British newspapers… a novel tale of devious deals, phone hacking and death

The Lion of Fleet Street is a novel about a British tabloid newspaper reporter – one of the ‘big beasts’ of Fleet Street – the centre of the newspaper business at the turn of the century.

It is written by Patrick Symes. He worked as a freelance reporter for national newspapers, radio and television for forty years, specialising in sport. He also ran a news agency covering news and sport throughout the South of England.

So he knows the inside stories.

He has written (as  Pat Symes) 12 non-fiction books about international sportsmen.

The Lion of Fleet Street is his first novel.

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JOHN: You’ve written factual books before. Why a novel now?

PATRICK: I just wanted to see if I could do it. I got to a stage in my career where I was winding down. I had sold the news agency and I did a wee stint as a lecturer in Journalism at Solent University in Southampton which was also coming to an end… and I was having cancer treatment.

I was fit and happy and looking forward to my dotage and then suddenly I discovered I had prostate cancer and then kidney cancer. I’ve had one kidney removed. Then the cancer moved to the lungs, which is where it is now. I’ve got a few nodules there.

JOHN: And, at the moment…?

PATRICK: I’ve had numerous scans. I’m never going to beat it; the tumours are there. But it can be contained and coped-with, I hope. So you just plod on in those sort of circumstances.

I had started a book. I don’t even know why. But I thought: Well, I’ll continue it.

JOHN: Why this plot?

PATRICK: One of the good things about journalism is you meet so many people and come across so many incidents and you store them away. I got this idea based on, I think, the funeral of one of the ‘big beasts’ in Fleet Street. I remember that time – the turn of the century – quite vividly. 

It was a massive turning point in the world of the media and how news was disseminated.

Most of my career, if I was covering a football match, I would have to pick up a phone and dictate the report to a copy typist. That was also the way these ‘big beasts’ in Fleet Street operated too; they had these huge, inflated reputations because theirs was the only conduit for news. 

But suddenly there was a twist and a change and the internet came in, though it wasn’t much good to begin with. I remember thinking: Well this is never going to catch on.

Now, of course, we all live by it every day.

It wasn’t just that, of course. Radio and television were becoming more sophisticated and news was being blasted at us all day long.

JOHN: How were radio and TV becoming more sophisticated in news coverage?

PATRICK: It was more instant. TV had taken over the role of newspapers. There was regional television, regional radio stations with quite sophisticated news production. During the day we would know instantly if the Prime Minister resigned. There was no point newspapers printing that as ‘news’ the next day. 

I think I got the tail end of Fleet Street in its pomp. And there was more money around.

“I think I got the tail end of Fleet Street in its pomp…”

News (in newspapers) has become softer now; it has to be very showbiz orientated.

Many of the ‘big beasts’ took hefty pay-offs and disappeared off to their gardens,; one or two others – like my man in the novel – stayed but didn’t really know how to adapt. Their salaries were quite large. New, younger, management came in with new, fresh ideas and decided that the old type of journalism was largely redundant. 

My man, with redundancy hanging over him, teams up with a phone tapper – although many of the journalists of that time did it themselves. He comes up with a couple of stories that give him a front page lead and he seems to be restoring his reputation, but redundancy is still very much hanging over him.

In desperation, he listens in to a police tape – this was at the time of the Milly Dowler murder. 

A certain person is going to be arrested, but my protagonist mis-hears it

When his story appears on the front page of his tabloid, the Sunday Argus, it becomes obvious fairly soon afterwards that his story naming the wrong man had been obtained by illegal means. My protagonist’s life is in ruins but he finds another story which involves… There was a hotel in Eastbourne, near Beachy Head which specialised in giving a ‘last night of luxury’ for would-be suicides.

JOHN: This was real?

PATRICK: I don’t know. Beachy Head is a very spooky place. The wind whistles there and there are all these crosses on the edge of the cliff where people have jumped…

JOHN: Really?

PATRICK: Yeah.

JOHN: You went there?

