We all have fond memories of people we have worked with, alongside ... people we heard about but maybe never got to meet. People we maybe didn't get on with easily or even like too much. People we did like and wanted to help or better still, people who liked us and wanted to help us make advances ... People. That's one of the things which made working in newspapers for so long worthwhile. A bunch of people I remember ... journalists, compositors, lino operators like Harry Gould who never as I can remember had a smile on his face, but who knew words - how to spell them and what they meant. A walking dictionary or even thesaurus ... a smart arse, yes, but he deserved some respect. He kept many of us right in those Spectator days. Later, there were more people/characters to get to know and enjoy ... We feature one today: Ivan Lambert. He and me only met briefly and only exchanged passing greetings ... He comes to mind because I was sent the illustration by someone who did know him well and still manages to make it a fond remembrance, if that's the right way to put it ... Ivan spent the night at his friend's 'residence' and the following morning departed, leaving the drawing and the scribbed note which tells its own tale ...So, here's to memories of people we have worked with and still like to remember ...
I have extremely fond memories of Ivan Lambert, body builder, bon vivant, good reporter, libido-rapido-on-the-lido, and true friend. When we were both reporters on the Belfast Telegraph, he came to my house in Knock for dinner. I met him at the bus stop. As we walked to my home, he mentioned that he had half a dozen fresh free-range eggs loose in the pocket of the overcoat he was wearing. "They're for Stella,"[my wife] he said. We continued to chat as we walked. Then he mentioned a sub-editor colleague who, he said, had "mucked up" his copy recently. Ivan flapped his arms in anger, at one stage bringing a fist hard down on his overcoat pocket. Crack! Squelch! Expletives galore!
Posted by: Cal McCrystal | January 03, 2012 at 09:21 PM
Ivan had a reputation for pawning newsroom typewriters to get money for a few scoops. I remember him as a likeable old roué but I did not know him very well. Our profession today lacks characters like Ivan, Leslie Mills, the unique Bud Bossence and so on. Duller times. Different culture. Nostalgic sigh.
Posted by: Chris Ryder | January 04, 2012 at 11:00 AM
Great stuff Cal.
Let me apologise for omitting this explanation of the above sketch and message from Ivan. I've been having computer trouble.
I discovered the note while rummaging through some boxes which had been dumped in the attic when we moved into our present home 20 years ago. The story goes like this.
On a freezing winter night in the early 1970's, Rankin Armstrong - now Deputy Editor of the News Letter - and myself were heading home from a "Midnight Matinee" at the Ritz Cinema in Armagh. Usually something from the Hammer House of Horror and a bit of soft porn....as it was then called!
We left the Ritz at around 0230. It was absolutely baltic. As we walked down Scotch Street we noticed the light spilling onto the street from the Armagh Guardian Office. At the time I worked for the paper and knew it was closed for the weekend. Suspecting a break-in, we had a good gander through the window.
A lone figure lay stretched out on the floor behind the desks. We pushed the door open and there lay Ivan - then senior reporter. He was fast asleep with his feet thrust up against a two-bar electric fire.
The office was rank and filled with smoke. The rubber on the soles of his shoes was bubbling. It took us some time to rouse him.
When he calmed down and and got his shoes on again he explained he'd had a row with his lady friend and had cleared off for the night. I offered him the use of a setee at home.
By the time I got out of bed the next morning he'd disappeared. I discovered this note hastily scribbled (as you can see from the spelling mistake) on the back of this drawing he obviously liked and was carrying around.
I had totally forgotten about this incident until I found this note tucked away in an envelope. Isn't it amazing what treasures lie hidden in attics!
Posted by: David Lynas | January 04, 2012 at 11:04 AM
Yes and may I put in an appeal at this time for more searches of attics for pictorial treasures like David's ... We welcome them for possible use.
Posted by: Blogmaster | January 04, 2012 at 12:58 PM
Having thought about Ivan a bit more, it occurred to me that some of us may once have thought him cynical. But that cannot be true if one thinks of cynicism in the modern sense. The ancient Cynics of Athens and Corinth were not Machiavellian or nihilist or greedy or self-promoting. They were, like Ivan, often pessimistic about human motivation, and, according to William Desmond’s “Cynics” (Univ. of Calif. Press., 2008) “they could satirize their own contemporaries mercilessly ... They did not argue with tyrants, but laughed, danced capers and farted at all self-appointed authorities.”
Posted by: Cal McCrystal | January 04, 2012 at 02:15 PM
In these modern times the word cynic and sceptic are too often misused. Many journalists are accused of being cynics. They are not. They are sceptics - at least, if they're any good at their job. They will test what they are told against other criteria.
