DAILY DRONE

How Hickey chief Wilson rescued this Fleet Street sculpture from a crusher

FORMER Hickey editor Christopher Wilson has revealed how he saved an important sculpture from being destroyed.

The work, Three Printers by Wilfred Dudeney, is a misnomer as it depicts an editor, a printer and a news boy. 

It originally stood in New Street Square outside the Westminster Press offices off Fleet Street but now graces the sunken Goldsmiths' Garden in Gresham Street.

Christopher wrote on Facebook: "This day 50 years ago I came to Fleet Street as a young reporter. In one of the back alleys I explored in the following weeks, I came across this sculpture by Wilfred Dudeney — as far as I know, the only public monument to us and our trade. 

"A dozen years ago, after the diaspora, it was in pieces in a builder's yard and destined for the crusher. I saved it, and since I never became an editor, I count it as my greatest journalistic achievement. 

“I wanted it to be re-sited in St Bride’s Churchyard but Goldsmiths' belatedly decided to claim ownership — even though until I said ‘ Oi!’ they were content to let it go to the crusher.

"They were the landlords of New Street Square but the sculpture was commissioned and paid for by Westminster Press [a now defunct local newspaper group].

“We compromised because Goldsmiths' offered to have it restored at considerable cost in return for it being placed in their garden.

“Anyway, like us, it’s still around!”

The Goldsmiths' Garden is on the site of the churchyard and medieval church of St John Zachary, which was damaged in the Great Fire. 

The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths had acquired land in 1339, and built the earliest recorded Livery Hall. After part of the Company's property was demolished in WWII, the site was first laid out as a garden in 1941, redesigned in later years. 

The former churchyard is to the west, a raised garden with a number of gravestones and trees. Steps lead down to the excavated site of the church, laid out as a sunken garden with lawn, hard surround and seating against the retaining wall. 

The Three Printers sculpture, dating from around 1957, relocated there in 2009.

Westminster Press was sold by parent company Pearson to Newsquest in 1996.

                                          __________

The way we were ...

From The Times Diary
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EXPRESSMAN Ray King’s son Alex has completed a marathon ride from Croatia to Greece to raise money for desperate refugees.

Ray told the Drone: "Alex is living in Greece and has been helping at refugee aid centres in Athens and other places.

"To try to raise money for the projects, he recently joined other cyclists on a tough cycle ride across mountainous Albania and Montenegro to Greece (from Dubrovnik in Croatia to Igoumenitsa). 

"As you probably know, refugees are getting a raw deal from governments (and sometimes people) around Europe."

After completing the ride on 7 September, Alex said: “In the end, we cycled 670 km over six days and through four countries.  We climbed more than the height of Everest when you add it all up. Most days were 120-140 km with some pretty solid climbing. It was an incredible ride and pretty challenging.”

You can read Alex’s personal thoughts about the ride and why he took part (and you can also donate) at:

https://donate.helprefugees.org/supporters/alex-is-riding-600km-with-thighs-of-steel-to-raise-money-for-refugees/395/

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Stokes splash row puts skids under Sun editor

By POPBITCH
It's been a pretty indecorous week for the British Press all round, but The Sun's splash about Ben Stokes' historic family tragedy went down like a particularly cold cup of sick. 

Word around News UK is that the backlash has marked the card of editor Tony Gallagher for good – not least because the sports desk had been counselling bosses against the story throughout.

It's no secret that Rebekah Brooks has been gunning for Gallagher since Day Dot, but he's always been kept in position thanks to his closeness to Rupert Murdoch, who sees him as a politically safe pair of hands to helm the paper while Brexit gets sorted. 

But with an EU departure now on the horizon, this little misfire means that no-one at the Baby Shard is expecting to still see Gallagher there at Christmas.

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                     BAKER                             HODGE

Whoah! Freeze frame! Back a bit! A bit more! Is this spooky or what? Can it be that the late, great BBC newsreader Richard Baker has been reincarnated as Lord Hodge, one of the Supreme Court justices sitting in judgment this week on Boris Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament? Are they actually one and the same man? No, stupid boy: they just look alike — Ed

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WAUGH’S ADVICE TO EXPRESS REPORTERS

Slope off to the cinema, smoke a pipe … then make a story up

EXPRESSMAN Geoffrey Mather, writing on his website about Brideshead Revisited, recalled an amusing anecdote about the book’s author Evelyn Waugh.

Quoting Waugh’s biographer Philip Eade he wrote: "Waugh spent several weeks ‘working' at the Daily Express. Having been fired in 1927 he gave advice to budding reporters.

"When assigned a story, 'the correct procedure is to jump to your feet, seize your hat and umbrella, and dart out of the office with every appearance of haste to the nearest cinema'.

"At the cinema the probationer was advised to sit and smoke a pipe and imagine what any relevant witnesses might say.”

We on the Drone reckon this was an excellent policy which was followed 50 years later by eager Expressmen, although at that time pubs were more de rigueur than cinemas.

And the moral? Never take work too seriously.

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WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Alex Collinson unearthed this pic of trainee journalists visiting the South Wales Echo in Cardiff in 1967.

But he has lost track of his erstwhile colleagues.

He told the Drone: "I know Bob Warman had a lifetime career on Midlands TV and Peter Deeley’s name has cropped up as a sports reporter on radio [and as a presenter on LBC.] 

"As for the rest, who knows? The names aren’t in running order, by the way — that’s me on the right, though I wouldn’t recognise myself. I was a reporter for the Berrow’s Group, Worcester, at the time.”

Alex added: "I never did darken the doors of the Black Lubyanka during my years in Fleet Street, working variously at the PA, London Evening News, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mirror.”

The cutting is from The Journalist of the time reporting on on the NCTJ block release course based in Cardiff. 

Do you recognise anyone in this pic? Let us know if you do at dailydrone@mail.com

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From Hickey to Hardcastle, McEntee gets the diary date

FORMER Hickey editor John McEntee had good news for his friends on Facebook.

He wrote: "Today I signed a new contract with Daily Mail editor Geordie Grieg to continue as Ephraim Hardcastle in his esteemed paper.

"It makes me the longest serving gossip columnist in Fleet Street surpassing Seb Shakespeare, Ross Benson, Nigel Dempster Kenneth Rose and all the rest.

"From Londoner's Diary via Times Diary and Wicked Whispers to be the last William Hickey on Express and now succeeding my mentor Peter McKay as Effy.

"And who better to celebrate with than Barry Cryer at an Oldie lunch in Simpson’s-in-the Strand.

"Thank God for my health my children my grand children my Morven oh and Geordie!”

Paul Callan commented: “Congratulations John! I think I’m not far behind you. 