“Beachy Head is a very spooky place. The wind whistles there… where people have jumped…”

PATRICK: Yes. And I was standing there minding my own business, taking in the atmosphere when two people from a church vigilante group came up to me and said: “Can we help you?”

I said: “Why do you think I need help?”

They said: “Number one, you haven’t got a camera. Number two, you’re standing there with your hands in your pockets, deep in thought… If there’s anything we can do to help you…”

JOHN: So you said “I’m a journalist”… and they said “Jump”…?

PATRICK: (LAUGHS) 

JOHN: All first novels are autobiographical, so…

PATRICK: Phone tapping WAS rampant throughout Fleet Street at that time. It was so easy. They were all expected to do it – on the tabloids anyway – and some fairly prominent people in the newspaper industry of that time got away with it. News International are still paying off victims of that nigh on 20 years later.

JOHN: Have you an idea for your next novel?

PATRICK: I went to a school that had part-boarders and there was a very encouraging English teacher there. He got sacked because he was fiddling around with some of the boy boarders.

He became an actor. His name was Roland McLeod.

He never rose to any great prominence, but he was in Worzel Gummidge and Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em and The Goodies and so on. He tended to play the bank manager or something similar in sitcoms.

He suddenly got the gig of his life when he appeared in Coronation Street – a 6-month or  a year’s contract – and there was a big, big build-up when he was going to propose to Emily Bishop (one of the central characters). A huge build-up. It was in all the papers.

Eileen Derbyshire (as Emily Bishop) and Roland McLeod (as Bernard Morton) in Coronation Street

I didn’t know he was in Coronation Street at first, but you couldn’t avoid it. I mentioned his background to some colleagues in the office and they said: “You ought to put that up to the News of the World. They’d love that!”

Walking behind the newsdesk at the time, by coincidence, was a guy who heard the words Ryde School and he said: “Oh! I went there! I was a boarder and I had ‘difficulties’ with teachers.” So it suddenly became a revenge mission for him and it took me over, really.

I thought: Well, he didn’t do ME any harm…

So it was a real crisis of conscience for a day or two but, in the end, greed overcame my conscience and I rang the News of the World and, of course, they loved it.

I went back to my parents’ house to see if they had any school reports signed by him, which they had. It became a front page lead in the News of the World, I’m afraid to say.

I was well-remunerated, as you can imagine.

The News of the World found him on the day before publication, boarding a plane at Luton Airport. They tapped him on the shoulder and said “Roland McLeod… It’s the News of the World” and he said “I’ve been waiting for this for 30 years”.

It was an astonishing admission when you think about it. 

JOHN: What happened on Coronation Street? Did they pull him as a character?”

PATRICK: I think his role was finished anyway; he had proposed to Emily Bishop and she had said No.

He still got bits and pieces of work afterwards, so I didn’t feel that bad about it. I could justify it by saying to myself that, in many respects, he…

JOHN: …got his comeuppance.

PATRICK: Yes. He did deserve it. 

JOHN: Kiddy fiddling is serious stuff…

PATRICK: Once the News of the World revealed it, he had a speech ready and he said something along the lines of “Homosexuality is a curse. It’s not what I wanted to be.” He tried to justify himself. He had a prepared statement.

JOHN: Over your 40 years in the business, you must have encountered lots of stories which never got published… Did you think of putting them into the novel or future novels?

PATRICK: Little bits and pieces. You knew about people who were on the fiddle. There were stories which suddenly ‘died’; they just didn’t appear.

JOHN: I mean, Jimmy Savile. There would have had to be real, solid, cast-iron evidence to print a story while he was alive.

PATRICK: Yes and he, too, gets a mention in the book. Every newspaper tried to nail him at one stage or another. But they never had solid proof and, if he thought they were getting too close, he would always say: “Well, I’m a national treasure. I’ve raised £50 million through my charity walks and things. Do you want people to know you stopped me doing those?”

