Hack

by Graham Johnson

  On my first day, I was welcomed with warm smiles, cups of tea, friendly faces. Lunch hours. Down-time. A leaving do for someone I didn’t even know. But where I was fussed over like an old hand anyway. Life at the Sunday Mirror was a dream. Genuinely nice people. Not cut-throat. Ethos was: ‘We can do the business, but we can have a laugh too – and there’s no need to go around fucking everything up. Especially your work mates.’ Like a refugee given sanctuary, I became fanatically loyal to my new homeland. Of course, I couldn’t help thinking that it was a second-rate country. In my arrogance, a few weeks earlier, I would have been like Ray. Wouldn’t have wiped my arse on the Sunday Mirror. Didn’t even read it. That silly. I would have looked down on Sunday Mirror reporters. Doughnuts and door-step cannon fodder, to wipe the floor with on jobs. But that was just the NoW brainwashing. Or corporate culture as it’s called. But now, magnanimously, these people were giving up their desks and helping me get used to the Apple computer system. It was as though I’d been released from the Hanoi Hilton. Where I’d been hanging upside from a meat hook for two years. In a dungeon with water dripping on my head. Then suddenly finding myself free. Recuperating in a friendly hotel. Staffed by a load of caring nurses.

  But there was no time to fuck about. I needed some big hits fast. Having lost his Screws link-up (me), Samrai was drifting off into TV land. But I headed him off at the pass. Persuading him to come on board for the big win, back at the Sunday Mirror. Soon we were back in business. Turning over his fresh-out-of-jail buddies, one after the other. The first was a Nigerian 419 conman who was busy getting his Christmas money together. By scamming Harrods with dodgy credit cards. Headline: ‘Santa Frauds.’

  Then I did ‘Steak and Kidney Pie Saved My Life.’ About a woman who fell over badly. But her head was cushioned by her chippy dinner. Hardly a special report from Cambodia about the Killing Fields. But I was still on the bench – and had to take my chances when they came up.

  Then my big break came. Around Christmas time. In the tabloid spirit of a bumper Xmas exclusive, it’d turn out to be the best present I ever had. What made it was its beautiful synchronicity. In one fell swoop, I would be able to show the Sunday Mirror what I was made of with a belter world exclusive. Simultaneously putting two fingers up to the Screws. By robbing one of their own stories from under their noses. Whilst fucking off Rupert Murdoch and his cronies at the same time. Not forgetting Her Majesty The Queen. Disgraced red-top hack Graham Johnson – come on down!

  The saga began when my old mate Roger ‘the Dodger’ Insall was unexpectedly jettisoned from the Screws for unknown reasons. I don’t know what had gone on, but it had something to do with a paedophile story he’d been working on in Sri Lanka. Roger had been secretly investigating Arthur C. Clarke for being a nonce.

  Arthur C. Clarke was one of the world’s best-selling writers – 2001: A Space Odyssey etc. He was also host of ITV’s Mysterious Worldshow. Synchronistically, the popular paranormal programme had also been the inspiration behind Rebekah’s brainwave to find the Beast and Lord Lucan et al. Somehow, it all made sense.

  In addition, Arthur was also one of Rupert Murdoch’s mates. A ‘guru’ in fact. After having come up with the theory behind the self-regulating geostationary communications satellite. Which of course inspired the Dirty Digger to invent Sky.

  Consequently, the Screws wouldn’t run Roger’s paedophile story about one of Murdoch’s mates. For obvious reasons, in case the proprietor got pissed off. Underlying this dilemma, there were even spookier simultaneous phenomena.

  Coincidentally, Roger was also feeling some heat off the Beast fallout. Even though they were old mates, Steve had taped Roger up saying bad things about the News of the World. In addition, to boost his tribunal case, Steve Grayson was claiming that one of Roger’s old stories was a spoof, denied by him. Oh dear! Part of a legal tactic to prove a culture of fabrication at the Screws. The upshot was bad blood between Roger and NoW Editor Phil Hall. One day on the bridge of the Death Star, Roger’s NI career was asphyxiated by remote. To get revenge, he handed over the Arthur C. Clarke tip to the rebel alliance.