"My gossip column years are: Londoner’s Diary, 1965 to 1971; Daily Mail Diary which I started with Dempster as my Number Two, 1971 to 1973; Punch (for which I wrote a weekly gossip column), 1973 to 1975; Daily Mirror, Inside the World of Paul Callan, 1975 to 1982.

"That’s a total of 18 years at the coalface of gossip before turning to the relative purity of features and news colour."

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SALES continue to tumble at the Daily and Sunday Express, new circulation figures show.

The daily title suffered a 10 per cent drop and the Sunday fell by 11 per cent. 

Things were even worse at the Daily Star Sunday whose circulation dropped by a whopping 19 per cent.

The Guardian recorded the smallest year-on-year circulation decline among UK national newspapers in August for the second month in a row.

All national newsbrands are continuing to see print circulations fall, according to the latest ABC figures.

The Guardian recorded a year-on-year circulation drop of 5 per cent to an average of 128,265 copies in August.

The biggest year-on-year decline after the Daily Star Sunday was the Sunday People at 18 per cent.

The Sun remains the best-selling national newspaper with an average circulation of 1.3million in August, despite a 12 per cent drop.

The Daily Mail is close behind on 1.2million and has set new retail market share records for its weekday, Saturday and Sunday editions.

Daily Mail editor Geordie Greig said: “We’re delighted by these record results for Mail newspapers, which are an endorsement from our loyal readers that they value our commitment to quality journalism, through our exclusives, compelling campaigns, and the best-read columnists.

“The Daily Mail on a Saturday is the best-selling newspaper in Britain and every day of the week we have the most read supplements and lifestyle sections. We will continue to invest in journalism that positively reflects the country we live in.”

The Saturday edition of the Daily Mail has a bigger average circulation than the Sun by about 142,662 copies.

The free Metro has the largest circulation of any UK newspaper at 1.4million.

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Unique genius of  Cold War Steve 

DRONETUBE
THE RELUCTANT EDITOR

GARY JONES has brought decency back to the Daily Express by banning anti-migrant and anti-Muslim stories and ending the paper’s obession with dodgy weather stories.

But is this former Mirrorman the right person to be editing the paper? A lifetime Labour voter, Jones appears uncomfortable in the role in this 45-minute interview with Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy

                                   __________

BANGED OUT OF ORDER

                        ___________
COST-CUTTER MONTY ON THE MARCH AGAIN
Rommel is back and aiming for a blitz on our jobs

His name was Hawkey, Raymond Hawkey and he had designs on Bond and the Daily Express ...

RESEARCH by the Daily Drone has unearthed one of the forgotten stars of the Daily Express from the 1950s and 60s.

That man was Raymond Hawkey, design director of the paper from 1959 to 1964, who later designed acclaimed book jackets for Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels and Len Deighton’s thrillers.

Clive Irving wrote in The Guardian after Hawkey’s death aged 80 in 2010: "I was features editor of the Daily Express when Raymond Hawkey arrived at the paper, which was then at the height of its success in the late 1950s.

"It is hard to convey to those who work in the relatively sanitised newsrooms of the digital age the bawdy zoo that was the editorial floor of the Express. 

"Banks of cut-and-paste subeditors yelled commands to the copy runners, a single backbench of senior editors shouted at the subeditors, muscular reporters bargained for column inches, and in a far corner of the black glass building was a bear pit of competing claims for the severely rationed space in the ‘soft’ end of the paper.

"In this Fleet Street madhouse Hawkey, who was always impeccably barbered, confronted visual barbarians. His title of design director seemed optimistic, since there was a rigid template of typography and page layouts, imposed from on high, that nobody had the power to circumvent. 

"But Hawkey chose to work in discrete elements, combining feature headlines and simple, strong images in bold panels.

"His style, which later came to full expression in his wonderful book jackets, was the first and one of the most consequential if furtive steps in the long and too-slow advance of newspaper design that eventually culminated in the transformation of The Guardian in the late 1980s."

Hawkey was design director of the Daily Express from 1959 before he was appointed presentation director of The Observer in 1964 where he led the design of its colour magazine. He died in 2010 aged 80.

In 1962, Hawkey was chosen by Len Deighton to design the cover of his first novel The IPCRESS File, which some regard as the template for the covers of all subsequent airport novels. He went on to design covers for Deighton's books, including Horse Under Water, Funeral in Berlin and The Action Cookbook (where the IPCRESS revolver reappears, this time with a sprig of parsley in the barrel).

Hawkey designed covers for works by many other authors, including the Pan paperback editions of James Bond published from 1963-1969, which the Financial Times described as having "a stark elegance ... consistently menacing and memorable. Each has a single photographic image on a plain or textured background. Blurb is dispensed with. It's the visual equivalent of a cruel, sardonic smile.” 

A key element was Hawkey's bold use of lettering — the sans-serif James Bond wording is far larger than the book title or the author's name. 

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WHO COULD THAT BE WITH OUR ALF?

Sunday Express legend Alf Lee was just strolling through Henley Regatta in his best bib and tucker when who should he bump into than our former Prime Minister Theresa May.

The pair exchanged a few friendly words before ambling off in different directions.

Jeremy Gates suggests a caption competition and offers: Alf Lee to Theresa May: “You might think you had a tough time, but I had to work for both Eve Pollard AND Charles Golding!”

Can you do better? Send a stamped, addressed envelope to dailydrone@mail.com

It would be no exaggeration to say that the Drone has not been inundated with entries for the caption competition. That dolt Muldoon did submit an entry but addressed it to himself and failed to include it in the envelope — which he sent without a stamp — Ed

UPDATE: An entry at last. This from RICK McNEILL: “It’s all right officer, I found her wandering around the champagne tent. I think she’s become separated from her party.”

The crisp oncer (it’s on an elastic band attached to Lord Drone’s wallet) goes to Rick.

EXCLUSIVE
HOLIDAY RELIEF NEEDED TO EDIT
MAIL ON SUNDAY

IS there any body out there who would like to edit the Mail on Sunday?

We only ask because the Drone’s mole in Derry Street reports that My Lord Northcliffe is struggling to find holiday cover for editor Ted Verity.

Verity is off on vacation shortly and they have had to haul Eric 'Mr Nice Guy' Bailey out of retirement to sit in the editor's chair because nobody else will do it.

Tobyn Andreae, the smooth-talking Old Etonian deputy editor, dislikes Verity and was given six months to go off and revamp Mail Plus. 

When the six months were up he refused to go back and is being found work elsewhere.  Another Daily Mail executive on secondment to the MoS has likewise refused to stay on, leaving Verity to fend for himself.

The Trump cables leak story, written by cub reporter Steven Edginton, which resulted in the resignation of the UK’s ambassador to the US, is either going to result in Verity getting the Scoop of the Year award, or possibly putting him in the dock.

Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, had a pop at the MoS on Twitter, which was most uncharacteristic, and surely where he leads other editors will follow in failing to support Verity.

Was it ever this bad at the Express? Definitely!

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Pattinson’s great moon scoop - and they didn’t even give him a byline

THE 50th anniversary of man’s landing on the moon was celebrated in July — and what better way to celebrate it than publishing this picture, described at the time as the Scoop of the Century.

Reporter Terry Pattinson showed ratlike cunning to secure the first pictures of the dark side of the moon for this great Daily Express front page, dating from 5 February, 1966.

Pattinson discovered that the Russians were using the same photographic technology as that used by newspapers, to send photos back from space. So he arranged for the Express to send the necessary machinery to the Jodrell Bank observatory from where the picture was snatched.

Terry has been dining out on the story ever since but he has been complaining on Facebook this week that he was not given a byline for his scoop. We think he has a point.

He said once that he would love it if his epitaph was ‘The Man Who Caught the Moon’. 

How the Express described that great lunar landing 50 years ago

The Cummings view

(Brought to you by the Grainy Pics Dept)

Thanks to Expressman Colin Simpson for these cartoons. Take a peek at afaranwide, the excellent Hong Kong-based travel website Colin runs with his wife Sue Brattle, HERE

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DRONETUBE

A day at the Daily Express in 1979

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BUTCHER'S HOOK-ALIKE
Putin raises the steaks

              SLAB OF MEAT                       MAD VLAD
WATCH out chums, those damned Russkies are everywhere you look, even in the butchery department of your local supermarket. That nice Mr Vladimir Putin seems to have his beady eyes on us. Don’t have nightmares!

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Um, just to let you know, it’s still a bit too long, could you cut from the end please love?

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Lunchtime O'Smooch

ON ME ‘EAD SON: Daily Mail diarist and former Expressman John McEntee receives some well-earned adulation from his son Paul after an expensive lunch at Ranald Macdonald Boisdale in London. 

Paul took this selfie outside Dirty Dicks although they hadn’t actually been in the pub. It just seemed like a good idea at the time. You know how it is after a good lunch ...

… and thank you for all the laughs, Mr Booker
THE Drone pays tribute today to Christopher Booker, first editor of Private Eye and the genius behind many of its jokes, who has died of cancer aged 81.

This cover of the magazine, dating from 1968 and featuring Enoch Powell at the height of the racism row that cost him his job in Ted Heath’s shadow cabinet, is acknowledged to be one of his best.

Booker founded the Eye with fellow Salopians Richard Ingrams and Willie Rushton in 1961. He was ousted by Ingrams two years later. 

Returning in 1965, he remained a permanent member of the magazine's collaborative joke-writing team with Ingrams, Barry Fantoni and current editor Ian Hislop.

Of his collaborative joke-writing, Booker said: "Over the years I have enjoyed some of the most hilariously pleasurable times I can remember in my life. Between us we have laughed our way through tens of thousands of joke items.”

The writer and critic Adam Mars-Jones regarded Booker as “near-barmy”, yet it was said without malice.

Times Obituary

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WE NAME THE GUILTY MEN

LOTS OF BOTTLE: Evening beers with the two Carols

Caricature of the Week

EXPRESS JOURNALISTS STAR IN THE GUARDIAN

THE work of two Daily Express journalists has been featured in The Guardian in a tribute to the illustrious past of the World’s Greatest Newspaper.

A fascinating collection of photographs taken by the celebrated photographer John Downing can be found HERE.

Reporter Kim Willsher visited the site of the Chernobyl disaster with Downing in 1986. Her eyewitness account is published HERE.

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SHOCK BBC OFFER
Don’t all rush, they’re only free for over-75s

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THE ETERNAL TRUTH

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EXPRESS CHIEF'S EXTRAORDINARY HOME MOVIE
Beaverbrook as you’ve never seen him before

THE Drone has uncovered an extraordinary home movie featuring Daily Express proprietor Lord Beaverbrook and the novelist H G Wells.

The silent film, filmed in 1924 at the peer’s home Cherkley, near Leatherhead, Surrey, takes the form of an amateur black comedy and also features the writer and feminist Rebecca West, who had a long affair with Wells and later reportedly with Beaverbrook. 

Beaverbrook, who died in 1964 and widowed in 1927, is pictured above wearing a top hat with some of the cast.

The film is fascinating also as a social document, revealing the mores of the time which are considered very politically incorrect today. 

You have been warned!

The film, entitled They Forgot to Read the Directions, runs for 20 minutes and there is no sound. 

Watch it here

POT, KETTLE? Former Daily Express news editor Mike ‘Porky’ Parry reveals his version of chivalry on Channel 5’s Jeremy Vine Show

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How newspapers work 

Before last weekend, the last time that Liverpool won the Champions League was in 2005, reports POPBITCH.

A small group of reporters managed to cadge their way on to one of the club buses as it paraded around the city. While on the bus, one tabloid hack took a call from his editor who needed to know the size of the crowd cheering on the team.

Having no real idea, he blurted out "750,000" – and then suggested to all the other reporters that if they all just agreed to stick to that figure, they'd all be OK for the day. So they did.

The story came to mind last Sunday when the city of Liverpool was celebrating again. And how many people did the press think were out on the street?

Yep, you guessed it.

TWO talented stalwarts of the Daily Express in Manchester, Stan Welsh and Peggie Robinson, have died within days of each other.

Stan, famed copytaster and all-round good guy, succumbed to pneumonia on Wednesday, May 15.

Peggie, a brilliant news reporter, died on May 4, aged 97.

Jim Collins, a former Express sub-editor and a good mate of Stan described him as "one of those true journalists who made up the Daily Express’s backbench team in Manchester for many years”. 

Stan had been suffering from bowel cancer but eventually succumbed to pneumonia while in hospital. There will be an inquest.

His former wife Rita Welsh said it was a peaceful death in the Northern General Hospital, Sheffield.

Another friend, Mike Hughes, said: "Stan, who was in his early 80s, joined the Express in the late Sixties and soon became copytaster. 

"He stayed at the Express until production switched to London. He was also a Sunday Express regular.

"He had been active until recently, still going for a beer with former Express and Star colleagues living in Sheffield, including Peggie Robinson.

“Stan made his way to the Express, after National Service as a gunner and working for papers in East Anglia and Sheffield.”

Peggie, a highly-respected mountaineer and yachtswoman, was one of the few women reporters operating after the war and covered the Yorkshire Ripper case and the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

A Tynesider, she died in a care home in Sheffield after a long illness.

Two lost legends of journalism, by RICHARD DISMORE

Shields Gazette tribute

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EVEN BEEN FOXED BY A NICKNAME?

