‍EXPRESS INSURANCE

‍Dear M'Lud — I was reading the interesting piece by Steve Mill of our parish, about the Express insurance certificate he has found in his files. This was an idea dreamed up by our founder Arthur Pearson in 1900 and lasted for many years. It was extremely popular. 

‍You can buy these certificates on eBay and other sites for around £4.50 a copy. Pearson was known to be an ideas person and was behind most promotions during his ownership. 

‍I did a piece on the insurance coverage some time ago in the Drone, and take this opportunity to bemoan the fact that in my view, Express Newspapers, was not a good caretaker of the title's history archives in many different areas, particularly letters and cuttings and other memorabilia. 

‍ Best,
TERRY MANNERS

‍PUTTING THE HIC IN HICKEY

‍Sir — It was only after we helped Lord Frame of Ludgate into a taxi that we started to count the bottles (his column yesterday). 

‍Contrary to his recollection, our lunch table consumed six white, five red, four pink, six sharpeners, three Babychams, a Cointreau with an umbrella and several barmaid's aprons.   

‍Fleet Street's drinking spirit lives on and we tolerate no whitewash. No Wokery!

‍Yours, foaming at the mouth,
(Ld) WISLON of ULLAGE

‍PS  Our lunch calls to mind the Mirror's Peter Senn, El Vino recidivist,  who at chucking out time floated down the Street to Blackfriars Tube and stuck his head through the grille.

‍"How can I help, Sir?"

‍"Larjesh ginntonic, my man, make it snappy, traintocatch"

‍7 November 2025

‍LEVESON FALLOUT

‍M'Lud, Some time ago, towards the end of the Leveson Inquiry, a Met police drinking acquaintance began to make it clear that he was not comfortable being seen in my company.

‍He always seemed to be on the other side of the pub, and nervous if I approached him.

‍I also knew his brother and, through him, convinced the caring copper that good men should not be nervous of association, because bad ones often were not.

‍He was uneasy about Leveson's fracturing of links between journalists and police because publicity was often vital in solving crime.

‍But more than the Leveson fallout, what really angered him was the effect of having to pursue old alleged child abuse cases, whilst current ones were being overlooked.

‍Traumatised victims of famous people like Jimmy Savile were being encouraged to come forward. Merely proving that they had been in his company would probably be believed.

‍And there was money in it — compensation — even though in the eyes of the law Savile would always be innocent because he would never stand trial.

‍(I didn't follow up on my offer to buy him a "Jimmy Savile is innocent" T shirt.)

‍More than once, he became quite irate about cases of current alleged child abuse being overshadowed so that ghosts could be chased.

‍Vulnerable young people were being abused in the present, he averred.

‍He darkly wondered if there was another agenda.

‍Years later come claims of grooming gang cover-ups in London boroughs on the precarious grounds of not disturbing community relations.

‍Khan you believe that?

‍PAT PRENTICE

‍LOGGING OFF

‍Sir — Please permit me to comment on the fact that Daily Express sales have fallen below 100,000 copies a day, 18% down year on year. This led me to ask my brainy grand daughter, a second year economics  student, how long it would be before the circ dwindled to nothing. I attach her calculation based on a sale of 100,000. It’s all pretty simple really.

‍H.HANDCART, Ms

‍AH LINCOLNSHIRE, WHERE THE FISH GO CHEAP

‍Sir — His Lordship seems to question why anyone would live in Lincolnshire, where apparently even the birds carry knives and wear ankle tags (Drone).

‍Well, having recently revisited my native county after a long absence, I think I know why people live there. It’s because the living — and especially the eating — is cheap.

‍Consider the prices on the attached menu I spotted in Lincolnshire. I reckon 1/6d is fairly reasonable for fish and chips, especially if the fish is prime haddock, which it usually is over there, and 3d is a snip for a fish cake. You are even politely requested to ask for scraps! 

‍Unfortunately, they weren’t frying when I was there. I shall have to go back when that chippy is open. Mind you, the sign was at Grimsby’s Fishing Heritage Museum. 

‍Kind regards
TERRY HAMILTON, long-exiled Grimbarian (that’s someone who was born in Grimsby, Lincolnshire), Daily Express and Daily Star, Manchester. 1968-87.