  Immediately, I was dispatched to Sri Lanka to stand it up. My first foreign – very exciting stuff. But super-gravity-folding-in-on-itself levels of inner star pressure to boot. The problem was, by the time I arrived in Colombo, I had less than 24 hours to stand it up. But like the SAS, I was expected to be dropped anywhere, anytime in the world and sort it out.

  First, with Roger’s help, I tracked down some rent boys who claimed that Arthur C. Clarke had fondled them up at a seedy table tennis club where Big Fat Westerners played with the beach boys. Penniless, powerless destitute caste. Who’d been bummed senseless by Arthur and his harem.

  But their testimonies weren’t enough. Plus no time for a big investigation. Saturday morning. The desk were screaming down the phone for copy. Whole paper riding on it. Everything fucked if it didn’t work. Only one thing for it – to blag a confession out of Arthur himself.

  Bombed it round to his pad. But he was playing the old soldier. Laid up in bed with a muscular disease. His servants wouldn’t let me in. I told them to give the great white chief man a message – that I’d come all the way from London to congratulate him on his knighthood. Stroking his ego was the only way forward.

  This was the icing on the cake, by the way. We’d been tipped off that the wank-on-the-biscuit, shape-shifting secret rulers of the world were gonging Arthur up the following week. In the New Year’s List. Prince Charles was coming to Sri Lanka himself. To do the honours. Once again the synchronicity was sublime. In the finest of Fleet Street traditions, the big plan was to fuck the whole thing up. For all of the nonces and their Establishment cronies. All at once. Put a bomb under the fucking lot of them. In one great, big, massive piss all over their weirdo parade. But was our dynamite good enought to do the job?

  Needed to think fast. The timer was ticking. Got it. Jumped in the cab to the nearest flower shop. A street vendor with racks and racks of exotic Triffid-like bouquets. Bought the biggest, pinkest, most expensive bunch flowers on the stand. Virtually cleaning him out and filling the backseat of the cab. No camped-up predatory nonce in the world is going to refuse a bunch of bloomers. Or at least that was my Carry On-style tabloid view of these affairs then.

  It worked. The serfs granted me an audience. On his bed, Arthur looked like death warmed up. Reminding me of when I was at the agency and I had to front a serial paedophile on his death bed. Like an old Nazi, the man then had stubbornly refused to confess. But old Arthur C. Clarke was too cocky for his own good.

  I opened up with the pleasantries, tape whirring in my suit pocket, now drenched in the jungle heat.

  ‘How you doing? . . . Aren’t you great? . . . Isn’t it nice that Prince Charles is coming to see you next week? . . .’ etc.

  But the pressure was on – the Desk screaming down the phone. I knew I only had a few minutes. So I hit him straightaway. Between the eyes like Carlos the Jackal.

  ‘By the way, Mr Clarke,’ I asked, using the old Columbo trick again. ‘Just one more question – what’s all this I’ve been hearing about you touching up underage boys down at the taboo club?’

  At first, Arthur said it was just scuttlebutt from unreliable rent boys. Fair enough. But as I reeled off the names and claims of one witness after another, the old fox was forced to concede.

  Like of all these satellite-inventors, he thought he’d use his somewhat powerful intellect to chicane his way out of it. But this wasn’t the Royal Society. This was a newspaper with a reading age of 14. Arthur’s argument was that it was acceptable for him to have sexual relations with young teenage boys because in Sri Lanka the lads mature faster. The sun. The jungle. Hairy chests, whatever. I pinned him down to the age that he considered fair game – 14. Bingo! That was that. Bye-Bye, Dick-Head. I didn’t even stick around to hear the end of the hypothesis. Within minutes I’d left the room. Throwing the flowers on the bed. Desperately in search of a phone to rin
g my copy in. Mission Accomplished.

  The following week, Arthur C. Clarke refused his knighthood out of shame. Causing Prince Charles considerable embarrassment and face-saving relief at the same time. For years afterwards, he denied underage sex. Every six months he’d pop up on the World Service saying that he’d been turned over. His cronies in the corrupt Sri Lankan police backed him up. But he never sued. Even getting some apologists in the broadsheets to publish a denial. Boasting that he’d called in a favour from Rupert Murdoch. Allegedly promising him that the reporter responsible would never work again in Fleet Street. But by then I think Rupert was just humouring him. I returned home to a hero’s welcome – and got offered a staff job with a big fat contract on the spot.