How editor McColl came to be known as Basil Brush (possibly)

               MR BRUSH                             MR McCOLL
Former Express and Mirror man TERRY PATTINSON has entertained his friends on Facebook with two great anecdotes about the Daily Express

I was once delegated to escort Tory Minister Norman Tebbit around the Daily Express building in Fleet Street.

Editor Ian McColl, not long out of Scotland, insisted on joining me although I knew the building like the back of my hand.

After showing Tebbit around the newsoom, picture desk, and fashion department, I decided to take him to the features writers' room.

As we walked down a long corridor McColl suddenly stopped and said to Tebbit: "This is the features department, accommodating the best writers in Fleet Street."


With a grand flourish he threw open the door.
 Out fell buckets, brushes and mops. It was a store cupboard.


McColl apologised and Tebbit said he had to 'get back to the House of Commons.'


I escorted Tebbit to his chauffeur-driven limo, parked outside the Express office.
 As he got into the car Tebbit said to me: "Why don't you Express chaps drink more lemonade?"


Private Eye loved the anecdote.
 After that McColl was dubbed 'Basil Brush.”

*But there’s no denying that McColl (my first DX editor) did look like Basil Brush — Ed

*****
True story. Freelance journalist Frederick Forsyth ventured into Fleet Street in the late 60s when he was 31 years old and tried to persuade the legendary Chapman Pincher (Daily Express) to look at his manuscript for a new book.

Pincher had asked his faithful secretary, Yolande, to get rid of the 'nutter' from the front hall (as we used to call people who dropped in without an appointment. Most were time-wasting nutters).

Instead, Yolande took Forsyth upstairs to meet the great man and made a pot of tea.
 Pincher was busy with his latest blockbuster exclusive and was as polite as possible before throwing the hungry freelance back on to the street.


Pincher felt sorry for Forsyth because, said Pincher, the proposed book had no chance of success.
 The book? The Day of the Jackal.
 The rest, as they say, is history.


Pincher revealed this anecdote in his autobiography published four years ago.

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The Day I had breakfast with Doris Day (sort of)

ROBIN McGIBBON remembers a chance meeting with  Hollywood superstar Doris Day, who has died aged 97.

In the mid-Seventies, when I was publishing books, I had breakfast with Doris Day, in the famous Beverly Hills restaurant, Nate 'n' Al's.

Well, not quite.

I was in a booth with a minor Hollywood film producer, Murray Silverman, when Doris came in, with a gentleman I didn't recognise, and sat in an adjoining booth, only a couple of feet away. 

My producer pal, who was not known for his shyness, immediately asked the actress if she would mind if he introduced me, "a famous publisher from London, England”.

In those days, I wasn't shy in coming forward either and did my best to live up to Murray's hyperbolic billing. Far from being irked that she'd been hijacked, with no escape, the enchanting Miss Day was charm itself — politely asking me about myself and my company for, at least, a quarter of an hour — before her (very tolerant) companion looked, again, at his watch and said they really must order.

Over the years, I've rarely missed an opportunity to boast of the morning I had breakfast with the legend that was Doris Day.

Well, I did. Didn't I? 

And look who met her too!

DRONE OPINION

WHY HAS THE DAILY MAIL HIRED THIS CARTOONIST?

WHAT is the point of the Daily Mail’s new cartoonist Paul Thomas? His drawings are just not funny, in fact they are embarassingly bad. Every day.

Thomas was hired to replace the brilliant Mac, Stan McMurtry, who retired last December. 

Yesterday he plumbed new depths by drawing a cartoon, pictured above, which not only isn’t funny but doesn’t make sense.

Does anyone get the ‘joke'? The Drone can’t explain it.

The editor should have taken Mr Thomas aside and whispered in his ear: “Could you have another think, old man?”

For that matter, the Mail On Sunday cartoonist Michael Heath isn’t much better either.

It’s a sad state of affairs when newspapers lose their sense of humour.

*An observant reader points out that the cartoon has a headline to which the answer is No.

Muldoon’s Lookalike

                  McENTEE                                BRADY
One is perceived to be playing a pivotal role in the future of this country with his subtle, sotto voce, behind the scenes advice and guidance; the other is the chairman of the 1922 Committee, a backbench group of Tory MPs. 

John McEntee and Sir Graham Brady may share the role of influential power brokers but they actually look alike as well.

Former Expressman McEntee, a leprechaun-like wit, bon vivant and World’s Greatest Lunch Club favourite, has just taken over the Daily Mail’s Ephraim Hardcastle column where he excels at writing short, witty and incisive observations of the events of the day (taking the pith, perhaps).

Sir Graham, a former PR consultant who edits the parliamentary magazine The House, has a genuinely important Brexit deadlock task in persuading the Prime Minister to “stop making a tit of yourself and piss off.” 

Isn’t life (and Muldoon) grand? — as McEntee’s guide and mentor Peter McKay was wont to proclaim.

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FREDDIE’S STAR QUALITY

 WE on the Drone are not particular fans of the comedian Freddie Starr, who has died aged 76. But this recording of him trying to mime to a broken tape shows him at his best.

Expressman ROBIN McGIBBON met Starr in the 1980s when he took the spiritualist Doris Stokes to the comic's Berkshire home for a Sun story about him giving the medium a horse.

Robin reports: "A Sun photographer had already arrived and Freddie nodded towards the kitchen, saying: 'Yer mate's in here — having a wank,' then ushered Doris through to his lounge  where they stayed, chatting, until Freddie was ready for photos, 40 minutes later. 

"The photographer and I weren't even offered a cup of tea. A funny man? Certainly. But coarse, rude and obnoxious, too.

"I went back to Bouverie Street with the snapper and typed the story in the Sun newsroom before trotting over to the Express for my afternoon subbing shift.

"Oh, happy days!”

THERE was dancing in the streets of Britain last night as Harry and Meghan announced the name of their newborn son. 

He will be known as Archie Harrison Tarquin Fin-Tim-Lin-Bin-Whin-Bim-Lim-Bus-Stop-F’tang-F’tang-Olé Biscuitbarrel Mountbatten-Windsor. 

The long-awaited announcement broke some of the secrecy surrounding the royal birth.

This is not the first time there has been a clandestine element to the birth of a Royal baby, as former Fleet Street reporter FRANK BALDWIN found out when he door-stepped the Lindo Wing for the birth of Princess Anne’s first baby Peter in 1977.

A boot up the Lindo Wing

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Team who helped make the Daily Mirror great

THERE are some well-known Fleet Street faces in this picture of Mirrormen at the wedding of Tony Hatton in around 1971.

Sadly only four of them are still alive.

Pictured from left are: Alex Collinson, Phil Walker, Ted Graham (back), Ben Noble, Tony Hatton, Phil Bunton (back), Ron Pell, Vernon Rowe and Chris Evenden. 