… Some of Pat(rick) Symes’ sports books…

I Skyped a stand-up witch at midnight

Jackie Juno talking to me from Caerwysg via Skype last night

Last night, appropriately just before midnight, I had a Skype chat with stand-up poet Jackie Juno. She is also a witch. She knows comedian Matt Roper, who was passing through my spare bedroom.

On Saturday, Jackie is organising the Grand Witches’ Ball in Exeter.

“Last year,” she told me, “we held a Grand Witches’ Tea Party, which was a daytime thing and was outside.”

“And this one,” I asked, “is a night-time thing and is inside?”

“Yes. In the 450-seater Exeter Phoenix Arts Centre. We’re going to have bands and loads of different acts, including The Invisible Opera Company of Tibet. I am the lead singer. It’s been going 23 years.”

There is a clip of The Invisible Opera Company of Tibet on YouTube.

“How invisible and operatic are you?” I asked.

“Not very, but I’m very showy-offy. Not very operatic at all. Well, I hate opera, really.”

“But you must love Tibet, obviously.”

“Yes… Well… I’ve never been. But we’ve got a sort-of connection… with Gong, which is another psychedelic rock band. The Invisible Opera company of Tibet was founded by Daevid Allen, the lead singer with Gong. He founded it with my husband Brian.”

“You’re psychedelic?”

“Yeah.”

“Psychedelic witches!” I said enthusiastically.

“I love dressing up,” said Jackie, “and being mad and cackling loudly at people and wearing striped tights”

Jackie Juno now reaches 21st century cyberspace on Twitter

“I don’t,” I said, “remember striped tights being part of the traditional witch costume.”

“They’re quite important,” said Jackie.

“But I feel,” I said, “maybe not from the Middle Ages.

“No,”agreed Jackie, “it’s probably from kids’ story books, but it’s great fun.”

“Are you treating your witchery seriously?” I asked.

“Yes. As well. I just think it’s important to have a sense of humour.”

“What’s the best thing about being a witch?”

“Connection.”

“With what or whom?”

“Everything and everyone. Connection to the universe, the Earth, yourself, others.”

“How long have you been a witch?”

“I think I was born that way. I used to get loads of stuff in my dreams when I was younger. Loads of psychic things happened. Dead people appearing. So I’ve had all that psychic stuff happen.”

“That sounds a bit scary,” I said.

“I didn’t find it scary,” said Jackie. “Never have done.”

“Not even when you were a child?” I asked. “Dead people appearing?”

“Yeah, well it was my grandad and my uncle. And other people. If I went somewhere, somebody would be there and I would describe them and it would be later confirmed. It doesn’t happen that often, but it has happened intermittently.”

“Does it run in the family?” I asked.

“Doesn’t seem to.”

“I seem to have met a lot of witches,” I said. “So you’re a white witch…”

“I don’t know,” said Jackie, “what this white business is. I am many colours.”

“I thought,” I told her, “that a white witch was a good witch and a black witch was a bad witch.”

“That,” she replied, “is like saying you get good Christians and bad Christians.”

“How does one become a witch?” I asked. “You can’t be born one, can you? You have to choose to become one.”

Jackie runs experiential workshops based on Goddess archetypes relevant to life now

“You can do both,” Jackie told me. “But I think it’s more of an uncovering, a going towards something. I think being a witch is like a natural state. We’re just in touch with the earth, in touch perhaps with other realms that we don’t often see. Before these organised, patriarchal religions came along and made all their rules and dogmas. I think we are our own people in touch with our own spirituality through the earth, through Nature.”

“I suppose you have seen The Wicker Man?” I asked.

“Yes. Great. I love it. A classic. I must re-watch it.”

“There’s an interesting line in it,” I said, “about Christianity being a Johnny-come-lately religion.”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“Were you ever a Christian?”

“God, no. I wasn’t brought up that way. My dad used to describe himself as an agnostic.”

“Not an atheist?”

“No. He believed there was something going on, but he wasn’t sure what.”

“So why did you decide to have a Witches’ Tea Party last year?”