  31

  98/99

  Over the next year, the plan was to restore my reputation. To widen my horizons. Started doing stories all over the world. In Croatia, I exposed a blackmailer. Trying to screw a cool mil out of F1 ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone. Threatening to smear his then wife Slavica in a sex scandal. I posed as Bernie’s bagman. With powers of attorney to negotiate a deal and pay the villain off. Meeting the conman in a smoky, dockside bar in the rundown port of Rijeka. The blackmailer filled the venue with Eastern European mafia-types to intimidate me. But I fronted it out with my secret tape whirring away in my pocket. Coaxing him to admit that he was a chancer. Boasting that the scandal was a fabrication. Little more than a blag to criminally extort money from Bernie Ecclestone and Slavica the diminutive billionaire. When I got back to London, Bernie invited me round to his Knightsbridge office to thank me. He said I was scruffy, went to his safe and pulled out a grand in cash. I think he wanted me to buy a new suit, rather than influence me. But now, under my new self-imposed code of conduct, any kind of madness was strictly off limits. Financial moodiness was never my bag anyway. Born poor, die poor – that was my expectation. Though it wasn’t a bribe, I’d only ever been offered cash once before. When I tried my hand at court reporting at the agency. By a dodgy solicitor on rape charges. He offered me £200 to drop the story. Mouthing the offer out and holding the cash up silently in the lift in case I was taping him. Of course I fucked him off. Just like then, I immediately reported the grand to the new Sunday Mirror Editor Brendan Parsons. We agreed to give it back straightway. Bernie was a bit pissed off that I’d told anyone. But we remained half-mates, going out for lunch now and again.

  In LA, I got a good line on the George Michael cottaging story. When the former Wham! heartthrob got caught engaged in a lewd act by an undercover ‘pretty’ policeman in a Beverly Hills bog. The Beverly Hills cops, whose plush police station was better decorated than my flat (cream carpets/chrome desks), gave me the name of an airline steward who was arrested at the same time as George. Tracked him down and babysat him. To protect my exclusive, I had to pretend that I was the airline press officer when the National Enquirer turned up. Blagging them in my best Starsky and Hutch blowse Yankee accent that the steward wasn’t commenting. It was flippin’ hard because it turned out that they were all ex-Sun hacks from Manchester and Essex.

  During the job, I fell out with the arsey American snapper that had been assigned to me. I had to tell him off for ‘showing out’ while he was trying to covertly snatch the target. I handled it badly, taking the old jingoistic Fleet Street line that: ‘You wouldn’t get a Brit snapper behaving like that. Driving down the road letting all and sundry see him. Yous’ Americans – you’re fucking amateurs.’ He got very angry. But soon got his revenge. Later inviting me out for a pastrami. Being suspiciously nice. The sandwich tasted moody. The next day I went down with a violent stomach bug. Spewing and shitting all over my $300-a-night Beverly Hills hotel room. I called a doctor out at $500-a-pop to inject me up the arse with antibiotics. Convinced that the photographer had spitefully spiked my pastrami. But everything ended up OK. Taking the pain on the bed, I got a phone call in the middle of the night – it was a new editor called Colin Myler who just been appointed to take over. Colin Myler was a straightforward person. I knew we’d get on well.

  Then I spent six weeks flash-packing all around the States. Doing stories about Ernie Wise, Ruby Wax and the death of Linda McCartney. Every time I turned up at a BA terminal to fly back to London, the check-in lady would say: ‘We’ve got a message for you: “Under no circumstances whatsoever get on plane. Call the desk. URGENT! URGENT! URGENT.”’ The BA people let me use the back office phone to get my new set of instructions.

  Next stop France. Paris in summertime was hot but beautiful. Spent a month doing Princess Di death anniversary stories. £15,000 bill for freelancers. Another few on top for translators. A grand’s plus worth of mini-bar. And a dry cleaning tab so big that the moody hotelier marched me round to a cashpoint in person because he knew I was going to do a runner.

