. Contrast with sylvan meadows, an odd tractor, the hourly bus, the tinkling laughter of the girl grooms from the village livery riding out, a red kite circling overhead and my nearest visible man-made object, a church steeple, four miles away. Green and pleasant, indeed (the land not the steeple).
Chuck Norris, who has died aged 86, deserved his hard-man image, says The Times. It was said that he was once bitten by a snake and ‘after 10 minutes of agony the snake died’. But his reputation was actually well-earned. When two men tried to mug him, police arrived to find the pair with ‘broken arms, knives on the ground and Norris, then 54, waiting quietly nearby’. Didn’t you know who he was, they asked the muggers, trying not to laugh. ‘We knew,’ they said. ‘We just figured all that stuff on TV was fake.’
Actors do like to live the part. Immerse yourself in the rôle, luv, feel it, feel it. Martin Clunes’s turn in the Huw Edwards biopic has received praise and so it should. It even went as far as the mummer having his rather, er, prominent ears temporarily pinned back while the cameras rolled, according to those scamps at Popbitch. Trouble was, by the time he came to promoting the show on morning telly, they were unleashed, flapping as usual.
That Zack Polanski, he’s a right caution. The boob-whispering Greens leader has boasted he can enhance ladies’ mammeries through hypnotherapy. But now the claim is slapping him in the face, so to speak. According to the Currant Bun, when pollsters More in Common asked voters whether they would consider backing the Greens, 33% said they would. When they told the respondents about Polanski’s boob-boosting gig, that figure more than halved to 16%.
Trust those zany, laugh a minute Aussies. A YouTube team Down Under called How Ridiculous has had nearly 700,000 views testing how many rubber bands it takes to destroy various items. They include a paint tin (98 bands), a mirror (150) and a printer (340). They gave up on a big bottle of Coke, which is nigh-on invincible, after 6,386. Check it out on Exploding Random Items With ONLY Rubber Bands.
You understand that this is not really my field but the sharp fall in page views across regional newsbrands continued last month with an overall 31% reduction. This follows a 25% drop in January, according to IPSOS. There were a total of 531.6million views compared to 772.4million in February, 2025. The figures concealed a mixed picture throughout the different regional publishing groups, with several Newsquest titles posting significant year-on-year increases. But Reach’s biggest titles, including the Manchester Evening News, Liverpool Echo, Wales Online and Birmingham Mail, all saw decreases in excess of 30%.
Let’s try to forget the bonkers Beeb’s latest stupidity — censoring a Bob Monkhouse joke book on The Repair Shop — and enjoy some of the quips: Wife asks: ‘Can my mother come down for the weekend?’ Husband: ‘Why?’ ‘Well, she’s been on the roof for two weeks.’ Or: ‘People say marriage is like a prison sentence. Not true! In prison you get regular sex, whether you want it or not.’ And: ‘My wife went off with my next door neighbour. I don’t half miss him!’
A sign of the times, perhaps, but car park operator NCP, in administration because of reduced demand, was originally a clever wheeze, says Megan Smith in the FT: buying up World War Two bomb sites in central London cheaply and converting them into car parks. When the company was sold to a US firm for £800million in 1998, the deal almost broke down because of the strange condition insisted on by one of the two owners. He asked to keep a single parking space for himself, just off Oxford Street. He wanted to maintain his weekend habit of driving there in his Bentley with a flask of tea and trying to predict where people would park.
Although English is the world’s most important language, it’s good to see the mother tongues of other nations in our islands are also in rude health. The Irish language, for example, has made a remarkable comeback, says The Economist. A century ago just 18% of Ireland’s population spoke it; today it’s around 40%, up 71% from 1991. This linguistic renaissance is in part because of exam reforms but also because of pop culture. Cillian Murphy and Paul Mescal both casually using the language on the red carpet prove Irish has ‘become cool’. In both Ireland and Wales study of the native lingo is a compulsory subject in all schools while some teach in it entirely. Poor Scotland, though: centuries of oppression by the pesky English has hit Scots Gaelic badly.
Old salts’ tales of Moby Dicks ramming ships have long been dismissed as rum-fuelled fantasies. But no longer, says Jake Currie in Nautilus. Using new drone cameras, researchers have, for the first time, witnessed sperm whales head-butting each other at high speed. The force of the impact in one case was estimated at 200 kilonewtons. No, me neither but they say it does make those sea stories credible.
Run out of butter? Don’t worry - just run away and churn some. The latest fitness trend, says Natalie Stechyson in CBC News, is ‘churning and burning’. It involves strapping a bag of heavy cream and salt to the torso and then heading out for around an hour’s jog. This mimics the typical churning movement that thickens the ingredients into a pat of the yellow stuff.