So far as we know, the survivors are Alex Collinson (who supplied this picture), Ted Graham, Phil Bunton and Vernon Rowe.

Alex was with the Mirror from 1971 to 1988, starting as a news sub and graduating to production editor and group systems trainer. He later joined the Mail on Sunday finance section where he worked from 1993 to 2006.

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ALL OUR YESTERDAYS

New King rises out of a crisis

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DAILY EXPRESS EDITOR CONFESSES

I TOOK COMMAND OF BRUTAL PAPER WITH
TORTURED HISTORY..
AND I COULDN’T SLEEP

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Retirement from the Daily Mail is music to the Ashworths' ears

WHAT  do two respected Daily Mail sub-editors do after being forced into retirement by that nice Mr Dacre? They get a life by creating a website full of nostalgia and great music.

Alan and Margaret Ashworth now devote their time to A & M Records, an online compilation of everything they love from Beethoven to Beefheart.

There are also clips from the old BBC radio shows like Take It From Here, Have a Go and The Brains Trust. There is even a Dog Track of the Week by Bingo Reginald Ashworth, the couple’s working cocker spaniel.

Alan told the Drone: "We now help out with the website The Conservative Woman and both write regular columns for it — myself on rock and folk music, Margaret on hymns and old programmes from the BBC when it was good."

Alan, a former Assistant Night Editor, and Margaret, who was Splash Sub, have a combined service on the Mail of more than 70 years. They live in the Ribble Valley.

You can enjoy their website here

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Two Mikes fall out in vicious Twitter spat

EXPRESSMEN Mike Graham and Mike Parry, who formed a popular radio partnership on TalkSport, have fallen out big time.

The origin of the dispute, which broke out on Twitter, is unclear but seems to be centred on comments in Mike Graham’s book On the Road which is due to be released next Christmas.

Their radio partnership broke up when Graham moved to host his own show in the prime mid-morning slot on TalkSport’s sister station TalkRadio. The programme is in direct competition with another morning chat show hosted by Expressman James O’Brien on rival station LBC.

Parry, known as Porky, co-hosts a TalkSport show with Alan Brazil which he bills as Alan and the Porkmeister.

The two Mikes met while working on the Daily Express in London. Parry spent some time as a reporter before being appointed news editor.

A passage in Graham's book reads: 

"The problem for Mike Parry was that he wasn’t actually very bright. He was fifth in the pecking order in his own office. He was despised by every photographer he ever worked with and was universally known as a man who couldn’t be trusted.

"Aside from that his time in New York was uneventful. He broke no stories, he came up with no great features and in London he was treated as very much the junior.

"When he met me he became very chummy. He asked me to feed him all the news that I found out about for a very substantial fee that he could pay me for the Express.

"I liked him at first. It took me a while to work out that he was a complete bullshitter.”

Cynics have wondered whether the entire affair has been engineered to publicise Graham’s book. 

EDUCATING ARCHIE: According to Wikipedia, Mike Graham’s first name is actually Archibald but, of course, you can’t believe everything you read on the internet. 

The tweets below give a flavour of the spat.

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Fleet Street between the wars

George Davison Reid photographed this uniformed messenger boy crossing Fleet Street in London some time in the late 1920s and early 30s. Such boys often went on to become photographers or journalists themselves.

The picture looks west up the street towards the Law Courts and The Strand. The church is St Dunstan-in-the-West which has stood on Fleet Street for 180 years. Close by is the Bristol Times and Mirror building.

 Below is the scene today. 

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The Daily Express, best policy for a healthy life

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NEWS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

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Inside story of how Daily Star’s Page 3 models went tits up

Lord Drone is obliged to his gossip friends at POPBITCH for the following dispatch ...

The Daily Star's move from Richard Desmond's stable of smut to Trinity Mirror's more right-on empire has been a surprisingly seamless transition. 

But behind the scenes, at least one huge change has been made. Last week, topless models disappeared from the Star’s Page 3 – and they're not coming back.

The fact that the change was slipped out with zero fanfare suggests that management was hoping to get away with it without anyone noticing. However, when nobody actually did notice, it got them even more worried. 

Some of the Star's long-suffering staff fear that the reason there hasn't been a resulting media storm means that no-one's actually reading their paper any more.

Never fear, chaps! We saw what you did – and we're here to pay tribute to the end of a British institution and some of the stars that Page 3 produced.

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EXPRESS JOURNALIST FOUND HANGED AFTER   GRIM 17-HOUR SHIFT

Daily Mirror newsroom 1953

Even our elderly benefactor Lord Drone struggles to identify anyone in this view of the Mirror newsroom taken in Coronation year, 1953. 

The chap pictured centre in the bow tie looks very much like David Thompson, current Life President of the Association of Mirror Pensioners, but it isn’t him as he confirmed last night.

He said: "Doppleganger reporting. No, not me. But I was involved in the Coronation, reporting local events for the Mansfield Reporter and Sutton Ashfield Times and then starting National Service.” 

Revel Barker added: "I have a vague recollection that one of them (and I couldn't even guess which) was Joe Grizzard, who was on the back bench as a rising young star, perhaps even around that time.

"You need somebody to contact Hannen Swaffer — a committed spiritualist, he was still around then, and will still be online, somewhere. You could get him via Doris Stokes."

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Bottoms up Down Under

IT’S an unwritten law that when old Fleet Street hands get together they end up in the pub.

Expressman Roger Tavener and his old chum Allan Hall carried on this fine tradition when they met to discuss old times in Sydney’s Lord Nelson, allegedly Australia’s first pub.

Roger wrote on Facebook: “Very excellent to meet up with foreign correspondent and author Allan Hall in the Lord Nelson.

“After 35 years (we were kids) it ended as it must. He fell asleep on a ferry and had to be woken by a friendly deck hand.

“I fell asleep on a bus (what’s a bus?) and the driver woke me. Mr Uber got me home. A very lovely Fleet Street day in Oz.”

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Sucker for a chukka

A TRIBUTE TO HECTOR BREEZE IN THE TIMES

THE Times has paid tribute to Daily Express Pocket Cartoonist Hector Breeze in an obituary. 

Breeze, who died last December at the age of 90, was appointed by the Express in 1982 and was best known for his drawings featuring impoverished gentry with characteristic chinless faces and tiny dot eyes. 

Fellow cartoonist Ralph Steadman wrote in 1996 that Breeze's "clumsy bewildered characters restore my faith in the seriously daft”.

In 2004 Breeze was voted Pocket Cartoonist of the Year in the Cartoon Art Trust awards, but six months later he was sacked by the Daily Express.

