.
THE THINGS THEY SAY
For the unlearned, old age is winter; for the learned, it is the season of the harvest — Old Hasidic saying
TODAY’S PAPERS
CARTOON OF THE DAY
PETER BROOKES, The Times
If you’re going to make a cock-up
you might as well make it a big one
Is it a tart? No, it’s a fag ash and lager pie, says Ange
I’m not the milk snatcher says Bonkers, I hate skimmed
Our story last week that staff at The i Paper had pointed the finger at their Daily Mail colleague Peter Hitchens as their office milk-snatcher started off a whole cottage industry of milk-related guff from the DMG building.
Bonkers, as Hitch was known on the Express, filmed a video and wrote a column about how he couldn’t be the milk thief as he hates the skimmed stuff and only drinks full-fat (FYI: He must have got close enough to the bottle at some point, though, to know what kind of milk they have.)
The i responded with their own series of columns and videos defending their maligned choice of milk.
We have learned our lesson. There will be no more gossip on these pages about Peter Hitchens and the type of milk he does or does not choose to drink — particularly as he has recently taken the extra step of labelling his particular pint.
Incidentally, there was a sighting this week of him in the toilets at DMGT drying his hands individually under two adjacent hand dryers, “looking like the risen Christ”.
Source: Popbitch
STILL STANDING (JUST)
The World’s Greatest Lunch Club celebrates its 100th anniversary
JOY and jubilation came to Covent Garden as the World’s Greatest Lunch Club celebrated its 100th meeting. Sadly its numbers were diminished since the palmy days when eight (subs pse check) of us sat down for a glass or two of lunch.
Three members managed to stagger to the Boulevard Brasserie. Pictured above are, from left, Alastair Mcintyre, Alan Frame and Roger Watkins (Miss).
Languishing at home suffering from a variety of ailments were Dick Dismore (hernia), Terry Manners (bad leg) and Pat Pilton (knackered).
Absent friends who have passed to the Great Nosebag in the Sky include Craig Orr, Terry Evans, Ashley Walton and David Eliades.
Glasses were raised to their memory.
NEW TODAY
At least our beleagured prime minister did not have the brass neck to emulate the Black Knight in Monty Python as he raked over the dying embers of a cataclysmic electoral disaster. You will remember that this knight of the realm surveyed his severed arm but vouchsafed: ‘Tis but a scratch.’ This defeat has dire implications for a once great political party as we shall see. Yet Starmer vows he ‘will not walk away.’ Oh aye? We’ll be the judge of that, mutter disaffected MPs and union barons. Meanwhile, trust Starmer to resort to that tired old photo op and walk hand in hand with his wife on election day. It was difficult to work out who was frogmarching whom to the polls. He really is pathetic. One thing’s certain: the fragrant Lady V doesn’t deserve that humiliation.
Meanwhile, Andy Burnham’s confidence that he will find a ‘safe Labour seat’ to confront Sir K in the lists is greeted with amusement and more than a little scepticism in Westminster. Is there such a thing now? As Sean Walsh says in TCW Daily: ‘Bless him. I’d have wagered you’re more likely to find the elusive Moss Side Unicorn than a safe Labour seat. You have to suspect that whenever Andy is punched in the mouth, he still puts the tooth under the pillow and that he gets excited when Christmas is only 23 big sleeps away.’
VoteNote: As the great and good gather at the Royal Albert Hall to celebrate the 100th birthday of Britain’s most illustrious national treasure, the defeated Labour Party in Wales has been in power there since David Attenborough was a toddler. Congrats to the naturalist who must possess the most recognisable voice in the world. His TV series draw hundreds of millions of viewers. He has been knighted, won three Emmy Awards, and remains the only person to earn BAFTAs across black-and-white, colour, HD, 3D, and 4K formats. More than 50 species have been named in his honour, including a newly identified wasp: Attenboroughnculus tau.
If antisemitism in Britain is, as has been said, ‘the biggest national emergency since Covid‘, why are we so slow at tackling it? The Government still haven’t decided whether to permit more pro-Palestinian marches with their chants of ‘globalise the intifada’, points out Martin Ivens in Bloomberg. They are only now getting around to proscribing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, long after other European nations. And whereas Australia responded to antisemitic attacks Tehran reportedly directed by immediately expelling the Iranian ambassador in Canberra, Iran’s man in London, Seyed Ali Mousavi, is still living it large at 16 Princes Gate.
