Dacre, of course, still had to answer to one man: David English.
Everyone bowed before David English.
‘As a young reporter when I arrived on the Mail in the late seventies,’ added Miles, ‘I was very much in awe of David English. It was always said of English that he could do everything on a newspaper better than anybody else – layout, subbing, writing . . . he was a brilliant writer. I mean you paid a lot of deference to English, he was the “supreme editor”.’52
Paul Dacre received his fair share of ‘bollockings’ from this supreme Mail being, as did Tim Miles. But reporters tended not to have to endure daily red-faced rows from Dacre, the Mail ’s new news editor. His preferred method of communication was by internal memo. And so, every day by the swing doors to the early-1980s Daily Mail newsroom, reporters would approach a wooden rack screwed to the wall and gingerly push their hand into a square hole with their name on it.
‘The first thing you did when you came in for your shift was to check your little pigeonhole for a house envelope,’ reporter Stewart Payne told the author. ‘And you’d let out a deep sigh when you saw one. As chances were it was a bollocking memo from Paul Dacre.’53
Reporters would watch Dacre standing in his glass office behind the news desk as he mumbled these endless memos to his furiously scribbling secretary . . . even though he was often only a few yards from the living, breathing hack he wanted to address.
‘He didn’t really walk down into the newsroom to brief you on a story or anything, someone else on the desk would do that,’ said Payne. ‘He looked embarrassed, almost, if he had to have a conversation. He would just kind of make a stab at it – a classic one would be “Christ, old man, that’s a dreadful tie” – and he would grab your tie and hold it up as if he was going to cut it. And you’d just think, “That’s probably his attempt at being friendly.” Dacre just couldn’t talk to you in an easy-going way. A memo was safe. I suppose you could say it was cowardly but I never really thought of him as a coward – just awkward and clumsy around other human beings . . . [A memo] could be succinct and devastatingly deliver the point and he didn’t have to actually talk to the person.’54
In the days before equally devastating emails, house envelopes began flying back and forth with the senders and recipients just yards apart, the messenger boys throwing them into pigeonholes like croupiers tossing out cards. ‘You couldn’t just collar Dacre and say, “Paul, can I have a word?”’ said Gill Swain, one of his few female news reporters. ‘So everyone had to enter the memo-sending game to get their point across. As a woman, I found Dacre very good to work with professionally but absolutely impossible to communicate with on any other level.’55
Partly as a result of the memo-sending, the Daily Mail secretaries became oddly powerful creatures, led by Ina Miller – the editor’s secretary, a semi-regal figure. ‘Ina was very, very grand and was always heavily made up, with her hair piled up on top of her head,’ reporter Stewart Payne told the author, ‘and she walked with the posture of a titled lady. She was very “glam” – frighteningly so.’56
‘She was stuck in a time warp, a 1950s throwback of Elvis movies and American diners,’ added ‘Barry’. ‘One Femail writer even pitched an idea in conference for the paper to do a makeover on her, to bring her up to date into the 1980s. [The reporter] didn’t last very long after that.’57 Queen Ina and the other secretaries were never shouted at nor treated shabbily, and seemed to have more authority than most of the hacks on the paper. However, the deputy editor’s secretary had a name that would land any company straight into court these days. ‘Stewart Steven’s secretary was a black lady – an Asian-black lady rather than African – and everybody called her “Sooty” . . . to her face,’ Stewart Payne told the author. ‘She even referred to herself as Sooty, it was her name. I mean, even in the late 1970s when I joined the paper – when people were nowhere nearly as politically correct on issues of racial discrimination as they are today – even then, I felt acutely embarrassed addressing a black woman as Sooty.’58
Out in the newsroom, there were frequent comedy moments at Dacre’s expense; one day, the news editor thought he was talking to a Mailman in Scotland called Jimmy Grylls but was actually on the line to the Tory MP Michael Grylls (father of TV adventurer Bear Grylls). ‘Dacre picked up the phone and he just started barking down the line a tirade of swear words and instructions, thinking it was his reporter,’ said Payne. ‘“We need to fucking do this that and the fucking other, you cunt, and fuck this and cunt that”, and I’m waving at him horrified. Eventually he breaks off and I say, “Paul, that’s Michael Grylls the MP you’re talking to, not Jimmy Grylls the reporter!” And the line was still open, and he started shouting, “Oh, I’m a cunt! I really am a fucking cunt! What a stupid fucking cunt I am.” And then he starts apologizing profusely to this bemused MP on the other line. He was so clumsy, and he just didn’t listen to people. He would just sort of bluster in, especially when he was under pressure. He never broke under pressure but he was like a bull in a bloody china shop.’59
Every day at around 5.30 p.m., a gentle hour or so of calm would fall over the newsroom when Dacre and all the other executives shuffled into English’s vast office for afternoon conference and some of the braver reporters actually dashed out for a ‘Conference Quickie’, CQ in code; they’d leave their jackets on the back of their chairs and grab a beer or two in the upstairs bar at the Harrow across the road. A few months before, when Dacre was usually still left outside the editor’s door with the rest of the plebs as a lowly deputy, he’d watched his reporters indulge in this quaint Fleet Street custom.