Times Obituary

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Lament for the death of the gossip column

DAVID LISTER, a writer and columnist for The Independent, has written a masterly account of the slow demise of the Fleet Street diarist, including the death and resurrection of the William Hickey column in the Daily Express.

The rise and fall of the Fleet Street diarist

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A song to strike a chord with all long-suffering newspaper journalists

(CONTAINS SWEARING)

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LEVY’S GOLDEN FIFTY

Former Daily Express and Daily Mail star features writer Geoffrey Levy has celebrated 50 years of marriage with his wife Stephanie … and Alan Frame was invited to the Golden Wedding party of his old friend.

Levy’s golden day

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C’est Jim sur le TV

Your eyes do not deceive you, this is Sunday Express sub-editor Jim Humphries appearing on BBC Breakfast TV. 

Jim, who has lived in the Dordogne region of France for the past 15 years, was interviewed  about his attitudes to Brexit with a fellow villager in Corgnac-sur-L’Isle.

As you perceive from his expression he is not keen on it. Jim said he was worried about continuing to receive free health care after he had undergone three recent operations in France.

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Expressman David Laws gets full-page treatment

Long-serving Expressman David Laws is busily publicising his latest novel Brexit Day, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by the Bury Free Press in his native Suffolk.

The paper gave David the full-page treatment with an interview with writer Barbara Eeles.

The book, a thriller, involves an out-of-favour journalist who tracks down a group of spies intent on sabotaging Brexit — and an assassin who is stalking the Prime Minister.

It’s a cracking read and is available as an ebook or paperback on Amazon. BUY IT HERE

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SIR — Your organ rightly points out that the answer to any headline with a question mark at the end of it is invariably 'no’. 

Ernie Burrington, when night editor at the Mirror decades ago, would attest to the truth of this by citing the following  classic  example (from the Daily Herald, I believe): Is this the face of Christ in the sole of a cobbler's boot?

My question is: Is there an earlier or more absurd example?   Silly me. The question mark provides its own answer.

Yours etc

CONFUSED of Epsom

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Sir — I was intrigued to read in your mighty organ the reference to “the face of Christ on a cobbler’s boot.”

This may be an offshoot of a similar miraculous apparition which is indeed linked with the late, great Ernie Burrington, with whom I worked on both the Daily Herald and The People and who was mentioned in your item

Ernie was chief sub on the Herald when they published an astonishing picture showing the face of Christ in a patch of snow. This picture remained in the Odhams library and was occasionally exhumed to make appearances in The People when Ernie was deputy editor. It invariably produced a torrent of letters from readers who had spotted the face of our saviour in a variety of alternative settings including a pancake and a bar of soap.

Regards

PLAIN JOHN SMITH

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GREAT TIMES: The Observer has republished a fascinating piece about Fleet Street watering holes written at the time the paper left for new pastures in 1988. The picture shows the conviviality continuing despite a power cut.

READ IT HERE

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LOOKALIKE (DON’T HAVE NIGHTMARES)

VIZ

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CARTOON EXTRA

PUBLISHER Reach increased its revenue by more than £100million last year following its acquisition of Express Newspapers.

New figures showed income rose to £723.9million in 2018, with an adjusted profit before tax of £141.9million, both numbers up by 16 per cent year-on-year.

The company, formerly Trinity Mirror, also increased its cash pot for dealing with phone hacking cases by £12.5million last year.

It spent £9.6million of the more than £70million provision in 2018, with £13.6million remaining. The publisher has faced more than 100 civil claims for historical phone-hacking carried out on the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People.

Reach made an operating profit of £145.6million last year.

However, the company, which owns the Mirror, Express and Star titles plus the Sunday People, posted a pretax loss of £120million last year after writing down the value of its goodwill, publishing rights, titles and buildings, against a profit of £82million in 2017. Excluding the writedown, it made a profit of £141.9million.

According to its full-year accounts, the company is on track to deliver at least £20million of savings by 2020.

The company said it had made £3million in “synergy cost savings” in 2018 as it cut out duplication across the Express, Star and Mirror teams, with up to 70 national newspaper redundancies falling over the 12 months.

A further £20million in cuts was the result of “structural cost savings”.

Reach made up to 140 people redundant in its regional newsrooms in 2018 under its strategy of building separate print and digital regional teams, Press Gazette has reported.

The company’s net debt is at £40.8million, with a pension deficit of £348.6million.

In a statement alongside its accounts for the year, the company said: “Subject to there being no significant adverse implications arising from the UK’s exit from the European Union, we are confident that our strategy will enable continued progress to support profit and cash flow.”

Simon Fox, Reach chief executive, said: “I am pleased with the performance we have delivered in 2018 and encouraged by the stronger finish to the year.

“We have begun 2019 in a strong financial position with good momentum on the integration of Express and Star and with clear plans for digital growth.”

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FASHION stops for no man as former Express photographer Steve Wood has proved. 

Despite breaking an ankle, Steve grabbed a pair of crutches and struggled to the airport to catch his flight from London to Italy for Milan Fashion Week.

He was philosophical about his broken ankle, telling the Drone: “It has stopped me going skiing so it has saved me £300 a day. I would rather have been skiing but I broke it the day before I was due to go.”

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LUDGATE CIRCUS,1926

Hold tight to your hats chaps, there's a General Strike on

A BUS operated by an independent company passes through Ludgate Circus at the foot of Fleet Street, London, crammed with passengers during the General Strike on 4 May, 1926

The 15A bus route ran until 1987 when it was merged with the 15 which still runs down Fleet Street.

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Craig parties with Fleet Street royalty on his 70th

Just a few of Craig's editor pals: From left, Eve Pollard, Sir Nicholas Lloyd, Wendy Henry, Craig MacKenzie, his brother Kelvin, Judy McGuire and Piers Morgan  

By TONY BOULLEMIER

Tabloid royalty turned out in force for Craig MacKenzie's 70th birthday bash last Saturday.

Ex-editors and many others from across the newspaper spectrum descended on the party in Weybridge, Surrey.

Craig started as a sub on the Daily Express and went on to become deputy editor of the Daily and Sunday Express. He also edited titles for the Murdoch and Mirror groups.

He thanked guests who had made him welcome when he first arrived in Fleet Street.

Presenting him with a spoof Sun Page One, Piers Morgan paid tribute to his incredible loyalty. 

He said whenever he had problems, Craig would be in the trenches alongside him. 

Piers described him as "mad funny" and said he loved Craig's passion for life and work.

He added: "All the MacKenzies are like that. Everything at 100mph." 

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FOUND HIM YET? Look closely and you will see Terry Chinery hard at work on the Luton News back in the 1970s. Terry, first left, went on to greater things and became Night News Editor on the Daily Express. And yes, that dagger in the foreground is his, we are reliably informed.