UntouchedByHumanSub: ‘We don’t seem anywhere near crossing Is and dotting Ts.’ — the BBC’s Gary O’Donoghue on the prospect of an Iran peace deal.
TheThingsTheySay: ‘Surely one of the great comforts of getting older is knowing that you won’t need your liver for much longer.’ — the Marvellous Ms Midgley in The Times.
HeadlineOfTheWeek: Woman Has Sex With Tram And Marries It Despite Already Having A Boyfriend —Star.
It’sOnlyMoney: The chief constable of Police Scotland, Jo Farrell, will pocket a salary of £281,000 from next month. That’s a hearty 3.5 per cent increase. Crime in Scotland is soaring by five per cent
OLD JOKES HOME
When the hospital asked me for a stool sample, I sent them a leg off my kitchen chair. The trouble is now my wife keeps falling off it.
There are 11 groups of people in the world.-- those who understand Roman numerals, and those who don't.
I filled my car up with £110 worth of petrol then drove off without paying. I was taken to court and fined £75. Watch this column for more money-saving tips.
talian journalists are striking because their industry-wide contract hasn’t been renewed in ten years, with salaries losing 20% of purchasing power to inflation. (Wanted in Rome)
CNN is preparing to cut employees as part of Mark Thompson’s digital overhaul, with a reported push for “more employees fluent in product, streaming, audience development, and digital storytelling”.
Future has expanded its Future Collab project with "Editors in Residence" at Who What Wear and "Masters" at Marie Claire. The schemes embed social media creators into the titles’ editorial output.
Australia's ABC has switched to BBC programming as more than 1,000 staff at the national broadcaster began 24-hour strike action over pay and conditions. (ABC)
NIBS
ONLY IN THE DRONE
Our great columnists
Stand and Deliver
By Hermione Orliff
NEW TODAY
Oh, come on — it’s an easy mistake to make. Could happen to anyone. Selfridges has been selling a world map globe which omits Israel. You keffiyeh flaunters need not worry: Palestine is marked prominently. Now the store, which has been accused of ‘cancelling’ Israel, has withdrawn the illuminated globe after receiving 700 complaints. A spokesman said: ‘It’s extremely important to us that we create an environment where everyone feels welcome and our customers can shop with confidence, which is why we made the decision to remove the item from sale.’ Nothing to see here: please move on.
The Daily Drone’s two acclaimed star diarists are uniting to celebrate their new book. The Wit and Wisdom of the Two Haitches (DroneMart. 29pp. £4.75) goes on sale today after a discreet launch in the Back Bar of the Flying Fuck. The ladies will now embark on a nationwide book-signing tour. The Editor of the Drone commented: ‘While we wish our diarists every success, the title of their book suggests that there is only a slim chance.’ A spokesman for Lord Drone said: ‘I woke his lordship up and he said: “What day is it?”’
News that BUDDS is holding what it calls ‘the largest World Cup memorabilia auction in history’ prompts Wally, kitman and archivist for Drone Casuals FC, to recall Maradona’s controversial Hand of God goal which ditched England out of the tournament in 1986. The English players were incensed and snubbed the Argentinian after the game. Except midfielder Steve Hodge who persuaded him to swap shirts. The lads were not impressed when he arrived in the dressing room with the memento. But the boy done good. In 2022 Hodge sold the shirt for £7 million at auction.
A recent change in the law has lifted a previously opaque veil hiding who owns what in London. The Londoner reports that 32,611 properties are owned by people and entities from abroad. They include 2,224 of the capital’s most expensive and recognisable properties all registered in just one short street in St Helier, Jersey. Curious.
Event tourism is where it’s at these days. The ancillary boost music concerts bring to a city — think Taylor Swift or Beyoncé — is enormous. Restaurants and hotels reap huge benefits. When the likely lads from K-pop phenomenon BTS returned from military service and announced an international tour, flights and hotel rooms in 34 world cities quickly sold out. Booking.com searches surged 6,700% for just one date in Taiwan. Music tourism could surpass $9 billion by 2030, a 50% increase from 2023. But it’s peanuts compared with sport. That’s a $1 trillion trove. California, where tourist revenue is already among the highest in the US, is experiencing a boom. After last month’s Super Bowl and the NBA All-Star Game, the state will host World Cup games this summer, the Super Bowl (again) next year, and the Olympics in 2028. Other world hot spots include London, Paris, Barcelona, Sydney, Dubai, and New York.
The local newspaper empire built up by the late Sir Ray Tindle has been sold to a joint venture involving the Iliffe and Fowler families. Tindle Newspapers was founded after World War 2 when Sir Ray spent his demob payout to buy the Balham and Tooting Gazette. The group went on to comprise 30 newspaper titles and websites across Wales, the West Country, Surrey, Hampshire and the Isle of Man. They include the Monmouthshire Beacon, based in Monmouth, which launched in 1837. The consolidation of the Tindle titles within the Iliffe Media Group and its associated companies will effectively create a ‘big four’ in UK regional publishing alongside Reach plc, Newsquest and Iconic Media. Sir Ray died in 2022, aged 95.