A pic posted on X of gorgeous, pouting, blonde, buxom, beautilicious Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni kneeling on a bed wearing only skimpy satin lingerie has Italy all agog and Reggie of the Drone Post Room in a right froth, I can tell you. It doesn’t emanate from some deep fake factory on the dark web, though. It was posted by gorgeous, pouting etc Meloni herself on her X account to illustrate the dangers of dodgy snaps which, she says, are 'dangerous and deceitful’. She made clear that the image was inauthentic: the words ‘Fake photo generated by AI’ are written in capital letters across it.
A young eccentric has declared himself ‘King of Switzerland’ and used a legal loophole to amass a territory of more than 110,000 square metres entirely for free. After discovering that Swiss law allows citizens to claim any land that is registered as ownerless, simply by writing to the local council, His Maj Jonas Lauwiner, 31, began systematically searching databases and claiming all the land he could find. Adam Sage in The Times says Lauwiner has held a coronation, created an Order of Merit, started a sovereign bank and set up a small military, consisting of an old amphibious tank and other decommissioned equipment.
We’re all familiar with the modern phenomenon of so-called grade inflation. But at Harvard it really is out of control, says Joshua Greene in The Atlantic. The final year undergrad with the highest grade receives the Sophia Freund Prize, and for decades this award went to one student, or sometimes two if there was a tie. In 2025, there was a 55-way tie – every one of these top students had perfect grades.
Validation, of a sort, for worthy but wordy so-called columnists everywhere. They must be hugging themselves at the news that this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction has been won by an author who, for reasons that haven’t been made adequately clear, has written a novel entirely in the form of a single 304-page sentence. Daniel Kraus’s World War One epic Angel Down has been hailed as a bold and daring new approach. Kraus, 50, has written 22 novels, some of which have been adapted for the screen. But, say Anastasia Tsioulcas and Neda Ulaby on NPR: ‘None until now, has inexplicably, and, possibly, rather pretentiously, done away with basic punctuation.’
The Iran emergency, blockaded shipping and soaring fuel prices have taken the world’s attention away from poor little Gaza. So how’s that going then? Not well, says John Haltiwanger in Foreign Policy. Key to the 20-point plan, which froze the conflict in October, is the disarmament of Hamas. But the terror group say they won’t disarm until Israel leaves the two-thirds of the coastal strip it now controls. The Israelis won’t do that until Hamas disarms to prevent them from simply re-taking control. Hamas fighters know that the minute they put down their weapons they will be killed, either by the Israelis or by their own rivals in Gaza. So don’t hold your breath.
Our note about arresting advertising/newspaper headlines prompts me to ask the Guide and Mentor whether he has actually written any. Not that he can remember. But on one paper he had a part in changing Residents Say New Station Tannoy Is Too Noisy to Pardon Me, Boy Is That The Chatter-Chatter Choo Choo? And at the News of the Screws, on a story about a dodgy salesman trying to pedal an aphrodisiac potion to young girls, there was Wicked Wooing Of The Wheatgerm Wonder Man. It was memorable in that it was approved by the chief sub, Monty Levy, who knew a bit about headlines. On April 26, 1970, the NoW carried Monty’s classic: Nudist Welfare Man’s Model Wife Fell For The Chinese Hypnotist From The Co-op Bacon Factory. It has been acclaimed as the best headline ever written.
Loved the story by Ed Halford in The Times about someone at a party who asked the father of Coldplay’s Chris Martin what his children did. ‘I’ve got one son who’s an international rock star,’ he replied, ‘and another who works in a bank.’ ‘Oh really?’ said the other chap. ‘Which bank?’
Anyone who has visited Mexico City won’t be surprised to learn that it is sinking by nearly 10 inches every year: it’s got to be all its 23 million inhabitants weighing it down. NASA, which reports the shift is so dramatic it’s visible from space, says the city has subsided more than 39 feet in less than a century. The conurbation was built on an ancient lake bed, and decades of intensive groundwater pumping to supply its growing number of residents have caused the underlying aquifer to collapse.
If you’re getting off a train at Okhotny Ryad station on the Moscow metro Red Line near the Kremlin and think you recognise the balding short-arse on the platform, it’s not going to be Vladimir Putin. He don’t get out much any more. The Russian president is terrified of assassination, says the FT. Even staff in his immediate circle – cooks, photographers, bodyguards and so on – have been barred from taking public transport and using phones around him. He and his family have stopped going to their residences around Moscow and elsewhere, and he largely manages his war on Ukraine from bunkers, with state media using recorded footage of him above ground to ‘project normality’.
