MR HACK N0. 104

 

 

It is good to bring you good, happy news ... Betty Rainsford (nee Lowry) is well known to a whole raft of journalists. She was at one time Woman's Editor of the Belfast Telegraph and carried out that job with style and skill. She celebrated her 90th birthday on Monday and a group of her ex-colleagues thought it would be a good idea to mark the occasion with a lunch at the Reform Club in the heart of Belfast. A good time was had by all ... and the pictures show that clearly. Present (in no particular order) were three editors of the Belfast Telegraph - Roy Lilley, Ed Curran and Martin Lindsay. Plus Belfast Telegraph's best known and legendary sports editor, Malcolm Brodie along with ex-colleagues from the Features Dept. of those early days, Billy Graham and Blogmaster John Caruth. Also present to celebrate was an old friend, Desmond McGimpsey, ex-Northern Whig, the Press Association and later with the Northern Ireland Tourist Board. And last but not least: Suzanne Lowry who happily took the time and trouble to fly from France to attend. Along with the two pictures featured here, we have an album, Betty's 90th Birthday with additional views of the lunch.

Comments

[Cal McCrystal]

What wonderful pics, with everyone looking so healthy and contented. I'm particularly happy to see the admirable Betty Lowry of whom I have such fond memories. She looks absolutely terrific for a 90-year-old. I really had no idea that Suzanne and Betty are related. I remember Suzanne at the Sunday Times when she attended - and often inspirited - news and feature conferences in the editor's office. I send my congratulations to Betty and very best wishes to Suzanne and the rest of the Reform Club celebrants.

[KB]

Wonderful pictures.

[JC]

Thanks for the praise for the pictures ... My camera skills are getting better as I get older it seems. Another point: Suzanne and Betty are not related ... just the same birth names. Suzanne was a member of Betty's Woman's Desk team along with Anne Fry and Carol Clewlow who have vanished from our sight.

[Cal McCrystal]

Ah! That explains it. Thanks, John for clearing that up.

[Blogmaster]

Interesting article from this morning's i newspaper about the setting up and the imminent closure and sale of the Wapping plant in London which brought to an end the stranglehold on newspaper production of the NGA and brought, from what I remember, smiles on the faces, particularly of sub editors who knew the meaning of having to work at the stone face ... Here is a link:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/one-small-step-for-news-corp-one-giant-symbolic-leap-in-press-history-2349772.html

[Simpson]

Carol Clewlow didn't disappear. She became a successful fiction writer and had at least one of her books turned into a TV film.

[Derek Black]

Anne Fry - I can't remember her on the 'women's' desk but I do remember her in Ballymena where she could not understand a word at council meetings. A kindly reporter from the opposition paper, the Ballymena Chronicle, took pity on her and gave her a black of his story.

Anne was from Pool-in-Wharfedale, pronounced 'pooh', in Yorkshire. She was last heard of in London working for a magazine called 'Community Care'.

Wasn't Carol Clewlow the one that set off to see the world with our late colleague David Watson. He came back with Anna, now Anna Lowe, Alliance MLA. Carol went on to greater things as Billy says.

[Derek Black]

Actually it was the Ballymena Observer and the kindly man was no other that Maurice O'Neill.

[Chris Ryder]

Some years ago Carol was living in Newcastle - not the local one but on Tyneside. I ran into her there some years ago in my SunTimes days along with former BT reporter Barbara (Cleland???) who was married to Sun reporter Roger Scott. They met in Belfast and settled in North-East where he was district man for the Sun. That was some time ago of course and may be out of date now.

[Chris Ryder]

For any interested Copyboy, the one-hour BBC NI doc on the Europa is being broadcast on BBC1 NIreland at 10.35pm on Monday 26 Sept. Should be a national transmission in due course.Many hacks feature.

Ran into Alistair McQueen's lovely sister at the preview-hotel birthday party on Monday night. Some of the original Penthouse Poppets were there too - they have matured beautifully! But there were six modern ones presiding. Memories!