Stop me if you knew this but birds across the world have started lining their nests with cigarette butts. In Britain, blue tits are even nesting in outdoor ashtrays, of the kind found nailed to the wall outside pubs. Lesley Evans Ogden in The New York Times reveals that a new study suggests this could be more than mere addiction: some of the 4,000 chemical compounds found in ciggies – which include nicotine, arsenic, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and heavy metals – may ward off parasites that would otherwise harm birds and their chicks.
Talk about streets paved with gold…London has the highest child poverty level of anywhere in the country because of the city's housing crisis, research reveals. About 38% of children live in relative poverty compared with 29% in England as a whole. Rates were highest in the constituency of Hackney North and Stoke Newington (60.2%).
If you’re wandering around Málaga this Holy Week, look out for the actor once called ‘the sexiest man in the world’. He’ll be wearing a pointy hat and taking part in a religious procession. It’s Antonio Banderas who, as everyone knows, is a member of the Brotherhood of the Most Holy Mary of Tears and Favours. Banderas, whose films have grossed nearly $8 billion, takes life easier these days after a near-fatal heart attack in 2017. Gone is the time when, during his marriage to Melanie Griffith, he was ‘half of one of Hollywood’s most famous couples’. Now the 65-year-old lives with his girlfriend in a flat in the historic centre near the iconic El Pimpi restaurant, which he owns. Hollywood still pays the bills but his passion, he says, is his not-for-profit Teatro del Soho, which has helped drive the port city’s cultural renaissance.
Cybersecurity experts in the States predict online traffic from bots and AI will exceed that from humans next year. ‘Automated traffic’ on the internet is growing eight times faster than flesh and blood users. So to new Drone readers (and please don’t take offence at any negative coverage of AI) we say: 01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111.
Why would London-centric The Standard online devote 23 pars, accompanied by five pix, to the fact that the Royal Regiment of Scotland is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its formation from an amalgamation of six regiments? Fills a hole, though, doesn’t it?
I don’t often quote from real columnists, such as Littlejohn (Perhaps you should: it would be more readable — Ed) but, following a reference to the Beeb censoring the Bob Monkhouse Joke Book, Rich recalls a meeting with the great man: ‘He asked me where I got my sense of humour from. My mum, I replied. And what did you get from your dad? Piles.’
US newspaper circs are in freefall. Some 24 out of top 25 saw print circulation decline in 2025, says Alice Brooker in Press Gazette. The combined average fall was 12.5 %. Largest decline, YoY, was The Washington Post: down by 21.2% to 87,576 in the six months to September 30, 2025, from 111,171 a year earlier. The paper saw ‘significant subscription cancellations’, alongside the Los Angeles Times, after its owners decided not to endorse a candidate in the presidential race. The Times had the second-biggest drop, down 19.8% to 63,492. The Post also shed 4% of its workforce. Highest-circulation The Wall Street Journal, fell by 12.9%, from 473,717 to 412,428. Florida-based Villages Daily Sun was the only title to see an increase, up 4.2% from 46,750 to 48,716.
TalesFromTheBackwoods: Psst! Anyone wanna buy the World’s Largest Dinosaur? The 86ft tall, 145,000lb Tyrannosaurus rex named Tyra skulks in the small town of Drumheller in the Canadian Badlands about 84 miles northeast of Calgary. The popular tourist attraction near the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology is on borrowed time The ending of a lease in 2029 has left the fibreglass and steel dinosaur’s future uncertain.
ThisSportingStrife: Spectators were baffled when a priest stood on the touchline barking instructions to the away team and shouting abuse at the opposition in a crunch tie between Galgagnano and Union Mulazzano in the Italian 9th tier. Then it was revealed the priest was actually Mulazzano manager Matteo Ciceri who’d disguised himself in robes and a dog collar because he was supposed to be serving a touchline ban. Ciceri managed to keep up the ruse for most of the match until his side conceded a late goal. Alas, he ran on to the pitch and kicked an opposition player. Late flash: he’s been banned an extra four months.
TheThingsTheySay: ‘It is for you to demonstrate there has been a wrong.’ — Mr Justice Nicklin to Prince Harry’s brief, David Sherborne, as the High Court privacy trial nears its end.
UntouchedByHumanSub: ‘(Ant) was fined £86,000 — believed to be a record for the offence —and banned from diving for 20 months — Katie Hind, Mail.
It’sOnlyMoney: You really couldn’t make it up, says the Taxpayers’ Alliance, but British taxpayers have forked out £14million for solar panels…in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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.