‍P.S. I never saw a bird carrying a knife while I was there, but a particularly vicious gull did try to nick my ginger biscuit. It is now "wearing" a black eye.

‍GONE TO THE DOGS

‍Dear Lord — I visited the Daily Express website this morning.  On a day when the world watched as Palestinians returned to an obliterated landscape that once was home, and people wondered if this was peace at last or just more Trumpian fakery, the Express lead story is about — lost dogs.

‍If I had tears left for our once great institution I would shed them. 

‍CW

‍BUNNY’S BUNS

‍M'Lud — I am intrigued by the 1935 photo caption of the DX-sponsored one shilling (5p for younger readers) loaves campaign. Has The Drone's social history editor by any chance been fishing around in the family archives of our dear old chum 'Bunny' Laws, lotp, whose early morning bread delivery to Heathrow Airport was the stuff of Fleet Street legend?

‍JEFF BOYLE
c/o The Sticks Rest Home

‍GOONS ALL ROUND

‍Sir — I awoke this morning as September was about to expire and my dear old steam radio gave me a difficult dilemma: Radio 4 Extra, The Goon Show. Radio 4, The Labour Party Conference. Which Goon Show should I choose?

‍P.S. By the way, is the party conference anywhere near … Eccles?

‍Yours
MEGA HERTZ

‍BABY CHANGING

‍Sir — My wife, Quarantine, in panic mode after she claimed to have heard on the BBC that World War 3 was imminent, had mounted her tractor and trailer and headed for Sainsbury’s to stock up on toilet rolls. She phoned me to say, next to the South African grapes and discounted aubergines, was a door marked “Baby Change”. Then, she says, a black mother, flooding in tears and clutching a moaning bambino, marched in through the Baby Change door and came out smiling clutching a laughing child of similar vintage. Customer service told my spouse that the “switch-a-sprog” service was very popular then unashamedly stole that Tesco mantra: “Every little helps”. You couldn’t make it up!

‍GOLDEN ALDI
Lancashire.

‍WHATEVER HAPPENED TO LORD STEVENS’ BUST?
Milord, Good work by Christopher Wilson in tracking down, and saving, the Three Printers statue, but his heroic efforts bring to mind another piece of artistically shaped stonework that abruptly disappeared, this one  from the foyer of the Grey Lubyanka, and its whereabouts is shrouded in mystery.  I refer to the ludicrously over-sized bust of Lord Stevens, which once blinked balefully at visitors from its recess  somewhere between the reception desk and a back room where the messengers went to die. It was larger than life-size (unlike Stevens himself). Indeed, it was calculated that Stevens would have to have been more than seven feet tall and weigh 300lbs if the bust accurately represented his size. 

‍Mrs Thatcher commented on it when she visited Ludgate House one afternoon and I was there when Stevens shrugged modestly and claimed that it had been commissioned by the board at the suggestion of his friend Sir Gordon Linacre  'as a wonderful total surprise'. There was a precedent, of course: Jacob Epstein's bust of Lord Beaverbrook once glowered in the foyer of the Black Lubyanka (and was later presented to the family)  though surely no-one could seriously  compare Stevens to the Beaver? But was the appearance of Stevens' mega-bust  as much of a surprise to Stevens as its dis-appearance?

‍Fast forward five years or so and one day, with almost no fanfare, Clive Hollick becomes chief executive. Stevens lets it be known in the City, where it matters, that Hollick has been given full power to make any and all changes he thinks fit to bring his business expertise to modernise  Express Newspapers.

‍Day 1, and Hollick closes the ground floor bar. Day 2,  the executive dining room gets the heave-ho (Hollick, like a true Labour man of the people preferred to use the ground floor canteen). And then...Stevens' Rolls Royce  is replaced by a BMW. It emerges, too, that Stevens is now non-executive chairman. And amid all the ensuing defenestrations on the executive floors, among them managing director Andrew Cameron, it is realised that Stevens' bust has been removed from the lobby. Some wondered if it had been given to Stevens to take home and use as a coat stand, but I was told by Star editor Phil Walker that it was in storage somewhere and had been removed because Hollick didn't like the cult of personality that he was encountering, although it occurred to me that it must be a first for the words Stevens and personality to be used in the same sentence.