I always think that if you are a cynic you might as well jack it in.
Thank got for sceptic. If if wasn't for him/her there's be many more apologies/clarifications/corrections in our newspapers. Here's to sceptic!
Especially when anybody tells you that this that or the other is the "first time" that such-and-such has happened.
Posted by: Graham | January 04, 2012 at 08:46 PM
One question invariably comes up whenever I dine or drink with Americans in London. Why is it, someone politely asks, that British newspapers are more prurient than American newspapers?
To the diplomat’s wife or the visiting businessman I usually offer the same answer: we are prurient because our readers require it. And why should this be so? Because, I reply, prurience has become an emanation so central to our national culture that weightier subjects tend to sink from sight beneath it (Out of sight out of mind!).
This situation suits government very nicely, I go on, despite parliament’s occasional lamentations about it. An electorate guided by its copulatory organs is “safer” that one motivated by its power to reason.
Someone persists: Why now? It is then that I find myself in some difficulty. To mumble the name “Murdoch”, is a rather lame explanation. Of course he has vandalised and promoted prurience not only in Britain but in those newspapers (such as the New York Post) with which he has come into contact. But it cannot all be laid at Murdoch’s vast door. Besides, although American publications, by and large, are less obsessive about people’s sex lives, there is no real evidence to indicate that the prurient streak in the American reader is weaker than in his/her British counterpart.
In the early Fifties, long before I went to live in New York, there was a sensational trial of the “margarine heir”, Minot Frazier Jelke 3rd, who was accused of procuring and living off the earnings of prostitutes. For weeks before the trial, daily newspaper articles promising smut galore occupied front pages, equalling (if not totally eclipsing) coverage of the new Eisenhower administration. Outrage followed across the land when Judge Francis Valente decided to bar press and public from the courtroom, a move condemned by the New York Times, even though that paper was milder than most in its coverage of the case. Later, recalling the episode, Henry Luce, the late founder of Time-Life, told journalism students in Oregon:
“Even if the New York Times was right and the judge was wrong, I am sure that all of you will confess with me a feeling of humiliation and shame that our profession is so obviously inspired by such ambiguous motives, and that the freedom we so uncritically demand is so often nothing more than the freedom to pander. If we pander to sensuality that is bad enough. But there may be even greater danger in the fact that freedom of the press is also freedom to pander to ignorance, to mediocrity, to group passions and prejudices, to hatred and meanness, to pander to all that is unlovely in democracy.” [Bravo, Henry!]
While it may be argued that the American press did not avoid pandering to the unloveliness of McCarthyism in that very same decade, an impression persists that American journalism is loftier than British journalism. This was not always so.
Shortly after becoming President of the United States in 1900, Theodore Roosevelt allowed his anger at American journalists to get the better of him. “If a room is fetid and the windows are bolted, I’m perfectly contented to knock out the windows,” he said, “but I would not want to knock a hole into the drainpipe, [for] I want to let in light and air, but I do not want to let in sewer gas.”
The effluvium that had found its way up the President’s nose was produced by newspapers and magazines whose stories about corruption and other wrongdoing in high places were fashionable at the time. The publishers ranged from the so-called “yellow-press” sensationalism of William Randolph Hearst, aimed at urban, blue-collar readers, to heavier fare - magazines such as McClure’s, Cosmopolitan, Everybody’s and Metropolitan - which addressed the middle class on the exploitation of child labour and corrupt political machines.
It was known as the “muckraking era”. It caused the angry President to declare that such journalists not only never had anything constructive to say, but resembled the character in Pilgrim’s Progress “who could look no way but downward with a muckrake in his hand, who was offered a celestial crown for his muckrake, but would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake to himself the filth of the floor.”
I recall this for two reasons. The first is because the muckraking journalism that seriously took off as America prepared to enter the 20th century was started at the lower end of the market during cut-throat circulation wars (cover-price going as low as one cent). Hearst’s papers appealed to rude, basic instincts by attacking - often recklessly and irresponsibly - duly constituted authority and any individuals whose humiliation might titillate readers. Their commercial success was not missed by the new magazines which then went on to make exposé journalism respectable.
Shady deals on Wall Street, union racketeering, dodgy bankers, copper magnates, insurance companies, oil companies were enthusiastically exposed, as were fraud by the railroad companies and dangerous practices by the major food and drugs manufacturers. It was one particular series, The Treason of the Senate, by David Graham Phillips in Cosmopolitan, indicting a number of senators for placing themselves at the service of “the Interests”, that made Roosevelt explode.