James Mossop
One of the great sports writers, James Mossop of the Sunday Express, has died aged 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.’
The family, who are having a private funeral, have set up a tributes page.
CONTRIBUTE HERE
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.”
DRONE SUBBING WORKSHOP
The golden rule is: Always ensure the headline matches the picture
Spotted by MARGARET ASHWORTH who commented:
‘Mail Online, obviously.’
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.
CUTTING A DASH: A fine example of the sub-editor’s craft from The Pratt Tribune in Kansas. Not.
WHY HYPHENS MATTER
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 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'.”
OUR GREATEST EVER LOOKALIKE
BENNY GERRY
These two chaps could be twins, couldn’t they readers? And one thing is for sure, you will never see Gerry Adams and Benny Hill in the same room. Admittedly that is mainly because that nice Mr Hill is dead, but we on the Drone don’t let the facts stand in the way of a lousy story hooked in desperation out of the flong basket.
But seriously, those berets definitely came from the same jumble sale and the spectacles are almost identical.
You should have gone to Specsavers — Ed
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.
The Night Howls
Two members of the Daily Express news sub-editorial team fill their time after returning from the pub late at night in the 1980s. If memory serves, this was the final of the Arthriticson Howling Contest which involved shouting HERE DOWN PLEASE! in the manner of Foreign Sub Jack Atkinson an aged Ulsterman. By the look on the face of Lord Drone, left, he has received a high score from adjudicator Mr Robert ‘Algy’ Smith.
We thank you most kindly, as the late Mr Arthriticson would have said.
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.
Meine Güte! Vee have vays of making a groß cockup at Der Torygraf, Herr Springer
By DONNA N BLITZEN
DID anyone at the Telegraph think to remind the subs that their paper had been bought by a German publisher?
We only ask because, with incredible timing, the Second World War-obsessed title led its Review section last Saturday with a picture of Adolf Hitler and a swastika with a headline asking: ‘Why would anyone pay to own this?’
The cockup happened one day after Axel Springer, which owns a string of top Teutonic titles including Bild and Die Welt, agreed to purchase the Telegraph Media Group in a deal costing £575 million.
The Daily Mail and General Trust had proposed to buy the company in a £500 million takeover, but the government ordered an investigation on public interest and competition grounds. In the interim, Springer nipped in, with chief executive Mathias Döpfner saying he wanted to “preserve the distinctive character and legacy” of the right-wing paper.
Poignant story behind these three cobblestones buried in memory of DX showbiz writer Ian Lyness in the land he loved so much
By BRIAN EMSLEY
THESE three cobblestones have been interred bearing messages in fond remembrance of former Express showbiz writer, and my friend, Ian Lyness.
The Drone ran an obituary four years ago after he died aged 70 in Colorado, where he lived with his American wife Catherine. But he suffered terrible homesickness for England.
Ian had asked me back in 2011, after first getting lymphoma, that his ashes be scattered in Hadley Wood, near High Barnet. But when his ashes were sent to me by his widow they were blocked by UK Customs for paperwork reasons and ended up in a lockup in Utah. His wife had by then relocated to Maryland.
A profound patriot, Ian would be turning in his urn that he could not rest in England especially when masses of illegal immigrants pour in with no paperwork. So, to honour his request, I and another chum buried cobblestones in the wood, messages penned on them. One of his favourite films was I’m All Right Jack, hence one of the messages.
He was a great supporter of King Richard III, who as a teenager, commanded the Yorkist army that crushed the Lancastrian army on the same spot at the Battle of Barnet. So, I hope Ian’s happy!
Another fine mess as Mail ends up with
two Chief Reporters
STOP PRESS: Arguably there are three
THERE’S a battle of egos taking place among the chief reporter(s) at the Daily Mail, writes Popbitch, Gossip Editor.
The unhappy marriage between The Daily Mail (the newspaper) and The Daily Mail (the website formerly known as MailOnline) has seen the joint publication end up with two 'chief reporters': Sam Greenhill (paper) and Martin Robinson (website).
And, since this story was published, it appears there are actually THREE.
Michael Hellicar reports: “Inderdeep Bains, until last week bylined as the paper’s deputy chief reporter has been promoted to Chief News Correspondent — thus chief reporter by another name.”
But who's really chief? The apparent solution, since the paper's reporters continue to look dismissively upon their online counterparts: make Sam Greenhill 'THE Chief Reporter' by title, so everyone knows he's the main one.
We’re sure that makes Martin Robinson feel very good about his status — which is presumably half the point...
Elsewhere, former Daily Mail exec Gerard Greaves has fled to the countryside and is apparently pissing off his stuck-up Cotswolds neighbours. Namely, about his huge parties, where everyone gets hammered on champagne. Particularly as Gerard occasionally attends the local church and works as a bell ringer. Gosh, the horror!
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