Thank you to the Marvellous Ms Midgley in The Times for reminding us that, at a time when we ladies are apparently having more breast reduction and implant removal procedures, there is a relevant organisation called the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS).
Bosses at our old friends (Eh? — Ed) Reach plc have got to be joking. Well, would you pay £3.15 for your daily dose of the Cambridge News? This title from the Reach stable is just one of the dailies that have just seen a 20p price hike. Newsagents have been told that their percentage margins will be unchanged by the increases, says Press Gazette. Print circulation generated £288.4 million in revenues for Reach during 2025 according to the company’s annual results – down just 3.4 % on the previous year. Chief exec Piers North says ‘carefully planned cover price increases’ were off-setting circulation decline.
The BBC has commissioned a six-part factual drama on the career of Sir Harry Evans, says Press Gazette. Actor Matthew Rhys will play the former Sunday Times editor.
NMPKT: Less than 20% of the world’s population has ever taken a flight, according to Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg.
HeadlineOfTheWeek: Sex-crazed Nudists Are Running Wild And The Authorities Decline To Act — Telegraph.
NIBS
Italian 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)
ONLY IN THE DRONE
Our great columnists
Stand and Deliver
By Hermione Orliff
NEW
Remember when Green Party activists had hearty laughs, hairy legs and scarily short haircuts? And that was just the women. Decent schools, they seemed an awfully nice bunch of lacrosse stick cradlers. Didn’t mind that they never won any elections and were regarded as slightly eccentric rellies at a family wedding. That was then. Now, though, on the eve of what could be cataclysmic elections, the Greens are a vastly different proposition. Under their new leader, the boob whisperer Zack Polanski, they expect spectacular gains, especially at Labour’s expense. YouGov projects that they could match Labour in seat and vote share nationwide. But what then? Like Reform UK, the Greens have grown so fast they haven’t had time to weed out the weirdos and build a cohort of competent administrators. What’s going to happen when they start to run local councils? Andrew Gilligan in The Spectator says a shocking number of candidates have posted extremist content online without facing party censure. The resurgent Green Party claims it can prevent the rise of the Far Right. Trouble is, parts of the Greens ARE the Far Right. Watch this space.
Don’t tell Ed (Net Zero Between the Ears) Miliband but the harmful environmental impacts of large industrial wind facilities are becoming increasingly manifest. Forget, if you can, disruption to the landscape, massive bird and bat kills, the shedding of tons of composite materials from blade-edge erosion, ocean disruptions, the toxins released in mining for rare earths and the mountains of waste generated. Now, says H. Sterling Burnett in Climate Change Weekly, the harvesting of balsa wood, a near-perfect material in the construction of wind turbines, is leading to deforestation of parts of the Amazon rain forest impacting the ecosystem and biodiversity. Still, we’re on the right track though, aren’t we?
Advertising copy writers are just like subs: they have to convey a thought in a few simple words. I once knew a newspaper hack given an impossible three-line headline count, in caps, for a report of West Ham winning 2-0. His WHAM WHAM W.HAM was a triumph. In advertising, Dig For Victory, Guinness Is Good For You and Drinka Pinta Milka Day are legendary. Author Fay Weldon is famous for Go To Work On An Egg when she worked for Ogilvy&Mather. Fleet Street subs will relish that it wasn’t even her line: she lifted it from the body of copy and made it the head. Mind you, another Weldon special, Vodka Gets You Drunker Quicker, was considered inappropriate. Other famous lines often came from second thoughts. Hi, Heineken! morphed, famously, into Heineken Refreshes The Parts That Other Beers Cannot Reach. And a pallid line for an Air Canada ad, Come To Canada, was triumphantly transformed into Ever Said Boo To A Caribou? Nice one.
Evidence of The Blob in action. Back in September, the Cabinet Office mandated that staff networking during working hours should be curtailed, with all of it needing ministerial sign-off. That’s that then. Er, no. Civil servants are ignoring the edict and are still hosting events such as a ‘fireside chat for LGBT history month’, ‘allyship for beginners’ and ‘why diversity matters’ in the middle of the day, says The Taxpayers’ Alliance. Worst offenders? The Department of Health and Social Care whose staff have attended 24 events, totalling almost 500 hours, since the new rules came in.