The Grand Witches’ Tea Party in 2014 (Photograph by Jim Bachelier-Moore)

“I was given the title Grand Bard of Caerwysg (the Welsh name for Exeter), which is a 7-year role. Each ancient bardic seat has a sacred hill associated with it and, in Exeter, it’s Rougemont Gardens. There is a plaque in Rougemont Gardens which honours the last three women witches that were killed in England. They kept the witches – the women – in a tower of the castle in terrible conditions and then they took them to be hanged.”

“Hanged?” I asked. “I thought witches were burned alive or chucked in the river?”

“No. I think in this country most of them were hung.”

“You said England. What about Scotland?”

“I think they carried on killing witches in Scotland after 1682 – the last ones in England.”

“So, in Exeter,” I said, “the sacred hill is Rougemont Gardens…”

“Yes. I’ve always felt a strong affinity with that place and, when I became Grand Bard, I wanted to do something to honour the women that were killed.

“I wanted to hold a ceremony but then it kind of grew and we decided to have a tea party afterwards and then we decided to try and go for the world record of number of witches gathered in one place. But, to qualify for that, you had to have a cloak, a broom and a pointy hat.”

“That,” I asked, “is a Guinness Book of Records rule?”

“Yes. The record had already been set so, if you want to break it, you have to follow the rules. So we thought it would be a bit of fun. That was what got media attention. It just went mental. But the local witchy community were all: Oh! this is a farce! This is Disney! we don’t wear pointy hats! We’re proper witches! They got a bug up their arse, basically. They couldn’t believe you could have a bit of fun as well.”

“How are witches organised?” I asked. “Is there a national Witch Council?”

A queue of witches in 2014, signing a petition to get the executed women pardoned (Photo by Jim Bachelier-Moore)

“There are various groups all across Britain – pagan moots.”

“Any old pagans?” I asked. “Not specifically witches?”

“Yes, any old pagans. Or young pagans. There’s various pagan groups and lots of kind-of I guess witchy, goddess groups.”

“I have met a few witches,” I said, “but I have never met a wizard.”

“Well,” said Jackie, “there are a lot of men who consider themselves witches.”

“So a ‘witch’ can be a man or woman?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“So there’s no such thing as a wizard?”

“I’m sure people might also describe themselves as a wizard, but I don’t know exactly what a wizard is…”

“So your husband Brian is not a wizard?”

“No.”

“Is he a witch?”

“He describes himself as a pagan Buddhist.”

“Was he a Buddhist first and then you converted him?”

“I think he was a pagan anyway, really. I think we all are underneath. Pagans do have a lot of fun.”

“It is the old religion,” I said. “Last year was…?”

“A wonderful event,” said Jackie. “It was incredibly moving.”

“Because?”

“Because the ceremony itself was very moving. People came from all over England and Wales.

This Saturday – The Grand Witches’ Ball

“This year, we’re going to hold a ceremony at the beginning and at the end of the night, remembering those killed.”

“And two psychedelic rock bands,” I said.

“And a mind-reading act,” Jackie added.

“A stage act or a psychic act?” I asked.

“A stage act. He lives down Penzance way.”

“You don’t have to be part of witch culture to attend this event?”

“No. It’s open to all. Once we’ve covered our costs, we are raising funds for Womankind Worldwide, which champions women around the world.”

“When did you meet Matt Roper?” I asked.

“Before he got into his Wilfredo character – without the teeth and trousers – and I thought What a delightful young man! How handsome! and then I saw him as Wilfredo and – Christ! – I couldn’t believe it! Has he told you about Reincarnation Street, my mystical soap opera set in Totnes?”

“No.”

“We did it using finger puppets. Johnny Depp is in it.”

“As a finger?”

“No, as a puppet. He has a walk-on part – Well it’s more of a shuffle-on part, because I’ve got my finger up his skirt. The first episode is on YouTube. Reincarnation Street: A Mystical Soap Opera Set in Totnes.”

“Has it got a theme tune like Coronation Street?”

“Yes, but with an Indian sitar.”