The second reason is that British journalism appeared to be in a somewhat similar position as we prepared to enter the 21st century, and even more so in that century’s first dozen years. “Muckraking” has always had less honourable connotations in Britain than it (or the best of it) had in Roosevelt’s America. Here, it is often associated with leg-over stuff: rampant actresses, dirty vicars and the like. But, promoted as exposés, it sells tabloids.
As we have seen in recent years, many British magazines, notably those endeavouring to appeal to women, have copied the formula. Sometimes it has seemed that, in the midst of our own circulation wars, life is entirely composed of a tangled mass of knicker elastic, zip-fasteners, soiled sheets and tumescent public figures. But, true to the American experience a century ago, some publications have managed to raise the muckrake from “the filth of the floor” to a level which, if not exactly “celestial”, is more edifying - and certainly in the public interest. In other words, the muckraking frenzy at the lower end of the market may have directly fuelled an appetite for exposés at the higher end.
That being the case, we may ask ourselves a question. Will the exposés by British broadsheets - and a couple of occasionally serious tabloids - create the sort of backlash which, in the end, greeted (and all but finished off for many decades to come) muckraking in the United States? Roosevelt’s fulminations apart, a number of influential and liberal Americans became convinced that in exposing the evils in labour, capital and government the muckrakers, as one chronicler, Forrest McDonald, put it, “dramatised a widespread sickness in American society, a glaring contempt for law”.
What occurred in the United States then was that exposure articles came to be regarded as a prerequisite for success. So “The Despotism of Combined Millions” (about insurance companies) and “The Greatest Trust in the World” (about shady finance and price-fixing in the meat packing industry) were followed by “The Railroads on Trial” and “The Great American Fraud” (food), not to mention exposés on the appalling conditions in New York’s tenements.
Some readers demanded remedies to the evils exposed, but in time many more simply got fed up with what seemed to be an unwholesome obsession with the sordid. Some popular magazines dropped muckraking altogether. Others, among them McClure’s, bit the dust. Consequently, virtually the only American newspaper exposé still bandied about after a quarter-century is Watergate.
In Britain, it may be useful to go back even further - to the unsettled 16th century, when newspapers which operated like ferrets proliferated like them too. “Devoted to political purposes, they soon became a public nuisance by serving as receptacles of party malice, and echoing to the farthest ends of the kingdom the insolent voice of all factions. They set the minds of men more at variance, inflamed their tempers to a greater fierceness, and gave a keener edge to the sharpness of civil discord” (Isaac D’Israeli’s Curiosities of Literature). Most sank without trace.
Once again, the conflict between newspapers and authority has many elements of civil discord. We have come to regard everyone as “fair game” , so far as intrusive journalism is concerned. Not all that longe ago, while the Prince of Wales was denied the privacy of his on bathroom on holiday, the then deputy governor of the Bank of England was denied the privacy of the bank’s bathroom for other easements.
So far as exposés of politicians are concerned (and it should be stressed that much of the 2009 parliamentary expenses scandal was purchased, not muckraked), it could be argued that this is a reaction to one of two things, or possibly both: a realisation that MPs and Cabinet Ministers are pretty much a duff bunch, and a realisation that the press has been far too cosy with them in the past. The brave, though ultimately unsuccessful, attempts by some newspapers in the Eighties to break the Lobby system may have been an acknowledgement of this, as well as a harbinger of things to come.
I am always suspicious of editors who socialise with the politically powerful, particularly when there clearly is no need for it. Yet, as one finds in political biographies, quite a lot of brown-nosing by Fleet Street went on. Denis Healey, for example, revealed in The Time of My Life that, as Defence Secretary, “I regularly invited the top editorial staff of the leading newspapers to dinner, and accepted their invitations in return. I would discuss my problems frankly with them, and never had a confidence betrayed.” He rarely felt that whatever criticisms of him they subsequently made were unfair.
The same cosiness exists in the United States, for all the emphasis on “objectivity” one hears about in that country. In the early Eighties, to illustrate the “symbiotic relationship” between press and congress, an American media analyst asked members of the House of Representaives how often the media treated them “fairly”. The result was, in my view, quite depressing: fewer than 3% of the legislators felt that the press as a whole treated them badly. Even the Washington Post and the New York Times were grumbled at by only 7% - surprising after the investigative trend that appeared, albeit unimpressively, after Watergate.
A point that emerged from the American study may have a bearing on the occasional parliamentary mood for anti-press legislation. US congressmen have complained about bloodthirsty, hostile, biased sections of the press, yet they gave specific media high marks for fairness and objectivity. Similarly, British politicians make trenchant remarks about the press as a whole for invading people’s privacy, whereas a more thoughtful assessment would show that a comparatively few, frequent invaders are entitled to most of the blame.
