While my days are now spread between the simple delights of garden, village hall and occasional WI speaking engagements I retain just enough cognitive experience of my life’s craft to be able to recognise a good yarn when I hear it and, what’s more important, to take down a surreptitious note (it was once suggested I could peel an orange in my pocket).
So when my broadcaster and TV celebrity pal Nick Ferrari – he’s the chubby chap on Titchmarsh – nudged me during the speeches at the British Press Awards this week and asked “What are you drawing?” I smugly reminded the one-time newspaperman that the scrawl on my menu was, in fact, Pitman’s shorthand.
Furthermore, I was recording some rather good words spoken by two other one-time newspapermen who have swapped their old roles for the lure of celebrity: John Humphrys, once of the Penarth Times, and Boris Johnson, sacked Times trainee and later a writer for the Wolverhampton Express and Star.
Mr Humphrys first: the TV presenter and bête noir of the political heavies who fall foul of him on Radio 4’s Today programme, confessed that he prefers presenting TV’s Mastermind these days “because it’s so much nicer questioning people who WANT to give you an answer!”
Mr Johnson, now rather better known as Mayor of London with half an eye on Number 10, was in the sort of sparkling form that required the full extent of what was once my 120 words per minute note-taking ability. Chastened, he said, by the Scoop of the Year – the MPs’ expenses scandal, exposed by the Daily Telegraph – the mop-headed Churchillian figure thundered:
"I appear before you tonight with the trembling hesitation of some Japanese general emerging from a bunker after Nagasaki. On behalf of all British politicians I have come to convey our unconditional surrender.”
Suggesting (tongue firmly in cheek) that democracy might be better served by an influx of journalists into Parliament, ‘hizzoner’ boomed: "You have won. You have bugged our phones. You have abolished our second home allowances. You have confiscated our porn videos and made it unacceptable for us to charge the taxpayer for pruning our wisteria.
“We can not go on like this. I come to propose, as a gesture of submission, that we change places . . . I urge all of you to put your expenses online: every dinner, every bunch of flowers. And to satisfy the wholly legitimate desire of the British people to know how much Jeremy Paxman is paid, a fact I failed to discover despite asking him 14 times, most of which was cut out by the BBC.”
You’ve never seen a sea-change like it. As ever, all agreed, Boris had now Gone Too Far. Hacks’ heads that had nodded in vigorous agreement, slowed to a halt when they realised they’d been had.
“Huh!” grunted Ferrari in my ear. “Same old Boris, well over the top.” Then, spotting the menu filled with my squiggles, added: “Pitman’s, is it?”
I nodded.
“Hmmm . . . we younger reporters were all taught Teeline.”
They may be EX-newspapermen but they’re ALL still a slippery lot.
ONE ex-newspaperman who refused to be blinded by the bright lights of Hollywood, I was reminded at the Awards ceremony, was the playwright Sir Tom Stoppard (ex-Western Daily Press) who initially rejected Steven Spielberg’s plea that he adapt Empire of the Sun for the big screen.
“Sorry, I’m busy doing a play for the BBC,” Stoppard told him.
“The BBC? But that’s just television,” said the great director.
“Ah, but you don’t understand,” replied Stoppard, indulgently. “This is for BBC RADIO . . .”
First published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne, March 26, 2010
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