‍So where is it now, more than thirty years later?  Still in storage?   Reduced to dust? Or maybe eventually given to Stevens once Hollick  himself stepped down. I think we should be told. A case for Christopher Wilson's investigative skills perhaps.   

‍MICHAEL HELLICAR

‍29 September 2025

‍DOLLIS HILL LAMENT

‍M’Lud — Three taps on the dusty top hat of former William Hickey editor Christopher Wilson for stepping in and saving The Three Printers iconic statue from the bone crusher.

‍I was deeply saddened to hear that the only known monument to UK journalism had been thoughtlessly dumped in a Watford builder’s yard and was awaiting its fate to be returned to Portland stone dust, until he stepped in.

‍Its guardians were the very grand Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, a company up to its gold-chained neck in English history. But no one, it seems, gave a printer’s fag end about spiking this monument to Fleet Street history, our history.

‍Trouble was it did not come under the protection of English Heritage, or any other organisation entrusted with keeping a watchful eye on our memories in stone because it was apparently, on private land, Goldsmiths land.

‍How many other historic statues have disappeared, or will disappear, I wonder? As we march relentlessly towards the Starmer and Khan dream of multi-cultural Britain or even a Muslim-run Britain, what will happen to these symbols of our nation’s historic past — our pride, the symbols of our blood, sweat and tears?

‍As for The Three Printers, the now UnWorshipful Goldsmiths company showed a complete lack of understanding for the iconic and historic street that it has had so many ties with. But then, I guess not everybody cares any more. Dust to dust for everything and everybody.

‍TEL BOY
Adviser to the Neasden Historic Monuments Society, Dollis Hill

‍WOT KELVIN SAID

‍Sir — For the record, Helena Handcart, Kelvin MacKenzie’s actual words in mocking Arthur Firth were: “Arthur Percy Firth, you stand accused of impersonating an editor. How do you plead?” delivered through a rolled-up newspaper megaphone.

‍I tell this and other tales in my 2018 memoir WHAT GENIUS WROTE THIS? *

‍A chapter headed “Carry On, Kelvin” also recounts the famous F for Fuck Off  event, evidently overheard by 10,004 subeditors, and I can only assume the same number witnessed the Firth takedown.

‍*Out of stock, alas, on Amazon. Only a few leather-bound copies remain in my private library.

‍RICK McNEILL

‍RETURN TO GENDER?

‍M'Lud — Regarding the letter Prude Awakening, Hermione Orliff has signed as Ms rather than Mx. Can we deduce, therefore, that the writer now prefers to be considered binary rather than gender-neutral? If so, this appears to be a volte-face on Hermione's part after I was gently bollocked following my titular slip-up in a recent missive about a Stand and Deliver item. I think we should be told as I am easily confused and not getting any younger.*
JEFF BOYLE
c/o The Sticks Rest Home
*Me too — Ed
21 September 2025

‍PRUDE AWAKENING

‍Sir — We, the undersigned, write to protest most strongly about the use of the C word on the Drone’s front page. It is not only offensive, but disrespectful, to the Leader of the Western World and our own beloved monarch.

‍We have noticed, with alarm, your drift towards limp-wristed, pink-trousered, floppy haired, keffiyeh-draped, hairy-toed, eye-linered Leftism of late.

‍You must be aware that a civil war is coming. You would do well to ensure that you are on the right side (SWWJDT?).

‍In the meantime, please be in no doubt that we are considering cancelling our subscriptions.

‍H. ORLIFF, Ms.
H. HANDCART, Ms

‍Oh do fuck off you right-wing loonies — Ed

‍19 September 2025

‍WAR REPORTER’S BRAVERY

‍My Lord — I very much enjoyed Terry Manners’s column about the first-hand account by Expressman William Troughton of what he saw when he accompanied RAF bomber crews twice in a single day as they attacked Duisburg in the Ruhr Valley.

‍It would be incredibly difficult to do now. He would have to be embedded, as the jargon goes, wear a flak jacket and have an insurance policy whose premium would be the ruin of most of today’s newspapers.

‍Troughton’s bravery was exemplary and he paid a heavy price for it later at the battle for Remagen bridge.