I suspect they know this to be the case. But by maintaining cries of outrage against press invasions of privacy, MPs help to maintain an atmosphere of popular mistrust in the media, thereby hoping to undermine exposés of more serious wrongdoing. A censored press is a censored press. A good press, on the other hand, is one that likes to hear pips squeak: whether they be 1890s Americans - John D Rockefeller (“God gave me my money”), or Pierpont Morgan (“I owe the public nothing”), or the New York financier George Baker (“It’s none of the public’s business what I do”) - or 2nd Millennium Britons.
When I was starting out in journalism, Frank Entwistle, a former Express foreign correspondent who taught me the ropes, gave me a copy of The Kemsley Manual of Journalism. In those days - the Fifties - exposés were more or less limited to what Lady Docker wore and the Duchess of Argyll omitted to wear. Romps in the News of the World and the like were decorous flights of innuendo compared with the heaving buttocks that greet us today, despite that organ’s recent closure. The manual’s section on libel law reform, now seems, in retrospect, a trifle censorious. “The shocking lapses from responsible journalism which occur when enthusiastic reporters, sometimes after pestering private individuals with visits and telephone calls, produce a story concerning the private lives or affairs of individuals who have no wish for publicity, meet with universal condemnation from every decent person.”
There was no Press Council then to protect us from ourselves. Valentine Holmes, who wrote the above words long before “hacking” and the means to achieve it were invented, concluded nevertheless: “It would, in the opinion of the writer, be a great misfortune if legisation to meet this abuse were to be thought necessary. Such legislation would have to create a new type of civil wrong the definition of which would be extraordinarily difficult, and would probably lead to the bringing of a crop of unmeritorious or trivial actions. Moreover, the courts are an unsuitable tribunal, and ill-equipped to determine the proper standards of good taste and responsible journalism, or to assess the damages which a person should receive for injury to his feelings.”
It is hard to argue with that, even when confronted with increasingly tasteless and irresponsible journalism. So, my American friends ask, what is the solution? One half-answer may be the good Lord Leveson, though I have doubts about that. If the government cannot act (for the reasons Holmes gave), or will not act (on the grounds that pandering to prurience becomes, like bread and circuses in ancient Rome, a useful buffer against grass-roots agitation), who will change the situation for the better? In the end, the decision rests with the millions who prefer the Sun, the Star, the Express and the Mirror to the Telegraph, the Independent, the Guardian and the Times. Perhaps, like American readers a century ago, they will finally acknowledge that the “widespread sickness” has gone far and deep enough and vote with their pockets against their newspapers’ (and, of course, their own) fetishism. The march away from Fleet Street was led by journalists. With internet blog sites, “tweets” and a fashionable subversion of “the print”, that retreat is being joined by millions of traditional readers.
Sorry the above is so long.
Posted by: Cal McCrystal | January 04, 2012 at 10:03 PM
JACK McNALLY
It is with regret that I record the death of JACK McNALLY. He has died yesterday after a short illness.
Jack, who came from Armagh, was a senior reporter on the Belfast Telegraph before joining the Govt Information Service.
He advanced to a senior position there, serving in London as well as becoming Press Officer for Brian Faulkner.
In later life he and his wife Charlotte, who worked for the then Independent Television Authority in N Ireland, lived in Donaghadee, where Jack became interested in local affairs, serving as President of Donaghadee Probus Club.
Posted by: Graham | January 05, 2012 at 04:47 PM
Sad news indeed. Jack was a classic government pr man. Would tell you nothing beyond the party line but always charming hospitable and friendly. He was heavily involved in 'Ulster Weeks' in major cities during his time in London. Journos always remembered arriving but not leaving. Bushmills amnesia. Those were the days. Sympathy to his family.
Posted by: Chris Ryder | January 05, 2012 at 07:12 PM
Have many fond memories of Jack McNally at Stormont during the time I was BT Pol-cor, John Wallace's deputy. Jack was a straight arrow. Something of a collectors item in the PR game. After he was officially retired from Government service he was still doing little tasks for various departments. Like organising speakers to talk to unemployed youngsters. Persuaded me to come down to Donaghadee once to give a talk, or rather answer questions. Most of them were good kids but you got the impression one or two were only there to get out of the cold. Didn't blame them a bit. It was freezing outside. It is always sad to lose a good man and we have lost a lot of old friends this past year.
Posted by: Chairman | January 05, 2012 at 08:02 PM
Jack McNally's funeral service will be next Wednesday, January 11, at 12.00 noon in Donaghadee Parish Church.
Posted by: Graham | January 06, 2012 at 03:31 PM
Maybe one of you guys who covered the courts can answer this. I'm trying to recall the name of a barrister (a QC, I think); he was also a Westminster MP, maybe the youngest Ulster MP before Bernadette Devlin. He died young, in his 30s or 40s. That would be in the late 1950s. Why I'm interested is a long story which I won't bore you with (sorry . . . with which I won't bore you).