“Matt took me to Totnes,” I said.

“Oh!” replied Jackie, “so you have experienced the aura-polishing and the chakra dancing and the womb whispering?”

“Womb whispering?” I asked.

“I saw an advert for it.”

“In the local paper?”

“In a poster up on a notice board. Chakra dancing, womb yoga, womb whispering, equine therapy, free hugs.”

“I have to say some people may think witchery is a bit odd,” I said, “but it has nothing on Totnes.”

Coronation Street was built smaller

It is a strange route I know, but this morning I read via the Scottish Television website that English Heritage may list the outdoor set of ITV’s Coronation Street as a historic monument.

Later this year, Granada TV are moving to the new Media City complex at Salford Quays in Manchester and building a new set there. Whether the potential listing of the old set is true or just ITV spin I do not know.

Granada used to do tours of Coronation Street. Maybe they just want a bit of publicity before building a new set and re-opening the old one to tourists.

It is not the original set, though. When I first worked at Granada, there was an older outdoor set which had not been built to normal proportions. It had been built slightly smaller than real life to save money on construction costs but, with careful camera angles, it looked perfect.

You only noticed it was slightly smaller than reality if, for example, you stood in the entrance door of the Rover’s Return pub… and you discovered you were slightly taller than you normally were.

The new set (the one English Heritage are allegedly thinking of listing) is full-scale.

Are they still celebrities even if you don’t know who on earth they are?

Someone said I was namedropping in yesterday’s blog when I mentioned that comedian Peter Cook once almost collided with me while he was running in the rain in Hampstead…

I don’t think it was. It is merely bizarre how people intersect with others. It is usually less than six degrees of separation.

I remember Jewish American comedian Andrew J.Lederer telling me (and, indeed, mentioning in one of his Edinburgh Fringe shows) that once in New York he encountered the Nazi’s favourite film director Leni Riefenstahl and she, of course, had shaken the hand of Hitler so he – a New York Jew in the 2000s – was only one handshake away from Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.

Someone told me last night that she thinks she may have briefly met Sammy Davis Jnr “at Alice Cooper’s birthday party” in the US perhaps 30 years ago…. “But it might not have been Sammy Davis. I did not talk to him and Alice Cooper was not even at the birthday party.”

I once showed Captain Sensible, formerly of punk rock band The Damned, round the Coronation Street set. He was up at the Granada TV studios in Manchester for some long-forgotten pop show, but all he really wanted to do was have his photograph taken in Coronation Street. I seem to vaguely remember him sitting happily on top of a red pillar box.

Comic Bob Slayer tells me: “At the Killer Bitch movie premiere, I met that lovely lady The Black Widow Murderer who was Myra Hindley’s hairdresser. I once had an ex-girlfriend who said she was having an affair with Neil Morrisey, but she was making it up. And several years ago (at least ten) I had a go at internet dating but didn’t have a digital photo of me myself or a camera so, I used an image of Buster Bloodvessel (lead singer of the band Bad Manners) which I found online… no-one ever said the photo was not of me.”

I myself once drove Buster Bloodvessel from Monmouth to Norwich for a film shoot.  He was very nice.

Bob Slayer says: “I drove Snoop Dogg from St Martin’s Lane to the Playboy Club in London recently, where he was doing a private gig. At the Club, there was some little fella having his photo taken with some bunny girls who were nearly a foot taller than him. I leant in and told him that there were probably some others his own size inside. Inside, some guy I did not recognise was talking about football to a bouncer. The next day, I saw the showbiz photos taken at the Playboy Club and it turned out the short-arse was Joe McElderry. Apparently he won the sixth series of The X Factor? It also turned out that the guy talking about football was Ashley Cole and the big fella who I thought was a bouncer was boxer David Haye.”

Andy Warhol was wrong when he said that, in future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.

He should have added “…but you may not know who they are”.

Who is the Black Widow Murderer and is there only one? It sounds like a tabloid term that may have been used more than once in different countries.

Fame is a fickle mistress.