Fresh from hosting Charles and Camilla, Trump is preparing for a major trip to China. These jaunts are rarely easy: paranoia and suspicion abound. Example: When Xi Jinping visited the US in 2023, he had a nice lunch of herbed ricotta ravioli in San Francisco. No sooner had he finished, recalls Lingling Wei in The Wall Street Journal, than his security team seized his plate and cutlery and sprayed them with an unidentified substance to prevent any trace of the Chinese leader’s DNA falling into foreign hands. On Trump’s first visit to Beijing in 2017, his security got into a fist fight with Xi’s men in a corridor of the Great Hall of the People while the leaders were meeting inside.
A British warship, which recently had a five-year refit costing the taxpayer £103 million, has been withdrawn from service. Iron Duke, a Type 23 frigate, has reportedly been stripped of its weapons and sensors. It has not been to sea since October. This leaves the Royal Navy with only five active frigates at a time when Russia is increasing hits presence in British waters. The refit, which ended in 2023, was intended to extend Iron Duke’s active service until 2028.
The hunt for young tech talent gathers pace in the States. Forget university. Silicon Valley investors ruthlessly pursue the teenagers with the most potential from the day they set foot on campus. They hand out mentorships, hard cash, and invitations to yacht parties and lavish dinners. Once you’re in, things move quickly. Three days after one Stanford student briefly chatted with an exec from a $150 billion company, he was having coffee with the CEO and being offered a minimum $600,000 salary if he dropped out.
Hand-wringing health and safety zealots have banned a volunteer from cleaning gravestones. Ben McGregor, 25, washes the headstones at Hebburn Cemetery, South Tyneside, with only soap, water and a bristle brush. But the Labour South Tyneside council has ruled that it was ‘inappropriate’ for him to continue because ‘safety checks have not taken place’. However, Mr McGregor, who has cleaned more than 20 graves so far, says he does not intend to stop because of the gratitude expressed by those he has helped.
Apropos the above, council jobsworths in Surrey have ordered Sir Brian May to stop planting daffodils on the village green in Elstead, because they say Wordsworth’s favourites ‘cause a safety risk by blocking the sight-line of traffic’. As the Queen guitarist told the Farnham Herald, it’s hard to see how daffs could obstruct anyone’s view when the green is generally surrounded by parked vehicles, ‘including a 7ft-high ice cream van’.
The end of the world is nigh (or nigher, at least). Gloomy boffins have produced a study showing that the universe may end trillions of years sooner than expected. Spanish astronomers say the cosmos is already 41% through its lifespan and will eventually collapse in an implosion called the ‘Big Crunch’. Don’t cancel your holiday though, it won’t happen for another 19.5 billion years.
Amazon in America is reportedly discussing relaunching The Apprentice, the reality TV show which first propelled the 45th and 47th President of the United States to national fame. But, assuming Donald Trump would be too busy, somehow, to take the helm, executives have discussed casting someone very close to him as the host: his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr. Discussions are still in the early stages and the Trump family haven’t been approached, nor have they commented.
More tales of grace under fire emerge from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting. We’ve already told of talent agent Michael Glantz refusing to be disturbed from his burrata salad. Another who kept calm and carried on was former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, also totally unfazed. Mind you, a colleague points out: ‘Lloyd’s good in a crisis. And if there isn’t one he’ll cause it.’
Don’t all rush now but a 70,000 sq ft mega-mansion has just gone on the market in California. ‘It’s basically Bel Air’s answer to Versailles,’ says Country Life. It comprises three buildings on eight acres of almost completely flat land – a rarity in the LA hills – and has 39 bedrooms and 50 bathrooms (albeit many of them for staff). Facilities include a cinema, beauty salon, spa, pilates studio, pizza oven, eight butlers’ pantries, garaging for 25 cars and, just in case, an X-ray room. Bel Air Country Club is nearby. Price? $400 million to you, squire.
HeadlineOfTheWeek: Brit, 50, Becomes First Person To Pull 2-Tonne Car With His Penis While On Fire…Weeks After Towing Motor With Testicles — Sun.
NMPKT: The number of homeschooled children in the States has nearly doubled since 2019. More than five million are learning at home.
TheThingsTheySay: ‘It’s not much fun on the soaraway Sun but it’s even less at the Daily Depress’. — Graffito at No.120 Fleet Street in the eighties.
ThisSportingLife: A military medal collection belonging to former England and Gloucestershire wicket keeper Jack Russell has sold for £74,000 at auction.