Posted by: MS | January 06, 2012 at 05:45 PM
Stanley McMaster? Ulster Unionist MP for Belfast East
Posted by: Graham | January 06, 2012 at 07:55 PM
Mitch, it is possible you are thinking of Richard Ferguson QC, who was a Unionist MP for a while before going off to London after the break up of his first marriage. He became one of the most successful lawyers at the London Bar and had an great reputation as a penatrating cross-examiner of witnesses. He died relatively young but was, I think, middle aged at the time. Of course you may be thinking of someone else entirely.
Posted by: Chairman | January 06, 2012 at 08:14 PM
No, it wasn't Dick Ferguson. He was a friend of mine. he nd his wife Roma came to my house for dinner - oh, maybe twenty years ago. I met him a couple of time s since then, and suddenly I hears that he had died. He was an admirable, friendly and accomplished man.
Posted by: Cal McCrystal | January 06, 2012 at 11:33 PM
Roma was actually Dick's second wife. They were having an affair and the pressure got to Dick so he upped sticks in the middle of a Diplock trial as I recall and headed to London. There he got it all together again and set up his own chambers. He actually appeared with great success in a number of high profile cases thereafter. But the split with his wife and his sudden exodus caused some pretty hostile ripples in the Bar Library in Belfast where many of his ex-colleagues sided with his wife. Think rhe divorce was quite messy. Roma was a young barrister. Dick died a couple of years ago, a relatively young man. He represented me and the Sunday Times in a couple of libel cases and was a damn fine lawyer as well as great company. I recall him in many terrorist cases at Crumlin Road. In his earlier days he flirted with politics but after an explosion at his house, as I recall, he concentrated on his legal career instead.
Posted by: Chris Ryder | January 07, 2012 at 10:24 AM
THE BAP, HIS BOOTS AND THE REV.
Detective Constable John Dunlop was one of Belfast's characters. His ample frame was always clad in brown sports jacket and flannels, topped by a large shiny pate which earned him his nickname of The Bap.
In his day he had been no mean footballer and had Bap not been a darned good policeman he might have made a living as a comedian. One always knew when Bap was in court because of the laughter in the foyer beforehand.
By the late 1960s the rough and tumble but cheery atmosphere of the police courts was being dulled by the advent of the Troubles. One defendant was a certain cleric who eventually served a prison sentence for public order offences.
Before this the police would keep a watchful eye on his variously named rallies, services or demonstrations and on one occasion this task fell to the Bap.
"I see you spying on us, Dunlop", came the stentorian bellow. "You've got your kicking boots on again today?"
Bap came back in a flash: "No reverend, I'm like you. I'm saving their soles".
The Reverend laughed louder than anyone, and the meeting went off peacefully.
Posted by: Michael | January 07, 2012 at 04:16 PM
I surprised some of his old colleagues haven't recalled the time Ivan Lambert and Norman Jenkinson woke up in their bachelor flat and found a greyhound staring at them. Apparently they'd got drunk the night before and some spiv sold them the dog with the promise that it would make a great racer. I seem to recall Jenks telling me that the dog's talents appeared to lie in eating, sleeping, crapping and strolling. It showed no inclination to run fast enough to make them rich, which apparently was the big selling point. Another time, after a night out, Lambert failed to turn up for his morning marking at the police court when he worked at the Whig. Some important case had been missed and his bosses were spitting blood waiting for them to arrive. Leslie Mills, I think, slipped out and met Lambert in the street and told him all hell had broken out about this failure to show up. Lambert walked over the the nearest chemist's shop. Bought box of sticking plaster and stuck bits of it over this face, and limps into the Whig office like Quasimodo,with a tragic tale of falling off, or being hit by a motorbike. When he got out of hospital he came right to the office. He must have told a great story because he was sent home to rest until he felt better. Mind you this is one of many versions of the same story I heard. I suspect Ivan may have improved on it several times in the retelling.
Posted by: Chairman | January 07, 2012 at 09:00 PM
Back to Dick Ferguson: Although a Silk back in Belfast he had to appear as a Junior in places like the Old Bailey. But success in several high profile trials ensured he quickly became a Silk in London, too. In addition to that he was an SC in the Republic. He used to partake of the odd refreshment in Vagabonds and he and I went to a couple of Barry McGuigan fights together in London. Afterwards we would return to Vagabonds - run by an ex Met Police fraud squad peeler and Portora Royal School old boy called John Mullally from Enniskillen - who would have the chef work late to lay on a decent supper for the gang of us. He and Dick knew each other from boyhood. Another of Dick's watering holes was El Vino2, not the one in Fleet Street, but the one near Blackfriars Bridge which is why it's called El Vino2. He liked it there because The Great And The Good of the Bar, the Bench and newspapers tended not to go there. Dick was also a season ticket holder at Arsenal. Last time I saw him he was defending one of six Paras accused of murder in Iraq. He died a couple of years back aged 72.
