THE STORY of Express cartoonist Carl Giles, who rose to heights of near sainthood in Fleet Street during his long career, is legendary. But in the late Eighties, with failing eyesight, the lead was running out of his pencil, as former Editor Chris Williams (Features Editor at that time), told me recently.

 The social humorist, feted by the public, Beaverbrook, and Royalty, who earned three times the salary of his editors, had turned grumpy; his cartoons no longer took up the column inches they did in the Express (for space reasons), and his famous newsprint humour of Grandma and her family did not hit the newspaper’s mission statement. But in his own mind, Giles remained a male prima donna.

 As Night Editor, I remember that Editor Nick Lloyd rarely found his drawings funny. He thought them outdated; and was always frustrated that Giles never came into the office and instead did all his work from his Suffolk farmhouse or Ipswich studio, not even taking briefs, well a few maybe.

 The cartoons often arrived late, and we were all angry that they were holding up the Edition. When he was snowed in, Editors would have to send a helicopter to pick up his work.

 He was troublesome too. Giles once sneaked in a packet of Durex on the back shelf of a crowded shop scene and on another occasion, he drew Rupert Bear hanging limply from a hangman’s noose.



Grandma busy in the kitchen

 Things came to a head one day in 1989. Chris told me: “He had been getting increasingly grumpy at what he called a lack of respect from the Express.

 “Larry Lamb sometimes chucked his cartoon out of the paper, and though Nick Lloyd was kinder, it was never quite enough to satisfy the old chap, who believed he had single handedly made the Express a great newspaper.

 “He kept a suite at the Savoy and used it when in London for meetings. He may have come to the office, but I never saw him. We spoke every week on the phone because he put his cartoons on a train from Suffolk to Liverpool Street where a driver picked them up. Then, either through forgetfulness or ill will, he started occasionally not sending his work. He always said the ‘useless bastards’ of British Rail had lost the cartoon, but I had my doubts.

 “Anyway, he decided to come to town to discuss this and all his other moans with Nick, who turned out to be unavailable on the day he came.

 “I passed the news to Carl, who said I should join him at the Savoy as a substitute. When I got there, he was standing in the private street outside the doors, next to a gleaming Rolls-Royce. He said something along the lines of: ‘This is my company car and shows my standing with the paper.’ 

Then he walked back inside leaving me on the pavement. No lunch for me!

 Giles quit the paper and later apparently explained to all who would listen: “I just thought sod it! And walked out.”

 The sad ending to his Express life is a far cry from the days when Giles was considered indispensable by management. At the height of his popularity, he was taken to lunch in London by Express Chairman, Sir Max Aitken.

 As they walked through Berkeley Square, Sir Max asked Giles how he was getting home. “By train,” said the cartoonist. Aitken then walked him into Jack Barclay’s, the top London dealer in Bentleys and Rolls-Royces at the time. Knowing Giles’ affection for cars, Aitken asked him which one was his favourite. Giles immediately pointed out a Bentley Continental. Sir Max said: “OK, give me your return ticket to Ipswich.” He did. “Right. I’ll keep this and you go home in that,” the Chairman said. And Giles drove home in his new company car.

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THE FAVOURED FEW …



Sidney Strube and his 'Little Man'

The history of the Express is peppered with generosity towards a favoured few from our world of journalism, I have discovered. Spy catcher Chapman Pincher and crime buster Percy Hoskins were both given plush London apartments. But others had contracts that would make your eyes water; some were given estates.

 One man, who would always arrive late for editorial news conferences, had his own special seat — the Editor’s wastepaper bin, it was always left out for him the correct way up, with rubbish in it, because the small room in Shoe Lane at the time, was overcrowded. He was arguably the paper’s greatest cartoonist, Sidney Strube, who created The Little Man. And he had the best contract in Fleet Street in the early days.

 Space was always tight in Editor Ralph Blumenfeld’s office during the days before the Black Lubyanka. So, Strube had to listen to Blumenfeld’s ideas at conference by squeezing his bottom into the top of the Great Man’s wastepaper bin. A perfect fit, it was claimed. A throne befitting the King of Cartoons at the time.

 The offices in the building were a series of little rooms in 1912, and there was hardly any space for Strube to even lay his brush. He didn’t even have his own desk. He never worked a full day and so others had better claim to the desks there were.

 Instead, he had a little attic studio in Fleet Street where he would work on his cartoons, finally walking down to the Express Process Dept to polish them up. He often even worked in a pipe cupboard on the roof and kept the door open to look out of the skyline for inspiration if the weather was good.

But no one had a contract like Strube, hired by Beaverbrook and Blumenfeld. He joined the Express at a vast salary with a contract that was guaranteed to run for a staggering 36 years until his official retirement in 1948. [In 1933, he was offered £10,000 a year to leave the Express and join the Daily Herald. But Beaverbrook more than matched the offer at a time when the average wage was £150 per year.

 Strube’s cartoons were based on the "man in the street", which appeared every day. The Little Man wore a bowler hat and carried an umbrella. He was the hard-pressed, suppressed taxpayer suffering under politicians, big business, and others in power. Strube became famous worldwide and Churchill adored him.

 Strangely, he was sacked in 1948 after an argument with Editor Arthur Christiansen, who was at the height of his power. No one knows why. The papers have been lost. (Oh really?). He was replaced by Michael Cummings as the newspaper's chief political cartoonist.

 Strube died at his home in Golders Green, London, on March 4, 1956, aged 63.

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SUN COMES DOWN ON THE BEACH



Beachcomber ... John B Moreton

For 50 years the man who ended up living alone and eating mostly bread and jam had brought joy into the lives of Express readers as Beachcomber. But as John B Morton’s life was drawing to a close, there was only sadness and despair left.

 The man described by G K Chesterton as “a huge, thunderous wind of elemental and essential laughter and was believed by Evelyn Waugh as having greatest comic fertility of any Englishman" had nothing to live for.

 He had been forced into retirement from his column ‘Down Your Way’ which he wrote for the Express from 1924 to 1975 and lived alone. He had lost his beloved wife Mary a year earlier and he couldn’t even boil an egg. His mind wasn’t right, and he became confused, spending all his time looking for her. He was taken to a nursing home and insisted on calling all the ladies there, Mary.

 But nothing can take his achievements away. He was loved not only by our nation, but in Europe too. Strangely, after his death in 1979, aged 85, his house was demolished, and all his papers destroyed.

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ODDS & SODS

Tales from the Front Line of long ago

Assistant News Editor Alun Jones had a problem with his blood pressure that made his bald head turn red. When big stories broke in the early 1900s, he got so stressed that his toupee would slide about his skull from one side to the other. 

His Editor, Ralph Blumenfeld once said: “He was no great shakes as a newspaper man but if Dickens had written a book on Fleet Street, he would have used Alun to provide the light relief.” 

In the 1920s the newsroom became a magnet for American journalists looking for Express shifts. One sub-editor from across the pond, who was reported to have ‘weird days’ was Myron Parrot, who never stopped talking.

 Apparently, Blumenfeld, who was doing Page 4 at that time, was always rowing with him. Parrot was finally silenced after being convicted of stealing ladies’ handbags from the Reading Room of the British Library – and deported!

Contributors to the Express during its early days included: H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, Harry Lauder, Rachmaninoff and Edgar Wallace.

TERRY MANNERS

3 June 2024