[simpson]

I suspect Carol Clewlow is not lost, merely misplaced. I know she has written several novels. The most famous being "A Woman's Guide to Adultry". Other's include "Not Married, Not Bothered" and "Keeping the Faith". Interested to read Chris Ryder's piece about the Europa's Penthouse Poppets. When the hotel first advertised for 'Poppets', my then features editor, Tom Carson, thought it would be a cracker of an idea for me to apply for a job as a Poppet to test out how far sex equality really went in the modern workplace. Sadly, did not get the job. They decided the Poppet costume was too low cut to disguise the hair on my chest. Also I got caught by a trick question by the interviewer. Asked what I'd do if a male customer offered to buy me a drink, I said "I'll have a pint, thanks." Apparently Poppets weren't allowed to accept drinks from punters. Glad I didn't get it. Those tights looked very restricting. I think I still have a picture of the occasion.

[Blogmaster]

One of the vanishing legends of Fleet Street, Mike Terry, has died at the age of 86. Many tales about him involved his glass eye. We can remember him at this link ...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8748145/Mike-Terry.html

[Michael]

*RANT ALERT* *RANT ALERT* *RANT ALERT*

What has happened to the embargo? It's no longer enough to report on events as they happen, the meejah now reports on events that are still to happen. Tomorrow's News Today.

This morning the BBC not only covered the report on alleged Army abuses in Iraq, it even asked General Jackson to comment upon it. He swiftly replied that he had not yet seen it as it was still to be released.

All too frequently the Beeb leads on a speech that the Prime Minister is expected to make today, following later with the same details from the speech which the Prime Minister gave today.

Is there not enough news out there, or can today's journalists not find it, or is the 24-hour "news" machine so greedy that it must regurgitate copy in this way? I remember when the embargo was a very useful tool for newspapers with their two-hour production lead time. We all respected it because it was to our advantage to do so.

Today the lead time is measured in minutes where once we reckoned in hours. So why the need for advance copy at all, and whatever happened to the embargo?

*ALL CLEAR* *RANT OVER*

May I offer my congratulations to Betty Lowry on her 90th birthday? For some years until my departure in 1968 I sat with Betty to my left, beyond her Chrys Weir, the lovely Suzanne opposite ... and Billy Simpson to my right. Could anyone have asked for more illustrious colleagues?

[A.McQ.]

Three were certainly fragrant and charming, Michael, but I don't know about the fourth

[Alastair McQueen]

I have seen on this site several references to the standard of subbing on the BBC NI website - or lack of it. But, of course, the reporters who write the actual stuff are equally to blame. They do not appear to have a style book and if they do they either ignore it or it must be the worst bloody style book ever. Today's lead story is about a Presbyterian minister addressing the Sinn Fein gathering in Belfast. The clergyman is referred to as Rev (Belfast Telegraph style) and in later references as Rev again and again instead of Mr. The Belfast Telegraph always referred to a Protestant clergyman as Rev Whoever on first mention and then as Mr afterwards. The News Letter referred to them as "the Rev" and then as Mr afterwards. A Roman Catholic clergyman was always called Father on first mention and abbreviated to Fr in subsequent mentions. On the Northern Constitution we referred to clergy in the same style as the News Letter and other local newspapers in NI at the time did the same. From memory the BT's style was unique. So is BBC NI using a style book of its own - or is the copy subbed and written by morons making up a style as they go along? I think we should be told. If such a sloppy piece of "reportage" had appeared in The Belfast Telegraph there would have been an immediate Inquisition conducted by JES, Freddie Gamble, Hastings McGuinness and John Rooks and Heaven itself could not have protected the offender(s). I'm sure G.McK, C.McC, M.McR and SM will be able to provide some authority on this.

[Derek Black]

Alastair

I think it was 'the Rev' first time and then 'Mr'

Of course, there is not much subbing done these days, not since Mr Murdoch and Mr Shah before him introduced the money saving delights of direct input.