It’sOnlyMoney: Guess what’s costing taxpayers almost £630million a year. You’ve got it: putting up the foreign criminals housed in Britain's jails, according to GB News. Around one in eight of the total prison population is a foreign national offender. Out of the 87,342 prisoners across England and Wales, some 10,487 are foreign. The cost of locking them up could pay for around 16,500 police officers or approximately 15,000 NHS nurses.
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)
Bonkers is nicking your milk? Pull the udder one
Hitchens prowls rival newsroom
ALTHOUGH the Daily Mail building is a mega operation, behind the front door the publications remain resolutely separate. Each paper sticks to its own floor, each section to its own desk.
Which makes it all the stranger that The i Paper has recently spotted an interloper in their midst.
Peter Hitchens.
Hitch has apparently been sneaking into The i’s kitchenette, where he’s been spotted drinking milk from their massive communal bottle.
On his most recent expedition he was even ‘caught’ by someone, but simply carried on as normal. Peter’s slow walks back and forth through The i offices are nothing new, but staffers there say it’s the milk thievery that’s one step too far.
One said: “He’s moved from suspected to confirmed milk pervert.”
Editor’s note: Peter was known as ‘Bonkers’ when he worked on the Daily Express, I mention this only to make the headline work. A headline, like a good joke, is often improved by an explanation. That’s what I always say.
Source: Popbitch
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.”
Will the last sub-editor to leave the building kindly turn off the lights?
(Too late, they’ve all been sacked)
HERE is evidence that stories are being subbed by robots.
The caption on this pic of actor Johnny Briggs lying on the cobbles of Coronation Street reads: "An individual dressed in a dark suit and a blue shirt is seated on a cobblestone street, smiling and leaning back with his arms crossed.”
That is a classic example of Artificial Intelligence scanning a pic and writing what it saw. A human being was not required.
Terry Manners, who spotted this error on the MSN.com website, told the Drone: “This is the picture of former Coronation Street star Johnny Briggs this morning showing him in a clip from the series looking utterly distressed. But the caption has him smiling would you believe. The pic went with a story about Johnny suffering illness and leaving the show but the sub thinks he is just a bloke in a suit sitting on the cobbles and smiling. Ughh!”
Point of order, M’lud: Johnny Briggs died five years ago.
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.
EXCLUSIVE
John Osborne hated gossip writers but the play he wrote lampooning them was an embarrassing failure
John Osborne was one of our most successful playwrights but he hated gossip columnists such as William Hickey with a vengeance. So he wrote a play attacking them. Former William Hickey editor CHRISTOPHER WILSON, writing exclusively for the Drone, said the battle came to a head on 5 May 1959, the opening night of The World of Paul Slickey, the much awaited follow-up to Osborne's blockbusters Look Back in Anger and The Entertainer.
The play didn’t go well. The audience booed and actress Adrienne Corri, raced downstage throwing V-signs at them and shouting "Go fuck yourselves!"
Among those booing loudest was Noël Coward, who later wrote in his diary, “Never in all my theatrical experience have I seen anything so appalling — appalling from every point of view!”
Farewell to the Great Eliades
CHEERS DAVID: Raising a glass to David Eliades are, from left, Kim Willsher, Alan Frame, Geoff Levy, Gill Martin and Chris Williams
By ALAN FRAME
Before David Eliades joined the Daily Express in 1963 he worked briefly one floor up on the SX. Until, that is, the ghastly old lecher John Junor called him in and said: ”I’m afraid we shall be parting ways” to which David replied: “Sorry to hear that, where are you going?”
That was one of the many stories told when friends of the great man celebrated the 92 years of his life in the St Bride’s Glee Club, more formally known as the Humble Grape wine bar at the rear of Fleet Street’s parish church.
The event was hosted by David’s widow Lamar, pictured, who had travelled from Lugano with her daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren who took in their stride the sight of old hacks drinking vast quantities of fine wine.
Kim Willsher arrived straight from the Eurostar that had brought her from home in Paris. She told of David persuading Nick Lloyd to splash on the news of the Chernobyl disaster (we led the way on the appalling effects of the fallout which lasted for decades) and ensured that she had a well-deserved pop at Nick in the process.