  Straight from there and half-pissed, I flew down to Cadiz in Spain to cover the shock arrest of Sexy Beast racketeer Kenny Noye. The whole pack was there. Staffers from ten different newspapers. Mostly bloated, bitter, middle-aged moaners. I never moved with the pack. Sharing war stories and swapping blankies. Of course, I fiddled exies like everyone else. But I didn’t turn it into a homoerotic bonding ritual like some these old-timers did. The pack even had a mad hierarchy. With the senior reporter booking the tables for dinner and arranging the flotilla of cabs to hither and thither. Even as a reformed sociopath, I couldn’t handle it. Lone Wolf. Always Move Alone. Welcome to the Terrordome.

  The key to getting a good line on Noye was the local newspaper reporter. A tasty Spanish señorita called Carmen Torres. The grass didn’t grow around town without her knowing about it. Ace translator. Good fresh lead digger-upper. Skin the colour of olives.

  But her services quickly sparked a war. Between me and Team News of the World. Stoked up by the bad blood still bubbling up from the Beast. The Screws had sent their main cut-throat henchman Cunt Too Ian Edmondson. To hoover up the story. Cunt Too’s henchman-in-turn was a slippery fish snapper called Nick Bowman. A thin-shouldered, hate-filled fag-smoker who was also mildly amusing.

  Carmen suddenly became a prized trophy within this bilious circus. A status symbol more important than the story itself. Like white slave traders, we bid to win her loyalty. Of course, I won. Firstly charming her into the hotel pool for a midnight swim. Then back to the room. Then into her contacts book.

  Cunt Too took defeat very badly.

  ‘Factor X, mate,’ I told him the next day. Carmen lounging around the hotel pool in a gold bikini. ‘Look into your soul, mate. Look into your soul.’

  In revenge, he turned me over in Private Eye. The diametric Orwellian untruth that he peddled to the magazine’s infamous Street of Shame column was that he’d won Carmen. Then employing her as a double agent. To seduce me. Download my notebook of stories during pillow talk. Then slipping out of my chambers in the dead of night. To betray my best lines on Noye to her real amante – him. All bollocks by the way. But good rough-and-tumble all the same. Had to laugh.

  One night the pack got pissed. Frustrated and desperate to get new leads, Fleet Street’s finest broke into Kenny Noye’s safe house. Smashing a window. Burgling his bedroom. Screwing his hideout to find some new collects. I never went. But Carmen and I continued to see each other for another year.

  When I got back to London, a mad thing happened. The News of the World offered me my old job back. Oh my word! Blown away. What a fucking turn-up. It was like a vindication. But flattering at the same time. I went out for secret drink with the Screws’ Editor Phil Hall. He told me how devastated he’d been over the Beast. Getting back from his hols to find blood all over the newsroom carpet. Then hearing that one of his favourite reporters had been ironed.

  Phil said he’d been tracking me ever since at the Sunday Mirror. One story in particular had convinced him to offer me my job back. I’d infiltrated a bent church and been ordained as a priest. In return for a back-hander. The mad thing was that it was all bona fide under church law. I got a dog collar. A certifi
cate. Best of all – a legal right to perform christenings, burials and marriage blessings. Phil said the Exec Chairman Les Hinton thought it was such a piss-take that I should be rehired on the spot. Indulgence granted. Sins annulled.

  Though I trusted Phil Hall, I couldn’t help thinking that it was a nasty plot by Stuart Kuttner. To get me back on the firm for ulterior motives. So that I’d drop my evidence at Steve’s tribunal, which coincidently was due to start the following month. Steve was suffering badly. One day he was unblocking the bogs at the swishy Oxo Towers restaurant when two journalists came in. As they were weeing and talking big-time newspaper stuff, Steve hid in the cubicle to hide his shame. I couldn’t cut him loose and knocked the Screws back. Of course, I let the approach slip to the Editor of the Sunday Mirror, who bumped up my money.

  In South Africa, I did a story about Princess Diana’s brother having an affair. In between the jobs abroad, I was knocking out bread-and-butter guns ’n’ drugs stories. As fast as Samrai could set them up. But I spent two years as a special correspondent. On the road. All over the world. Being sent from one job to another. Living out of airport shops. Cash on tap. Twenty different currencies stuffed all over my falling-apart suit.

  When I got home, there were pints of milk outside my door. My car had been towed away for expired tax. Squatters in my flat. A broken-down motorbike on my new laminate floor. A Volly van full of wood on bricks in my parking space. Being a reporter had a devastating impact on your personal life.