I used to have three lines of defence - a sub editor who knew about cars, a type-setter who also new about cars and a proof reader. They are all gone now - and so am I. Subs don't sub anymore they just shovel copy in and as for style books - they are history.

I still have my little red BT Style book, beloved of Des McMullan,
in one of the drawers.

Now the priorities are doing things quickly and staying in business

[Michael]

Yes Derek, it was 'the Rev.' first time and then 'Mr.', with of course the stops.

Let none say the Beeb ignores the definite article. Quite often one hears "the HMS Glamorgan" or other Royal Navy vessel. Poor JES must be turning non-stop.

The great man told me once that the BT style book owed much to that of The Times. I used to think it was too hidebound, now I realise how necessary it was.

[sm]

The NL did indeed have a very comprehensive House style-book - I was given one to digest when I arrived there in 1959. I wish I'd kept it. The previous contributors are right, of course, regarding "The Rev." when first mentioned, and thereafter "Mr." It also contained the order of seniority as far as titles were concerned - Barons, Counts, Lords, Viscounts and so on - as well as their wives and offspring. And the Birthday and New Year Honours required one to know the order in which they went. An interesting book and one which would not be out out place on our bookshelves today.

[Cal McCrystal]

In 1956, soon after joining the Belfast Telegraph’s reporting staff, the inimitable Tommy Roberts, who recently had succeeded John Cole as pol. corr, noticed me reading “On the Study of Words”, a book of lectures by the Archbishop of Dublin, Richard Chenevix Trench, D.D. (1882).
What’s that you’re reading, Cal?” he asked. I showed him the chapter I had open: “Words the Guardian of Thoughts”, or possibly “Fair Words for Ugly Things.”
“Ah, yes!” exclaimed Tommy knowingly, “the greater style book for journalists ...”
It wasn’t really. But Trench’s book (which I retaain) contans wonderful examples of how our language has changed down the years. “Daft’ once meant modest or retiring. “Crafty” and “Cunning” meant only knowledge and skill. A “pedant” was simply a tutor - and so on.
The greatest “pedant” or tutor from which I learned the journalistic craft was The Kemsley Manual of Journalism, a 400-page guide given to me and inscribed, in April 1955) by Frank Entwisle, my then editor on Bangor’s Norther Herald.
However. if memory serves, most rules on the BT were gleaned by word-of-mouth (I recall in particular Freddie Gamble instructing me on the “Rev” rule. Similarly, The Sunday Times had its own, post-Kemsley, style book, but I cannot remember ever studying it. I suppose the subs table or the much lamented proof readers fixed things up where required. No longer, I’m afraid. Even my very good friend Christopher Hitchens in today’s Guardian Review gets by with “try and ...” rather than “try to ...”. [Sigh!]

[Blogmaster]

By the by: there is a conference in London today at the University of Westminster focussing on India, a land where 99 MILLION newspapers are sold each day and where sales grew 46 per cent in the first eight years of the century and where 100 twenty-four hour television news channels broadcast. And they are analysing the changing face of journalism there?

[Chris Ryder]

John Whale was the arbiter of style on The Sunday Times and produced a booklet which I still have somewhere but it was the subs who most rigorously enforced it. They were an eclectic bunch. During the week they worked on The Sun or The Telegraph but did Saturday casual shifts with us. Interesting how they reacted differently to raw copy. Telegraph men often snorted at Irish copy. We took a more liberal approach than their motherpaper did!

[Cal McCrystal]

Chris, what made Daily Telegraph subs snort at Irish copy? Even if one says, "I tink I heard a tump of tunder," one would still write, "I think I heard a thump of thunder."