One of David’s great gifts was in encouraging young female reporters, in spectacular contrast to the likes of Mike Parry, and it was no surprise that so many of them were there to raise a glass to him; Liz Gill, Gill Martin, Melanie Whitehouse, Gill Swain and Jo Gourlay. Louise Court would have been there had she not just lost her father Monty, former news editor of the Mail and editor of Racing Post.
Sadly David Richardson wasn’t well enough to make it from Languedoc but his daughter Lucy dashed down from her job in the City to read a message from the old boy.
Two distinguished former Express defence corrs were there, John Ingham and Michael Evans who excused himself after a mere three hours to write a piece for The Times.. Chris Williams came down from Glasgow, the indomitable Kate Hadley from Cambridgeshire, as had Esther Harrod, and David’s goddaughter Emma Freemantle from Herefordshire. Somehow I made the seven miles from Gipsy Hill and David Wigg the three from the King’s Road.
It was a great show of the affection we all had for David; Sue Peart, Maureen Paton, Caroline Hendrie, John Burns, Jeremy Gates and Geoff Levy all shared their memories and if I hadn’t ended up in the Bell with Williams, Willsher and Ingham I might well be able to recount them.
Thank you Lamar, and most of all thank you David. You were a star!
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'.”
Peter ‘PJ’ Wilson dies at 87
Another well-known Fleet Street name, Peter ‘PJ’ WILSON, former news editor of the Daily and Sunday Mirror, died on March 18, aged 87.
He joined the Daily Mirror as a reporter in 1966 and left in 1987, weary of working for the then proprietor Robert Maxwell.
PJ’s friend and colleague Peter Miller wrote on the Mirror Pensioners website: ‘Three things made PJ an exceptional journalist: He could spot the potential in a story, then get the story, often against the odds, and finally write it so fluently that the sub-editors invariably ticked it through. Those rare talents made him a brilliant reporter and an inspiring news editor.’
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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)
APRIL FOOL’S COCKUP
A dwarf at reception asking to see the Editor? Pull the other one say Mail
staff (exit a disgruntled Warwick Davis)
Actor Warwick Davis found himself unexpectedly in the tabloids last week as he was spotted out with a new girlfriend following his wife’s death a year ago, writes Popbitch.
Davis was apparently unhappy about the coverage, so he rocked up at reception at the Daily Mail on April 1st, asking to see the editor.
Reception dutifully called up to the paper, whispering that there was a famous dwarf at reception demanding to talk to the editor about a story.
The journalists upstairs rolled their eyes, told them something like “yep, great April Fool”. So no-one took any notice of the request.
After about another 15 minutes with no attention, Davis got back into his car and left, headed towards the US Embassy, where he was spotted attending an appointment shortly after.
Who the hell is that man gatecrashing our quiet lunch? McEntee? Nuff said
MAIL diarist John McEntee really put his foot in it when he arrived late at a lunch to celebrate his cousin Catherine’s 50th wedding anniversary with husband Mick.
So when he saw all the guests sitting at dining tables he wasted no time in addressing the assembled company.
But there was a hitch as the former William Hickey editor admitted.
He said: “l arrived late and all were seated including the happy couple their children Gareth and Andrew and two grandchildren plus childhood friend Majella Sullivan and her husband Nick. The upstairs room was chocka block with about 60 covers.
“Before the food was served and without Catherine I dashed to the front of the room banged a wine bottle with a spoon and called for silence.
“Addressing the throng I described growing up in Cavan with my cousin and how wonderful it was to be here with her family and friends marking her splendid milestone with Mick.
“I called for a toast just noticing out of the corner of my eye the lovely Catherine with her head in her hands. Returning to my seat nothing was said. Then during the dessert course I noticed that the room had emptied down to three large tables containing Catherine's invitees. Behind me were dozens of empty tables.”
Catherine explained: “They weren't part of our party. They were just people I don't know having lunch.” Doh!
DRONE PICTURE SPECIAL
My chum and colleague Ivor Davis, famed West Coast reporter for the Daily Express
Ivor Davis drives a robot in his car in pursuit of a story in 1984
BY PAUL HARRIS
THE death of Ivor Davis made me think of my life as a photographer from Barnstaple, North Devon, where I lived for 29 years too frightened to try and compete with Fleet Street.
In 1975 I sailed with my car to South Africa where there were lots of jobs as many white families were fleeing the country because of the fear of war.
I ended up in The Rhodesia Bush War but it was Terry Fincher who got me to Hollywood and Ivor Davis who enhanced my career in California.