‍I also noted Terry’s thanks to Geoff Compton for alerting him to the Troughton story. I believe Geoff’s father was a Lancaster bomber pilot during the Second World War and was decorated for bravery.

‍Sometimes those pilots had bravery forced upon them. I remember watching a TV programme years ago – perhaps The World at War, I’m not sure – in which they interviewed a Lancaster pilot who had earned the Victoria Cross by flying doggedly through a curtain of anti-aircraft flak.

‍His plane was getting shot to pieces, his crew were dying before his eyes. Why did he not turn back? they asked.

‍He said it was the first of the 1,000-bomber raids launched against Germany, “We were at the front. There were planes above me and to the left and right,” he said. “It was impossible to turn round.”

‍He dropped his bombs on the target, then turned his crippled aircraft and limped home before landing safely with what was left of his Lancaster and its crew.

‍DICK DISMORE

‍PIE EYED

‍I was rather tickled by erudite Dick Dismore's dalliances with northern delicacies. The pie in a bap he refers to is actually a feast commonly known as a Wigan kebab. It is often served with liquid from mushy peas called pee wet.

‍I know, I should get out more, but I thought he should be told.

‍CHRIS GILL
Pie eater

‍FERGIE’S BOTTOM

‍Re the Harry/Harry comment by Helena Handcart, Aug 31. 

‍Is Lady H being a little unfair or, if that were possible, naive in asking 'when will Mail subs learn...the name Harry in a headline can only refer  to one person in the world?'

‍I suspect the sub knew precisely what he/she was doing. As was, 30-odd years ago, the Sun sub who wrote a xref beneath a splash about the Sarah Ferguson Toe Job case and a saucy pic of Prince Andrew's ex.

‍It read: Fergie's Bottom! See Back Page. And, true enough, manager Alex Ferguson's Man U side were there revealed to be lying 20th in the 20-team Premier League.

‍Yours & etc

‍T. RYLE
c/o St Jude's, NW11

‍31 August 2025

‍IT’S JUST NOT RIGHT

‍Dear M’Lud, I cannot help find myself agreeing with your letter writer Jeff Boyle who took time off from his busy schedule daydreaming of England’s past glories in the Sticks Rest Home.

‍ Let us hope that Cooper’s new Department of Correction at the Home Office, that oversees court action against Union Jack flag wavers, does not get to hear of him.

‍ To censor his heart-felt letters of the illegal immigrant invasion would be yet another victory for the Third Front Buttered Bun Brigade who welcome the new Army on our beaches.

‍ Mr Boyle, holder of the Long Service Medal from the battles of the Black Lubyanka, is right to highlight D-Day with pride.

‍ Churchill will have chewed his cigar to shreds up Above, hearing that our commemorative flotilla of boats celebrating the 85th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation, was forced to divert by our Border Farce (correction Force).

‍ It ordered our patriots to divert their journey by a mile to avoid one rubber tub packed with illegal males eating their passports and looking up the menus of four star hotels in Watford on their Samsungs.

‍ Meanwhile, M’Lud, the lads and lasses of the Neasden Omnibus Company will be sending a petition to No.10 to ban the phrase Right Wing.

‍ It now seems that anyone who dares challenge the Labour Government over their obvious open borders policy are fascist lunatics, when they are merely voters who care about our homeless, hospitals and state of the economy.

‍TEL BOY
Corner Table of the Neasden Omnibus works canteen. 

‍DO THEY MEAN US?

‍Dear M’lud, while browsing yet more publishing archives I came across this revealing clip from an interview with a local councillor for Salisbury, named Annie Riddle, 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?”

‍TERRY MANNERS
Neasden Forever Society.
Cocklecarrot has advised me to deny everything — Ed

‍HITS AND MISSES

‍Sir — Why, oh why do formerly reputable newspapers demean themselves by allowing their online versions to peddle any sort of shit to try to glean ‘hits’? Take this from the Independent, bizarrely written nearly two days after it happened. 

‍Someone called Holly Patrick, who, shamelessly, allows her byline to be used, reported:

‍‘A University Challenge contestant stole the show on Monday's (18 August) of the BBC show with her blunt responses and confidently answering a question even though she didn't hear it fully.