[Chris Ryder]

Well Cal, references to British Army excesses, for instance, were alien to the Telegraph mindset and caused green eye shades to be pushed back and furrowed brows to be rubbed. Bloody Sunday was a constant concern for them when it was suggested that the Army had shot dead unarmed civilians. But don't really want to denigrate them. They were all very professional characters especially Frank Barbour???, the splash sub. George Gardiner, later a right wing Tory MP was really the principal culprit.

[Cal McCrystal]

Yes, I remember well (and warmly) Frank Barber, utterly professional, now deceased. Both his sons work for the FT (Lionel being editor), and both as professional as their dad. My memory of George Gardiner is hazier: a thin, spindle-shanked figure, with whom I had no encounters, comes to mind.

[Blogmaster]

Enjoying this conversation, but wonder did either of you read today's Charles Spencer column in the DT? It's funny in places... he's quite critical of William Rees-Mogg's memoirs (the 'ineffable superiority of the former editor of The Times') and he writes: 'He is actually a a terrible memoirist entirely unable to bring to life the many famous people he has met. We learn, for instance that Harold Wilson was devious and Ted Heath wasn't much good with people. Hold the front page...'

He also recalls a lunch Rees-Mogg attended with the Queen and Rupert Murdoch, 'an occasion at which one longs to have been a fly on the wall, he reports that Rupe and Her Maj seemed to get along famously, before adding, with the bathos that is such a feature of his book:"I cannot remember a word that was said."'

[Simpson]

I confess I was avoiding the Style Book debate because I fear the lonliness of being a heretic. The Belfast Telegraph style book, as I recall, was not all that much different from the Northern Whig or Press Association style books. While clarity and good punctuation are admirable in any communication, I fear too many rules tends to imprison language. I was only in the Telegraph a short time in 1964 when a fat report on some aspect of local government that looked too boring to read, was dropped on my desk to get something out of. Turned out that hidden in the usual officialese and gobbledygook was quite a good story. When the newsdesk got the first few pages, the then deputy editor, Martin Wallace, came down, took over my seat at the typewriter saying the story needed a punchier intro. I stood behind him and watched he write a very puncy intro that got to the heart of the story, but in a prose that broke several of the sacred commandments in the Style Book. Frankly I never bothered with the style book after that and simply played everything by ear and (I hoped) common sense. It allowed me the freedom to put a little colour into some sentences that I used to try to enliven many a dull story. I confess that injecting a little humour into stories was not always appreciated. Recall being scolded by the great Whig editor, Bruce Proudfoot, who said "Young man, you are not working for Reville." (A somewhat racy weekly tabloid of the time.) However, as the author, poet and occasional journalist, Clive James once said, having a sense of humour was just 'Common sense dancing." And as a local academic once told me, the fact that the Scots, Irish and Welsh retain some colour and music in their way of speaking is because they learned their English before grammer was invented. (Or uniform spelling).

[Blogmaster]

Graeme Forster

We learn of the sudden death in Cornwall of Graeme Forster, formerly a graphic artist on the Design Desk at the Belfast Telegraph. Darwin Templeton files us this report:

Graeme Forster, former Belfast Telegraph graphic artist died suddenly last month in Cornwall. He was just 42.

A service of thanksgiving for his life was held at Roselawn on Monday morning and was attended by several hundred mourners, including former Telegraph colleagues Nick Garbutt, David Ballantine, Malachy McCourt, Jennifer Doherty and Darwin Templeton.

The mourners heard a moving tribute from Graeme's brother Robin, who spoke of Graeme's talent and the pride taken in his work in both words and pictures. After leaving the Telegraph, Graeme worked for both the Daily Mirror and the Daily Record.

He is also survived by his parents Norman and Audrey, who live in Donaghadee.

Our condolences go to Graeme's family at this sad time.

[Blogmaster]

BELFAST TELEGRAPH
IN THE FIFTIES ...

Thanks to our good friend, Dave Culbert, now Senior Content Producer on the BBC's NI website. He has sent us a link to a wonderful nostalgic piece of Fifties film featuring the production of the Belfast Telegraph. I see several people I know (and worked with in the Editorial and the composing room) and hope others around here will be able to put names to people they may know. Here is the link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00k5x6p

[sm]

Nostalgia! You can almost smell the hot metal!