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Help cheer up John Downing

THE many friends and colleagues of star photographer John Downing are being urged to rally round him today.

John has been diagnosed with incurable lung cancer, according to his wife, the pianist Anita D'Attellis.

She said John was ill over Christmas, culminating in an 

operation to remove liquid from his lung.

Anita added: "At the same time they took a biopsy, which sadly turned out rather bad news.  He has a particularly virulent cancer, which is incurable. He’s in good spirits considering, and full of gallows humour. 

"He's happy for you to mention it to any of his old colleagues, but would appreciate emails only, because he’s not up to taking phone calls at the moment."

John's great friend, Tom Smith, reported that the surgery John underwent last week at London Bridge Hospital will, in John’s own words, only "delay the inevitable a short time”.

He added: "Most of old-time Fleet Street and all of the London Welsh Choir have our fingers crossed. Please pass this on to all who knew him and worked with the 'best snapper of his time'.”

Understandably, John is not up to phone calls at the moment but Anita said you may contact him by email at jd@johndowning.co.uk

UPDATE

John writes in an email to friends:

The operation has gone well and will, I hope, extend my time a little longer.  In fact I feel pretty good. 

I am very lucky to have such a lovely wife Anita, who has been a true stalwart. I have had a great life full of excitement, fun and had the pleasure of befriending all of you.  Throw in a handful of tablets each day (the most important of which is the morphine I suspect) and how could I fail to feel good.  

In passing, watching two nurses trying to part me from my underpants whilst I was attached to tubes and wires would have had you in fits and would have made a great Jacques Tati film.

Well, must away and write a epitaph.

All the very best to you all, and thank you.

FORMER Daily Express news sub Robin McGibbon is justly proud of this Downing photograph of his wife Sue taken when she was aged 17.

Robin told the Drone : "In the early 70s, my wife, Sue, worked at the Daily Express, selling classified advertising. Her boss was John's wife, Jeanette, who felt it would make the girls' regular sales calls more personal if clients knew what they they looked like. 

"She primed John on each girls' personality and he chatted with each one — to relax them — before taking their photograph, which was stuck on compliments slips sent to prospective advertisers.

"The attached pic of Sue, aged 17, is displayed in our study, assuring that, for her, John will never be forgotten.”

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Legendary sports writer McIlvanney dies at 84

THE greatest sports writer of his generation, Hugh McIlvanney, has died at the age of 84.

McIlvanney spent most of his 60-year career with The Observer and The Sunday Times and worked briefly for the Daily Express.

He leaves a wife, Caroline, son Conn and daughter Elizabeth.

In 1996, McIlvanney was awarded the OBE, was given the Lifetime Achievement Award 2004 by The Scottish Press Awards, and is the only sports writer to be voted Journalist of the Year. 

McIlvanney was great friends with fellow Scotsman Bill Montgomery, a Daily Express news sub who was never reluctant to give someone a thump whether they deserved it or not. 

An Expressman who prefers to remain anonymous, recalls:

"I am reminded of the night I was chief sub and, for no reason, didn’t give Bill Monty a story. He thought he was getting the freeze. Later in the Press Club, Bill told me there was a call for me. Remember those phone booths in that dimly-lit hall?

"I went out and picked up the phone which was hanging off its hook. The line was dead. It was a set-up. 

"I felt the grip of  death on my throat. It was paranoid Monty, demanding to know who’d instructed me to give him the freeze. I couldn’t plead my innocence owing to asphyxiation.

"Just then Hugh McIlvanney appeared through the gloom. 'Need a hand there, Billy?' he said. 

"You don’t forget moments like that.”

PATRICK COLLINS, sports writer and friend of McIlvanney’s summed up the man, saying: "When his countless admirers speak of Hugh’s writing, they recall the rolling phrases, the astute insights, the dramatic sense of occasion. 

"But those who worked with him — and especially the heroic subs who placed paragraph marks on his copy — will tell of the tireless perfectionist, the man whose Sunday would be spoiled by a misplaced comma or a wayward colon.”

ALAN HILL, former Express Chief City Sub, writes: One of my former bosses, Roy Mackie, City Editor of the Daily Express for some years, was a good friend of Hugh McIlvanney’s. I spent many a convivial night in their company, usually in The Old Bell.

My friend Iain Murray, formerly of Daily Express features and The Observer, told a Hughie story some years ago. 

Hugh was becoming a wee bit stressed by someone in the pub. Seeing what was coming our good friend Bill Montgomery placed his hand on the back of Hugh’s neck. 

The squeeze on the McIlvanney neck was said to be tighter than a Scotsman’s grip on a tenner. And it was accompanied by Bill, saying in his warmest Glaswegian tones: “Now Hugh, we’ll nae be havin any of your nonsense tonight.”

Iain claims Hugh’s feet came off the floor.

Calm was restored. And as Roy Mackie said: “Strong drink was taken, and we all went home good friends.”

ROGER WATKINS: I was a features sub in Manchester in 1972 when a newly-appointed McIlvanney came into the office to write up a featuremin time for the first edition.  He was taciturn and uncommunicative and I recall thinking at the time that he did not seem happy to be on the World’s Greatest Newspaper and, especially, not to be camping in a branch office wrestling with a battered Olympia.

When his copy came I’d  like to say I subbed it with all the attention of a Cliff Barr or a Roy Povey but, to be honest, I didn’t sub it at all.

JIM DAVIES: The fully-deserved paeans of praise for the work of Hugh Mcilvanney prompted some fond memories of our time together.  When he — I thought inadvisably — came back to the Express in the early Seventies (he had been on the Scottish Daily Express earlier in his career), we were having a jar or six in The Old Bell.

I said the Express was a tightly-subbed paper which might fit ill with the lengths he had been accustomed to at The Observer.  "I decide what a piece is worth," he said with what, in anyone else would have sounded like rank pomposity.

I teased him.  "I doubt they have a type face small enough so what do they do?”  'They hang it in a strip below the page,' he said with a look that almost challenged anyone to disagree.

His return to the Beaverbrook fold was not a match made in heaven and did not last.  But happily it did not derail an illustrious career the like of which I doubt we will see again.

Hughie and I were both among the class of '34 who arrived in Fleet Street in the late 50s and early 60s and, sadly, we are a rapidly dwindling bunch.  But boy, did we have the best of it! 

1 DRONE EXCLUSIVE: My last meeting with Hugh

2 Guardian obituary 

 3 Donald Trelford’s terrific tribute in the Sunday Times

Hugh’s tribute to Pele last year

Hugh McIlvanney’s address to the Football Writers’ Association at The Savoy, London on 21 January, 2018 

SENIOR journalists at the Mail on Sunday are in despair after alleged blatant plagiarism at the paper.