Posted by: A.McQ. | January 08, 2012 at 04:17 PM
Sorry guys, none of the barristers you mentioned is the guy I'm thinking about. I think he was a county Derry MP. It's driving me crazy 'cos I have the name on the tip of my tongue, almost (if you see what I mean) and I can't spit it out. He represented my father when he was charged with murder --- just kidding, it was a civil case over a disputed will.
Posted by: MS | January 08, 2012 at 06:27 PM
Eddie Jones?
Posted by: Graham | January 08, 2012 at 07:43 PM
I have an old 1968 diary that I used as a contact book. It lists quite a few lawyers from that era. Maybe one of these names might ring a bell. Martin McBirney QC; Robert Babington QC; C.B.Shaw QC; John Creaney; John C MacDermott QC; R.R. Chambers QC; T. Cahill; J.P. Higgins QC; Richard Appleton; Roy Watt QC. F.G. Harty; Sir Turlough O''Donnell QC; Wm. J. Staunton; Basil Kelly; Vincent Hanna; Desmond Boal. Any help?
Posted by: Chairman | January 08, 2012 at 08:26 PM
Ronnie (not Richard) Appleton. Frank (not Vincent) Hanna. T'others ring a distant bell in the journalistic tintinnabulation.
Posted by: Cal McCrystal | January 08, 2012 at 09:06 PM
Sorry, Billy: 1968 is too late. I am thinking of the mid- to late-50s. And it's still driving me crazy.
Posted by: MS | January 08, 2012 at 10:01 PM
Got it! It was Tom Teevan.
Posted by: MS | January 08, 2012 at 10:07 PM
Thank God for that, Mitchie, now go and have a well-earned lie down..
Posted by: A.McQ | January 09, 2012 at 09:04 AM
For the record, Tom Teevan was chairman of Limavady Urban Council at 21, a barrister at 22, MP at 23 (Unionist, for West Belfast, in the pre-Gerry Fitt days) and dead at 27. A promising life cut short.
Posted by: Mitch Smyth | January 09, 2012 at 06:11 PM
This from the NUJ website. The case for the defence at last?
The union has been granted core participant status for the Leveson Inquiry and we are asking members to contact NUJ General Secretary Michelle Stanistreet with views and experiences that can inform our participation. Please contact Michelle in confidence via email: leveson@nuj.org.uk
Posted by: Graham | January 09, 2012 at 08:02 PM
Bride Gallagher died today, aged 87. I'm sure our good friend Eddie McIlwaine. Will be writing an obituary for the BT. He interviewed her many times.
Bridie was described on BBC NI's Newsline programme as a "country and western" singer. I wouldn't have thought so. One of her most famous recording was "The Boys from the County Armagh"
Which reminds me that this was one of Jim Gray's favourites. I remember his singing it in party mode many a time.
John Wallace would oblige with "Down by the Faughan Side" (Oh, I courted a wee girl and her age was sixteen...)
Then up would come Uel Young with a deep-throated rendition of "Old Man River" and not to be outdone Roy Lilley warbled "Forty Shades of Green" (and I'd walk from Cork to Larne to see the 40 shades of Green)
Happy days!
Posted by: Graham | January 09, 2012 at 08:13 PM
...speaking of which go to You Tube and tap in Johnny Cash Forty Shades of Green
Posted by: Graham | January 09, 2012 at 08:25 PM
Surely John Wallace's party piece was called "Lovely Derry" or something like that and Down By The Faughan Side was a different song??? Another of Jim Gray's renditions was The Enniskillen Dragoons or is the correct title Fare Thee Well Enniskillen??? Our Dear President is bringing back memories of 25 Tudor Place, 436 Antrim Road and Kay Brown's wee palace in Sandy Row in her days with a certain I.Lambert!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: A.McQ. | January 09, 2012 at 08:51 PM
Alastair, you are absolutely correct re John Wallace. Memories of several events get concertained into one as time goes by
Posted by: Graham | January 10, 2012 at 10:49 AM
The late Charlie Witherspoon, doing a piece to camera for one of his famous travel programmes ("Five Degrees West" - or was it Seven?) began - "I'm standing here on the banks of the Faughan River...." It was only during the editing that someone suggested "River Faughan" might have sounded better!