[Michael]

Aye Stewarty, it brought back the smells of hot metal, ink and white spirit used for cleaning after proofing. I watched this clip with many replays, recognising Bobby Young, Harry McMaster, Tommy Edgar and Major Finlay, Rod McLaren the stone sub, and Fred Gamble. There were also familiar faces around the stone but I can't remember their names.

Many thanks to Dave for the link; I enjoyed it immensely.

[JC]

Good spotting Michael ... I'd love to know who the suited Picture Editor was? - it is not big Herbie McMullan, I think. In the composing room sequence I saw John Currie who always got the back page to makeup and the foreman, Ned Renton who I always remember as a helpful and friendly gentleman.

[Simpson]

I've just finished watching it. I'm going to send the link to my brother-in-law, Willie Harbinson, now in his 80s but in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he worked as a copyboy at the Telegraph before he joined the RAF. He has many fond memories of his time there.

He recalls Big Herbie the photographer and how he was 'arrested' by the police for taking photographs around the docks. They took Herbie back to the Telegraph and made him develop every picture he took and went through them with a magnifying glass before deciding he wasn't a spy after all.

This was when Herbie was just another photographer and long before he became picture editor. Willie talks about those days all the time and appears to have a photographic memory of his time as a copyboy. Which amuses him because he says he has a better memory of that than he does of his years in charge of the maintainance crews at Belfast's Parks Department.

Of course, I suspect we all remember our teen years with more clarity than our adult lives. Interesting to see they still used horses for delivery in the city into the 1950s.

[Michael]

The Pic Ed was Harry McMaster whose deputy was Herbie McMullan, who I think was brother of T McM, Tom McMullan, joint managing ed with JES.

Harry was slight in stature, Herbie was called Big Herbie with good reason. They made an unlikely pair, and I remember them with affection.

When Harry died in 1961 the PicEd job went to 'Met' Metcalfe, late of the News Chronicle which had died too. Most of us were disappointed that Herbie didn't get it.

Harry had been very close friends with Anne Lawlor, JES's secretary, who was kind to me when I started from school (as was almost everyone else). In those days one kept a stiff upper lip and I admired Anne's composure, for she was devastated.

The latest blockmaking machine in the film was the Klischograph, which scanned prints and engraved the images onto alloy sheets rather than the much slower etching process. It was operated by Tommy Reynolds in a stuffy little room off the photo dept. He was well known as comedian Tom Raymond.

I remember Ned Renton and Albert Huddleston, who usually made up p1. Albert could be prickly at times, especially when I innocently slid a galley across the stone to him on one of my early visits to the stone. Nobody, but nobody, touched type unless they were in the Typographical Association.

I too didn't realise the BT had horses so late on. The newsprint, three rolls at a time, often came on Wordie's horse-drawn cart. The delivery door had steel channels to guide the cart wheels and it was reckoned too restricted for a motor lorry.

One huge and friendly Clydesdale was called Tom and I used to feed him on sugar lumps purloined from the canteen (lunch 3s/15p, free with a pink docket signed by chief sub if you took a 30-minute break instead of 90 mins).

One day I failed to notice Tom, waiting his turn to unload outside McGlade's entry, and went for my lunchtime stroll. Seeing his mid-day cuddle and sugar lumps disappearing into Royal Avenue, Tom whinnied loudly and set off in pursuit.

A mighty Clydesdale hardly notices three rolls of newsprint on his cart ... or Albert Huddleston's green Ford Popular which was dragged sideways by the cart's rear wheel. I avoided Albert's dominion on the stone for the next week or two.

[Chris Ryder]

Wonderful picture of long lost days.

[ruthie]

Jeremy Clarkson was hilarious in Sunday Times. I never read his column, but last week was so funny I had to mention it.