The entire Page 3 of this week's edition of the MoS was apparently a straight lift of the Sunday Mirror’s splash about the woman who broke her wrist when her car was in collision with Prince Philip’s Land Rover.  

Our mole at Northcliffe House said staff had their heads in the hands over the incident and that the Sunday Mirror plans to bill MoS editor Ted Verity for the story.

An unconfirmed report claims that the woman who sold the tale to the Sunday Mirror went first to the Daily Mail and asked how much they would pay.

They gave a price which she agreed before being told: 'We'll call back you in the morning’. Exasperated, she took her story to  the Mirror who snapped her up.

Our informant told the Drone: ‘I seem to remember that in the old days it was always a case of 'grab the body and get it away.

'How times change.’

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THINGS are going from bad to worse at the Mail On Sunday with editor Ted Verity under pressure following the axing of star columnist Tina Weaver.

Weaver's removal was ordered by Lord Rothermere following revelations that she masterminded phone hacking at the Sunday Mirror while she was editor.

Verity is already facing a costly lawsuit for referring to the couple wrongly arrested for the Gatwick drones chaos as morons in a splash headline.  

Our informant at Northcliffe House says morale at the MoS is at rock-bottom because staff had been accustomed to the gentlemanly ways of former editor Geordie Greig. Under Verity they now find themselves back to the bad old days of Paul Dacre.

Weaver’s reported involvement in the phone-hacking scandal was revealed exclusively by the news website Byline.

A source told Byline: 'This is already being seen as a humiliation for Ted Verity and leaves a big question mark on his judgment. The decision to get rid of Weaver was made by the paper's top executives last Saturday.

'When they hired her, they knew there were some skeletons left over from her years at Mirror Group Newspapers. But until Byline's stories came out, they did not know the full extent of Weaver's involvement in the phone-hacking scandal. 

'It was abundantly obvious they had scored a big own goal. Reluctantly, but inevitably, they had to let her go.'

Read the report here

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Who’s still in the Q?

Dear Lord Drone,

I wonder how many of your digital followers worked on the old broadsheet DX in the late 60s and early 70s, when Douglas Orgill was Chief Sub?

Dougie was very stout and never ventured far from his chair. He could just about reach Ralph Mineards & Co on the middle bench to hand out copy.

But we lower mortals, on the distant benches, had to be summoned to receive our LP, Brev and Min instructions. 

As an ex-tank commander, Dougie liked to keep up morale with a joke or two. So when he issued an order, he interposed the initial Q in our names.

When, for example, he called out: “Anthony Q. Boullemier, approach the base of the podium,” a hum of merriment would go round the desks.

But how many of those in the Q are still with us?

Clearly Kelvin Q MacKenzie is. As is David Q Laws, Ian Q Bain, Laing Q Leith, Chris Q Chalke and Rick Q McNeill, although I believe Rick sat near enough to Dougie to be handed his copy.

But listing those who have departed this earth is sobering. Lloyd Q Turner, William Q Reynolds, Leslie Q Diver, Robert Q Kilby and William Q Montgomery to name just a few. 

How many others are still out there today?

If they’re readers of this mighty organ, perhaps we could be told?

Yours as ever,

Anthony Q Boullemier.

PS:  Dougie never did tell us what the Q was meant to stand for.

IAIN Q MURRAY may have the explanation.

He writes: I suspect that Dougie, whom I fondly recall from my brief spell in DX features, was enjoying a mischievous private joke.
Q was the pen name of Sir Arthur Quiller Couch (1863-1944), editor of the Oxford Book of English Prose and a series of Cambridge lectures published as On the Art of Writing.

He coined the writers’ maxim ‘murder your darlings’. 

“If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it— whole-heartedly — and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.”

It would have amused Dougie to see the subs as discerning assassins hired to butcher purple prose.

This from RICK Q McNEILL:

I recall Dougie Orgill also used occasionally to address lowly subs as Shufflebottom and Aloysius — as in “Anthony Aloysius Armstrong, your past has caught up with you!”

DOUGIE THE WAR HERO
By JIM Q DAVIES

When Dougie Orgill was brutally sacked as chief sub he found himself deposited in features where I lived.  I barely knew him but attempted to commiserate.  'Nonsense, dear boy,' he said.  ‘It's out of the kitchen and into the restaurant.'

That lovely piece of insouciance began a friendship which lasted for several memorable years until his early death at the age of 63.

Dougie was an expert in some pretty diverse fields from tank warfare to butterfly collecting, a constant source of entertaining stories and a joy to lunch with — especially in El Vino where he loved my embarrassment at being made to wear a tie, usually one of Geoffrey Van Hay's gravy-stained numbers.

During the advance through Italy in early 1944 Dougie's tank was knocked out by a German shell and his crew surrounded and told they would be shot.  Bravely, Dougie told the Panzers that they could shoot him as commander but that his men must be taken prisoner under the terms of the Geneva convention. 

Into this crisis charged  a German officer, ironically the same rank as Dougie, who ordered the German troops away and apologised saying his men had sustained days of aerial bombardment and were stressed out of their minds.

He explained that he had no facilities for taking prisoners and told Dougie and his men to stay by their stricken tank until the Allied advance caught up with them.  'This war will be over very soon,' he said by way of farewell.  

Dougie congratulated him on his perfect English and asked where he had learned it.  ‘Oxford,' said the German. 'Which college?" asked Dougie.  ‘Balliol,’ said Herr Maior. 'Me too,' said Dougie, upon which they exchanged names and addresses and promised to get in touch when the war was over.

Dougie fulfilled the promise only to find out that his generous combatant had been killed within days of their battlefield meeting.

I can't settle Tony Boullemier's query about Q any more than I could ever discover why he always called me Soulberry.

I am, though, proud to say that I was invited by his family to give the address at his funeral at St Bride's where, to his undoubted celestial amusement, I did not wear a tie!

Good to know there are still those of us around who remember this great man.  Best to everyone, Jim.

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CHAPMAN’S PARTING SHOT AS HE QUITS THE EXPRESS
Private Eye reports:

Veteran Daily Express hack John Chapman, who refers to himself as a “Fleet Street survivor” having stuck with the paper through its Desmond doldrums and on to the new Mirror-managed era, left last month with an old-school retirement party at El Vino.
He had an admirable valedictory message for his assembled colleagues: “I have witnessed the slow, sad decline of a once-great newspaper … but I was earning an old-style Fleet Street salary so I don’t give a fuck.”

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MARTIN HOLDS COURT

Sunday Express editor Martin Townsend, left,  holds a riverside conference with deputy editor Dick Dismore, right, and Andy Hoban at the Lower Thames Street offices in London some time in the mid-Noughties.

…. AND HERE’S ANOTHER