Posted by: sm | January 10, 2012 at 11:42 AM
An old yarn about JW that I seem to remember and it has probably been told here before, but he was brought back from Stormont (possibily on Jack Sayer's orders) because he had a button missing from his jacket ... Maybe his pol corr deputy remembers.
Posted by: JC | January 10, 2012 at 12:10 PM
I quite believe the missing button story. Under the Sayers-McMullan leadership at the BT a sartorial fastidiousness reigned. One episode (which I have mentioned before) was when TMcM accosted Trevor Hanna in the corridor and criticised the width of his trousers (There was an anti-Teddyboy rule to be observed. Trevor argued with him and placed his leg against TMcM's and said: "See, sir? Yours is only half an inch wider than mine." Although my meagre salary should have forbidden it, I always had my suits made at Hector Powe. These included a waistcoat (or "vest", as Americans improbably say) which could be orthodox or "cutaway". I must say the waistcoat was useful for keeping soup off one's shirt and tie, and I'm sorry that it has gone out of fashion.
Posted by: Cal McCrystal | January 10, 2012 at 01:24 PM
That waistcoat, Cal ... How did you pronounce it? Alistair Cooke always said Brits called it ``weskit.'' I think we did in Ulster, too.
Posted by: MS | January 10, 2012 at 06:25 PM
As far as I remember it was given the full treatment - waist coat. I don't think I heard it pronounced weskit, although I can understand it eliding into something like that. I never found out why Americans called it a "vest", given that almost all Americans wear vests (t-shirts) beneath their shirts, summer and winter.
Posted by: Cal McCrystal | January 10, 2012 at 11:13 PM
When I worked in the North of England a waistcoat was often referred to as a weskit. Generally it was called a waistcoat but Northern gentlemen transplanted to Fleet Street still called it a weskit. The Northerners also called those woollen cardigans worn by men as ganzies. Now work that one out!
Posted by: A.McQ. | January 11, 2012 at 11:36 AM
Let me go back momentarily to Hector Powe. Where did they operate? I remember Burton's at the Royal Avenue end of Lower North Street (once bought a flashy suit there) and a couple of yards from there, opposite the Avenue Cinema, there was another men's outfitters but the name escapes me. Small, narrow shop laden with suits, jackets, shirts, ties ... quite popular in its day.
Posted by: JC | January 11, 2012 at 12:56 PM
Hector Powe, long gone from Belfast (and, I think, from London's Rgent Street) was at 43 Donegall Place, next door to Cathedral Touring Agency and roughly opposite Thompson's Restaurant.
Posted by: Cal McCrystal | January 11, 2012 at 01:52 PM
And much-patronised by the extremely elegant Bob Templeton.
Posted by: SavRow | January 11, 2012 at 04:02 PM
Ivan Lambert was always smartly attired, no matter how well-refreshed of hungover. He got all his suits made for him. His tailor was at 43 Falls Road and I think is name was Joseph Clarke. He made one for me once.
Posted by: Graham | January 11, 2012 at 05:03 PM
There was another tailor in one of the narrow entries between High and Ann streets. Think was run by two brothers. Nowhere I know to get a proper made to measure today except for Hong King tailor who comes to Holiday Inn in Ormeau Avenue every few weeks. Never tried it though. Burberry travelling tailor used to come to Europa. Got suits from him over the years.
Posted by: Chris Ryder | January 11, 2012 at 05:24 PM
JCs tailor may have been Tailorfit, who also had a shop in Bridge Street opposite the Whig. Also coming to mind is John Collier - "The Window to Watch."
Posted by: sm | January 11, 2012 at 07:14 PM
JACK McNALLYS FUNERAL
I've had an email from Robin Walsh as follows:
"A grand turn-out at Jack's funeral service at Donaghadee. Had a chat with Roy Lilley and Roy Shephard and a former colleague of Jack's Robert Ramsay paid a fine tribute. Spotted Fred Hoare and Howard Beattie - such was the attendance I'm sure there were many others of our breed I didn't spot. Robin."
Posted by: Graham | January 11, 2012 at 07:27 PM
Re men's outfitters, I always remember this slogan in the window of a gentleman's outfitters clothes shop in High Street, Belfast.
When I was a lad
I went with my dad
and we both got clad at Spackmans
Now I am a dad and have many's a lad
and we still get clad at spackmans.
Posted by: Emily Lea | January 11, 2012 at 09:46 PM
In North Antrim, as I recall, a ganzie meant a coat like an anorak or a duffel coat (``Where'd ye get that ganzie?).
Posted by: Smyth | January 11, 2012 at 09:55 PM
[from the "Daily Telegraph"]
WATERSTONE'S DROP THE APOSTROPHE
The chain has been known as Waterstone’s since it was founded in 1982 by entrepreneur Tim Waterstone.