[RHL]

This film is absolutely fascinating. I'm fairly certain that the Picture Editor is indeed Harry McMaster. I also spotted Major J St C Finlay (Chief Sub in my early days) and also (I think) a youthful David Gilliland on the subs' table. Can't say I recognised Tommy Edgar but perhaps I need to visit Specsavers again. And the Sixth Edition going to Press at 5-30 pm!!!!! I wonder what Mike Gilson would make of it all.(via email)

[Michael]

Sorry I can't place RHL though he/she must be of my vintage.
Tommy Edgar, to be precise the back of his head, appears in the shot with Major Finlay, whom I remember with deepest loathing. This view of Tommy was familiar to me as he was copytaster in the slot while I was in my lowly down-table position.

Others included Canadian Garth Wilton, John Brown who I think was son of an MP, Mick Murphy and Dan Kinney who taught me so much, and Sam McMurray who subbed the Derry.

Anyone remember Frank Manley from Glasgow, whose life was made hell by the screaming Major until he resigned after six months? Hastings Maginnis was quite distressed by this, saying that the Chapel should have taken action. Later, the Chapel did.

Having called me up to the Table one day the Major was raising a full head of steam when there was an ominous rumble beside him. Cowan slammed the table so that a cloud of dust rose from its ancient crevices and roared: "For f---'s sake Jim leave the boy alone!"

The Major fell silent and didn't speak to me for a couple of weeks thereafter, a state of affairs which made me very happy.

[JC]

When I got to know the Major he was safely tucked away in a room down the corridor where the weekly papers were edited and designed. I remembere he was in the tranquil company of Mick Murphy, Ivan Peebles and the gentlemanly figure of Fred Owens.

[Desmond McGimpsey]

Cal McCystal's remark about "a tump of tunder" reminds me of an amusing incident when some members of the British media on a visit to the North West of Ireland encountered the Irish concept of "tunder".

It was when I was with the Northern Ireland Tourist Board and a Bord Failte colleague and I had organised an angling and golfing weekend in Fermanagh and Bundoran for news editors in the English ITV network.

Some of the fishing enthusiasts were "flogging the water" on a stretch of the Erne between Belleek and Ballyshannon without much success. A local rode up on his bike and stopped to watch them from a bridge nearby.

One of the anglers called out to him: "We were told this was a good spot for fish." The local replied: "The fish are there surely but it'll be the tunder."

"Thunder?" exclaimed the Englishman, "We haven't heard any thunder."

" Ah but," the rustic explained. "I heard on the news, it's been tunderen desperate bad in Belfast."

[A.McQ]

Clearly the trout in Fermanagh have a different reaction to tunder. My old photographer colleague Bill Kennedy - he was on the Mirror staff in Dublin, Manchester and London as well as making many forays into NI - discovered a fishery just east of London. Several times we went there and "thrashed the water" and occasionally returned with our supper until....The Day The Tunder Came. A raging tempest of monumental proportions the like of which is hard to imagine.....but the fish went into a feeding frenzy. It was our best day ever at that spot. We each left with a dozen and a half trout, soaked to the skin and happy. We could have had more but the cosy little pub nearby was calling. And there was much hilarity among the locals as we squelched in.

[Malcolm Brodie]

I remember the film being made in BT. The page being made up is the sports - compositors Ned Renton John Curry and the sub-editor at bottom, I believe, is a young Jack Magowan. RHL sent me the list of picture editors - I think the first one is missing. His name was Leonard but I cannot remember his first name but it should come to me.

We were talking about the hotel at the back of the Telegraph, Robinson’s Hotel - it was another of my haunts. I used to take myself out of the BT on Saturday’s at 12-45 and go for lunch there and a snooze before working in the ISN in the office during the summer months.

If Robinson’s could speak it would produce some fascinating stories which makes the NOW hacking resemble Romper Room! (via email).