‍‘Cardiff University's team captain Carenza Danko delighted viewers with her assertive leadership style.

‍‘She admitted to her teammates that she hadn't heard the start of a question about a 16th-century monarch but offered an answer anyway, which was correct.

‍“Absolutely loving Danko on University Challenge, who is taking no s*** from the lads on her team,” one X user posted.

‍Cardiff finished on 115 points, closely following Bristol with 118.’

‍Er, that’s it.

‍SPIKE DIVER,
BB FF EC4

‍PS: I offered this to one of your ‘ladies’ but she said it was too long and she couldn’t get it in. Eh?

‍D-DAY DAY DREAM

‍M'Lud — Hermione Orliff reports that among other presumably taxpayer-funded deals and treats, asylum seekers in Portsmouth are to learn about D-Day. This is excellent news as they will find out that the June 6 1944 invasion was from England to France rather than the countless cross-Channel migrant crossings in this direction. Armed with this knowledge I wonder if it's too much to hope they might take the hint, re-enact that historic day and bugger off. I'm not holding my breath, but there's no harm in daydreaming.

‍JEFF BOYLE
c/o The Sticks Rest Home

‍FLEET STREET CHANGES

‍M'lud — On a recent visit to the Street of Shame I was fairly taken aback by the wholesale redevelopment taking place, Fleet Street is becoming almost unrecognisable. What a forlorn site is the Black Lubyanka, I was quite shocked at how small the original building is compared to the former Telegraph building.

‍Nice to see the Poppins Court Cafe is still in business. It looks quite different now, I recall myself and a number of work colleagues patronising this establishment after an all nighter! I'm still mystified how the Leornard & Michael Barbershop has managed to survive decade after decade. I could never work out where their clientele came from.

‍There is a huge new building going up almost opposite the Telegraph making a massive difference to the look of the street. Along to Bouverie Street and this is also being given an extreme makeover.

‍The Tipperary is closed again for refurbishment, the notice in the window suggests visiting the Harrow in Whitefriars Street. I couldn't help noticing the reduced opening hours for the Harrow, not open Saturday and Sunday and closed by 9pm during the week. Of course there was a time when, pubs were shut between 3 and 5pm, the desperate hours.

‍Speaking of Fleet Street pubs, does anyone remember The Crown & Anchor in Shoe Lane, also known as Aunties? I was on a site dealing with defunct Fleet Street pubs and remembered Aunties but didn't  remember it's real name. Also mentioned is The Falstaff, located at 67 Fleet Street. 

‍Wonderful description of The Poppinjay written by a barman who worked there in the 1970s, 'The place was usually packed in the evening mostly with printers who were supposed to be working in the newspapers. Several eminent journalists would hold court there.  Love the 'supposed to be working'! So true.

‍Happy days.

‍STEVE MILL 

‍TAKING A NEUTRAL POSITION

‍M'Lud — In answer to Hermione Orliff's missive regarding the writer's preferred choice of title, it was never my intention to either insult a non-binary person or cause the deep emotional stress and anguish my assumption — taken from a purely binary point of view — has obviously caused. If Mx Orliff's gender-neutral heart can overlook my misplaced but accidental disrespect I promise to keep reading the tantalising gems in the Stand and Deliver column. But only as a fully paid up binary ex-hack!

‍JEFF BOYLE (MR)

‍SHEET STIRRING

‍Sir — Alan Frame bemoans the coy phrase “slept with”? 

‍How about . . . penetratively engaged with, intercoursed, nookied, nudge-nudged, bed-rolled, lain with (for vicars), futoired (French-style), dubbed, dobbed, dibbed or dipped.

‍I’m sure Dronesters will pitch in with more ideas.

‍RICK McNEILL

‍15 August 2025

‍A LOAD OF BOLLOX

‍Sir — In a letter to the Drone [see below] someone called Jeff Boyle refers to me as Ms Orliff. With respect, I point out that it should be Mx, a neologistic honorific that does not indicate gender. Created as an alternative to gendered honorifics, it is the most common gender-neutral title among non-binary people and people who do not wish to imply a gender in their titles.

‍HERMIONE ORLIFF, Mx
BB FF, EC4
14 August 2025

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