STILL SNAPPING AT 79 Celebrity Photographer Richard Young has had his eye on the stars for over 50 years
CELEBRITY photographer Richard Young was a familiar face in Fleet Street newsrooms in the 1970s and 80s and he is sill going strong at the age of 79.
Former Expressman STEVE MILL who spotted this feature in the Mail On Sunday, told the Drone: “Nice to see Richard Young still out there looking fit and healthy at 79.
“I recall seeing him bowling into the Express sometime in the morning to review his work from the previous evening, usually in the Hickey office.
“I wonder if he still has any association with the Express? Incredible that he could afford to buy a house after having taken a few photos of Burton and Taylor.
“By his own admission Richard is not good with finances, but he's been savvy enough to retain ownership of all his own work.
“I recall a despatch rider pal of mine at the Express telling me about a colleague who was waiting outside a London royal residence catching sight of, (the then) Lady Diana, and the blurb was that she wasn't supposed to be there. The despatch rider was told later that if he'd have had a camera with him and successfully captured a picture or two of her he could have named his own price.”
Every picture tells a story
Which was why the Daily Express snapped this one up like lightning
THE Daily Express has always given prominence to good pictures and whole pages were often given over to PHOTONEWS (ask any flong sub).
Terry Manners spotted this pic, left, online which the Express had snapped up. He explained: “In Feb-
ruary 1971, a giant, forked lightning bolt lit up London and Colin O’Brien, a photographer in Clerkenwell, caught it by chance at cloud level on camera, snapping it from the top floor of a new tower block ‘Michael Cliffe House’ that his parents had just moved into. Colin walked into the Daily Express offices in Fleet Street the next morning with the picture and sold it at once. It became the PHOTONEWS page the next day. It is featured today on the website Spitalfields Life.”
ONCE MIGHTY PAPER POSTS £53m LOSSES
At the going down of The Sun we will mostly remember Kelvin’s great front pages
By JAMES BALL, writing in The New World
WHEN, in July 1995, Tony Blair controversially flew halfway around the world to give a speech to Rupert Murdoch and his top executives, he was not doing so to gain the endorsement of The Times. It was The Sun – then the most influential media outlet in the UK, and the tormentor of his predecessor Neil Kinnock – wot Blair wanted to win over.
Blair’s decision to woo Murdoch at the exclusive Hayman Island resort in Queensland, Australia, came with political cost. Murdoch had broken the print unions to move his operation to Wapping, and The Sun’s vile false front page the day after the Hillsborough disaster just six years earlier was still a relatively fresh memory.
Kelvin MacKenzie, who had run The Sun as a feisty, sometimes funny but mostly desperately racist, sexist and homophobic battering ram against Labour, had only departed as editor the previous year. Many within the Labour movement were appalled to see a fresh-faced, electable Labour leader even giving Murdoch the time of day, let alone flying to a private island to see him.”
But now The Sun is surely setting, just like its proprietor. Its readership is much diminished, its political power is all but used up, and it doesn’t even make money any more. Last week it announced losses of £53million in the previous tax year, up from £18million the year before.
Where once the paper was at the heart of the national conversation, it now barely reckons in it. Stop to think for a moment: what’s the last Sun front page that you can actually remember?
The truth is that newspapers as a whole have less power in 2026 than they did in the 1990s – in the internet era, there is simply a lot more competition for our attention. This has shown in their sales: in 2010 the Sun was the UK’s top-selling paper, shifting around 2.9m copies a day, a comfortable 800,000 copies ahead of the second-place Daily Mail.”
“Part of the cause of the Sun’s woes is the phone-hacking scandal, for which it is still paying compensation and legal costs more than 15 years after the scandal broke. The newspaper made a profit of £103m in its last accounts before the phone-hacking revelations, but has failed to ever turn a profit since – with cumulative losses totalling £1.3bn over the last 15 years.”
“The question is how much longer the Sun itself lasts. Insiders believe it is safe for so long as 95-year-old Rupert Murdoch is alive – but after that, it could easily be put up for sale, or even shut down entirely.
©The New World
DRONE TOOTHALIKE
DODDY CODDY
YOU will never see these two toothsome individuals in the same aquarium, would you readers? The reason, of course, is obvious — one is too large to fit in a tank and the other is dead. Which is which? We think we must … etc, etc.
The editor apologises because he cannot tell them apart so you will have to make your minds up yourselves. (Will this do?)
No, it’s bilge? My office NOW — Ed
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