[Desmond McGimpsey]

Reading the comments of my retired colleagues, I am sure there must be a hidden anthology of amusing Press anecdotes stretching back to the middle of the last Century and waiting to be extracted from mental recesses for the entertainment of us all and future hacks. They need not be confined to the Belfast media scene because such stories typify the journalist's world wherever he lives or works.

I'll begin with the best one given to me recently in the memoirs of Peter Paterson, a former Daily Telegraph Industrial correspondent with whom I often worked in Fleet Street in the 1960's. It concerns Mick McGaghey, the communist Scottish miner's leader whom we both knew well. When Mick's mother died in Glasgow in her nineties, he placed a placard on her coffin : " Murdered by Capitalism."

In those days we spent more than half our time reporting the annual round of wage claims argued between employers and unions with the issues sometimes resolved in the early morning hours over beer and sandwiches.

The yearly cycle began in the engineering industry after the TUC conference in September and the Amalgamated Engineering Union was first in the field. When Sir William Carron, the AEU President, led his team to meet the employers" federation in November 1963, the chairman greeted him with the weary remark : " In the vanguard as usual, Sir William". Carron's reply was as quick as a shuttlecock : " On the contrary chairman, we feel relegated to the guard's van "

[Malcolm Brodie]

The name of the photo editor before Harry McMaster and Herbie McMullan was John Burford Leonard. (via email).

[Michael]

Desmond's anthology #2:
In the mid-Sixties Belfast Corporation had a ferocious little Shankill member called Tommy someone. He had fought with the Chindits and debated under wartime rules, being known to punch an opponent.

In those days Belfast Corporation members viewed all films so that the citizens would not be corrupted. When flesh was exposed the Corporation viewing was prelimmed and all the hacks would gather outside the cinema, thereby guaranteeing a full house.

Of course these films would have been laughed off today's TV screens. One day we met the film committee emerging from the Ritz, having endured some boreno-flick on our behalf.

What did Tommy think of it? "Oh, it's photographic. Definitely photographic, we won't allow it in Belfast".

[Derek Black]

Might that have been Johnny McQuade, Michael. He fought in Burma etc.

[Michael]

Thanks Derek, Johnny McQuade it was, all those 45 yrs ago.

[Chris Ryder]

One late night in the London Commons, Johnny was reliving his Army days including recollections of a parachute drop. Gerry Fitt shouted: Did you land on your head?

[sm]

Johnny was also a fairly successful professional boxer in his "young day." He fought under the name of Jack Higgins.

[Simpson]

It is true that Councillor Johnny McQuade served as a chindit under Orde Wingate in Burma. But I think Michael may be confusing him with Alderman Tommy Henderson, the master of the mixed metaphor. And he was a ferocious opponent of naughty films. After viewing "Last Tango in Paris" he warned the public that "This kind of sex can give you leprosy." Complaining about the number of lampposts and trollybus poles around Donegall Square, he declared "There are more poles round City Hall than there are in Warsaw." Perhaps some of our other bloggers can remember some of wee Tommy's famous quips.

[Simpson]

Just read a worrying article on Yahoo news, more chilling because I fear it is absolutely true. It is a list of things that are basically obsolete due to technological advances in communication: newspapers, books, CDs, maps, pocket calculators and landline telephones. And if you view TV on your computer or ipad, you don't need to pay for a TV licence anymore. I may keep my library of books around for sentimental reasons but those a generation after me may well never have a bookcase in the house.