However the retailer’s new head, James Daunt, who also founded rival book chain Daunt Books, is jettisoning 30 years of bookselling history by altering the punctuation, to become Waterstones.
“Waterstones without an apostrophe is, in a digital world of URLs and email addresses, a more versatile and practical spelling,” said Mr Daunt.
However, language experts were outraged.
John Richards, the chairman of the Apostrophe Protection Society, described the change as "slapdash", particularly from a bookshop
The removal of the apostrophe also has subtler connotations.
Tim Waterstone has not worked at the chain for well over a decade and the removal of the possessive punctuation makes it clear to shoppers that the bookshops no longer belong to him.
Mr Daunt said: “It reflects an altogether truer picture of our business today which, while created by one, is now built on the continued contribution of thousands of individual booksellers.”
The retailer’s logo will also revert to its old Baskerville typeface after a trendy redesign a few years ago resulted in the ‘W’ being written in the lower case.
“Waterstones is an iconic brand deserving of a capital W,” said Mr Daunt.
Scott Pack, a former head of book-buying at Waterstones who now works in publishing, said that he was a fan of the recent redesign.
"The last rebranding wasn't all that long ago and appeared to be well received by publishers and customers alike. I certainly thought it showed some real imagination," he said.
The new, apostrophe-free name will be gradually implemented on all of the retailer’s written communication, in stores and online.
The book chain was bought last year by Russian businessman Alexander Mamut from HMV Group, the struggling music retailer.
[Marks & Spencer is what it says above the M&S shops - but the public call it Marks and Spencer's. Of course, you can't hear the apostrophe]
Posted by: Graham | January 12, 2012 at 09:34 PM
Perhaps we should call for assistance from Jason Cripes and his Twelve Apostrophes.
Posted by: Cal McCrystal | January 13, 2012 at 12:11 PM
I have an old (i.e early 21st century, cathode ray tube) 26", perfect working order. Channels 1,2,3,4,5.
Suitable for second room?
Anybody want it free if charge? Or do you know of some pensioner just living on State Pension whose TV has broken down?
Seems a sin to throw a perfectly good TV on the dump!
Posted by: Graham | January 13, 2012 at 08:50 PM
Dear Graham, I am afraid that "the dump" may be the perfect receptacle for TVs of whatever width.
Posted by: Cal McCrystal | January 13, 2012 at 09:28 PM
Cal's right Graham. Analogue TVs won't work after October - we'll all be digital by then!
CRTs are useless - you won't even be able to give it away!
Posted by: sm | January 14, 2012 at 11:48 AM
Not so hasty guys. All you need is a freeview box and a 'digital' aerial. I got £50 for my old 28-inch CRT tele. Try Gumtree, Graham
Posted by: Derek Black | January 14, 2012 at 12:44 PM
I believe Derek is correct. The cost for conversion, quoted on Radio Ulster, is £40. And
its free for people in receipt of certain State benefits. And I'm giving it away.
Posted by: Graham | January 14, 2012 at 02:49 PM
Are the digital channels being broadcast yet? And what about RTE? Aren't we supposed to be getting it on digital? Any tips/info gratefully received.
Posted by: Chris Ryder | January 14, 2012 at 07:19 PM
Everything on Sky and Freeview is digital as far as I know. RTE is a available on Sky provided you don't mind paying the Dirty Digger. They say it will be available on Freeview before too long - that will do me.
Posted by: Derek Black | January 14, 2012 at 08:35 PM
Thanks. Derek. Will keep an eye on info websites.
Posted by: Chris Ryder | January 15, 2012 at 10:51 AM
On advice of Derek (above) I put an ad on Gumtree and had several replies within an hour!
Man very pleased to have the crt television.
Posted by: Graham | January 15, 2012 at 01:32 PM
Hope Derek is correct in saying that RTE will be avaiable on Freeview. I don't want to miss the European Champions League matches and Eamonn Dunphy's sometimes ludicrous analysis but certainly won't be paying Sky for the privilige - one TV licence fee should be enough!!!
Also, in my opinion,there are more watchable, entertaining and interesting programmes on RTE thsn on any of the other channels - apart from Friday night music on BBC4!!!
Derek,if you hear anything more about RTE starting on Freeview let us know.
Posted by: RedRick | January 15, 2012 at 04:37 PM
P.S.
Sorry about the spelling errors - why is it one doesn't see them on screen before hitting the post button!!!
Personally think that it's something to do with the brain and the screen - if handwriting you'd see them immediately!!!
Posted by: RedRick | January 15, 2012 at 06:00 PM