What a brilliant way to start the festive season. Lunch at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street with some of my best pals from the old Evening Standard days, followed by a drink or two at one of our favourite haunts, the Punch Tavern. As the drinks flowed, the years rolled away and the stories got wilder. We reminisced about the days when mobile phones were the size of bricks, ...keep reading
The last time I worked in an office Prince Charles was still married to Princess Diana (just), mobile phones were the size of bricks and cappuccinos were unheard of outside Italy. In those days journalists started their careers in the provinces, honing their skills on local papers, learning 100wpm shorthand and bashing out stories on tinny typewriters. After a couple of years loads of us hotfooted it to London, clutching our prized ...keep reading
Rooting through my old files I’ve just found a piece about journalism that I wrote as a young reporter. I can’t for the life of me remember who it was for but here, completely unedited and slightly dated, is an account of my route to Fleet Street. Don’t even contemplate going into journalism if you are highly-strung, sensitive to the slightest criticism or expect to be on the 6.03 train ...keep reading
“Goodnight sweet prince,” muttered my son as our trusty Gaggia coffee maker finally gave up the ghost. He twiddled a few knobs on the machine and the illuminated display declared that the machine had made the grand total of 7,197 cups of coffee in its time. Blimey, I thought, that’s a heck of a lot of coffee. We’d had the machine serviced regularly but the coffee had definitely been getting ...keep reading
Watching BBC One’s brilliant The Field of Blood last week was like stepping back in time for me. Stepping back to the Eighties when just like the characters in this gritty TV drama, I worked as a hard news reporter. Adapted from Denise Mina’s The Dead Hour, The Field of Blood was set in Glasgow. But even so, the scruffy, paper-strewn newsroom, whisky drinking hacks and clattering typewriters were uncannily similar ...keep reading
The newspaper picture took me straight back to my royal reporting days. Rows and rows of metal stepladders have suddenly appeared outside the Lindo Wing of St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington – ready for the royal birth. There are still two weeks to go before Kate Middleton’s baby is due but Fleet Street’s finest aren’t taking any chances. The photographers have been camped outside the hospital night and day since ...keep reading
Tony Blair reckons he’s better equipped to be PM now than he was during his Downing Street years. He says he’s learned “an immense amount” and would love to have another go, even though it’s unlikely to ever happen. I was never a Blair devotee, but his words – during an interview with Evening Standard editor Sarah Sands – made me think. In my 20s I worked as a news ...keep reading
Tyler Brûlé is a publishing phenomenon. A war reporter turned fashion editor, he launched the ultra-hip style magazine Wallpaper* in 1996 and the following year Times Inc bought it for a cool $1.7 million. He writes the Fast Lane column in the Financial Times and has also founded an upmarket monthly magazine called Monocle. His latest venture is based at chic headquarters in Marylebone, where everything is so stylish that ...keep reading
I’ve never met a journalist who isn’t obsessed with their byline – for the uninitiated, that’s the line between the headline and the story giving the name of the person who wrote the article. Maybe it’s because hacks are an insecure bunch, or maybe it’s because we’re preoccupied with seeing our names emblazoned in lights. It’s certainly why an article by Kira Cochrane in today’s Guardian caught my eye. Back ...keep reading
On Saturday and Sunday mornings I wake in the grey light of dawn, fretting that my student daughter has got home to her flat all right. She’s working weekends in a chic Shoreditch bar from seven pm till six am and I can’t help worrying. Actually, I didn’t even realise bars stayed open till six, but then again I don’t think I’ve been inside one since about 2002. The upside ...keep reading