[sm]

Tommy Henderson holds the record for the longest speech ever made in a UK Parliament. It lasted, I think, 10 hours.
Tommy once rang the NL to ask Cowan Watson if he could help him out as he was "financially embarrassed" and intended to sell his complete bound copies of Hansard. Photographer Cecil McCausland and I went round to his home in the Cromac Square area - Ewan Place I think (not sure of the spelling but no matter!) He told me was a lonely man - in fact his one true friend was his budgie and he talked to it every night before going to bed. He believed the sale of his Hansard volumes would raise him much needed cash. However, when the story appeared - with a photo of Tommy and his budgie - Tommy didn't like it and decided to sue me, Cecil, Cowan and the NL. We met with barristers for weeks hammering out some sort of settlement, but Tommy wanted cash. We eventually settled out of court - the amount I can't remember. I can also add that, in an effort to save my own and Cecil's bacon, I kept Cowan's "beano" (Mike will remember those!) on the morning the report appeared praising Cecil and myself for the great story and how it did Tommy proud.
Obviously, Tommy didn't agree....!

[Blogmaster]

Thanks to sm's help, a photograph of Tommy Henderson talking to his budgie is now in the Pictures album, with his name to help you find it ... Tommy's ... not the budgie.

[Desmond McGimpsey]

Oh! the memories of Tommy Henderson, Independent Unionist member for Shankill at Stormont, Alderman of Belfast Corporation and former High Sheriff, and compared with whom John Prescott is an amateur in imaginative and eccentric use of English. He added gaiety to our lives as reporters at the City Hall, in Parliament or on the hustings.

His most memorable mixed metaphor was in one of his celebratory speeches after being returned for Shankill when he declared he looked forward to the day when the British Lion walked down the Shankill arm in arm with the floodgates of democracy.

His malapropisms too were of a quality matching those of Amanda McKittrick Ross, the celebrated Ulster self-publishing novelist of the 1930's. In one of his many denunciations in Stormont of Prime Minister Lord Craigavon and how he dominated the Unionist Party, he declared : " There he is like a huge octopus with his testicles stretching all over Ulster"

[Cal McCrystal]

That is hilariously funny. I had forgotten Tommy Henderson, but the testicular octopus brings him back. Wasn't he a small, shouty, man who had something to do with reclaiming part of Belfast Lough's Antrim shoreline?

[sm]

Yep - he wanted to build some sort of Lido. Can't remember what happened - except that the Corporation threw the proposals out.

[Desmond McGimpsey]

When Tommy withdrew from active politics he was followed as the Independent Unionist voice in Shankill by William Wilton, head of the large firm of funeral undertakers, which is still in operation. Although becoming a City Councillor and serving for two terms as a Stormont Senator, he was a humourless man, lacking his predecessor's charisma and popular appeal.

One evening when he was addressing an open air meeting during a council election, a man standing at the front who had drunk too much kept interrupting him. Wilton told him he would get his chance when questions were taken afterwards. But the man wouldn't give up, so Wilton said sharply : "Well, what is it"? Swaying slightly, the man replied : " Ah only want to tell ye Mr Wilton, Melville's buryin me".

[Chris Ryder]

We cannot continue in this vein without recalling Tommy Patton. Asked what he had found most interesting on a visit to the USA as Lord Mayor he is reputed to have said: 'Visiting a Red Indian reservoir.'

On another occasion when told that part of the City Hall required costly and extensive renovation he is said to have remarked: ' I thnk all it needs is a good coat of Durex'.

[pete mcmullanr]

With brother-in-law Walter Love and wife Daphne out seeing the sights around Vancouver I have had time to catch up on recent postings, in particular Betty Lowry's Reform Club - a setting from another era if ever there was one - birthday luncheon. It was especially good to see Malcolm B among those present. He had a huge influence on the early stages of my BT career, more especially when I was offered a position as sports editor of the Nanaimo Daily Free Press - it was a one person department! - in September, 1955. The only catch was that I was required to start work in two weeks.MB was on assignment in Russia that week-end so I fired off a Telex
asking him to overlook the normal requirement for four weeks' notice. Back came the memorable response:"The answer from Moscow is uusually 'niet' but this time it's yes and God Bless". What a man.

[peter mcmullan]

...more typos..blame the machine

[peter mcmullan]

..and another typo...the date should have been September 1971.....1955 (January) was
when I joined the BT...definitely need a decent sub!