‘CQs were absolutely fundamental to the Mail newsroom culture when I was there, especially to the more “risky” [those not cowed into staying at their desks for fear of retribution] reporters,’ said Payne. ‘Dacre knew all about CQs and he started to resent it when he became news editor. If you can’t see them then they must be up to no good was his prevailing attitude.’60
Then the calm would be broken by a stampede of flustered executives stumbling out of English’s office, spiking stories and setting off a flurry of phone-bashing and door-knocking to stand up the stories and ideas that the editor now demanded appear in his newspaper. Dacre would often send two reporters at a time on the same tale.
‘He’d shout over just as you went out the swing door: “And I don’t want you two cunts holding hands!”’ said Payne. ‘Meaning, you were supposed to virtually work against each other. Divide and rule was very much the Daily Mail ’s underpinning philosophy and there were a few reporters who absolutely swallowed the Daily Mail bible, one guy had absorbed it so much that if you were sent out on a story together he wouldn’t even talk to you; he wouldn’t even tell you where he was going! Some reporters were just totally driven by the Daily Mail and weren’t great company as a result. You ended up working against each other, and Dacre liked that. He thought it’d achieve a better result because you’d be stabbing a colleague in the back at the same time. Whereas, of course, most of us were good mates . . . and we didn’t do any of that stuff.’61
One old hand who experienced this ‘creative tension’ was English’s friend from the days when they had both walked two young girls into the bushes on Barnes Common in the 1950s: Tony Burton. He worked on the Mail in London for a few months in the late eighties, and then in New York.
‘There was some press conference going on with Rolls-Royce up in the Midlands. And the news desk suddenly called me over and said, “Hey, get up there now!” wherever it was, two or three hours north of London. I knew I was going to be late so I hurtled up there, and found the Daily Mail already had a reporter on the job. And I was fucking furious because I risked my life and licence to get up there, and they were just playing games. English was responsible for this philosophy, to send two reporters on the same story to compete with each other and whoever did the best job – it’d be their story that was carried in the paper. It pissed me off big time though, stupid fucking g
ames. I didn’t give a fuck if they wanted to use my version or not, to be honest.’62
Hoots of laughter could be heard out in the street coming down from the upstairs bar of the Harrow most evenings, with one hack or other usually doing a perfect impersonation of their boss the news editor.
‘We all used to laugh at him,’ said Payne, ‘more behind his back than to his face. He was rather a comical character, although he would hate to be seen that way I’m sure. He was often imitated. If you went across to the Harrow someone would always be relaying the Paul Dacre story of the day. I didn’t dislike Dacre though, I actually found him rather funny because he was so bloody clumsy and oafish – I just thought he was silly at times, buffoonish. Not intentionally, that’s just how he came across. But I didn’t think he was a dickhead.’63
Every now and then, Dacre would actually appear in the bar himself.
‘He would stand at the bar and he’d clip the guys on the shoulder and bumble (in a voice like an Eton schoolmaster) “h-aargh, you cunt . . .”’ recalled Swain, ‘and his conversation didn’t seem to consist of anything much more than that really. So I would hover on the edge trying to find a way of getting into this “conversation” . . . but on the level of – “h-aargh, you cunt!” I couldn’t really find a way in.’64
Another reporter did find a way to reach Dacre, though – with his fists. Allan Hall, who is now a Mail freelancer in Berlin, had been a Mailman on six-month rolling contracts in the early 1980s (many reporters joined the paper on such deals, which would sometimes turn into staff jobs) before leaving to join the Daily Star after Dacre told him he didn’t think he had what it took for a coveted staff position. A little while later Hall happened to be in the Harrow on one of the rare evenings when Dacre was also there, as another reporter who was there that night explained: ‘Allan was at that time a staff reporter on The Sun and chuffed to bits because he had just been told he was going to be the Sun’s new man in New York. He’d been in a pub all afternoon, with his colleagues as you did in those days, waiting for a jury to come back in an Old Bailey trial. So he was completely pissed. Allan clocked Dacre and just . . . he just went for him, shouting: “You said I didn’t have ‘the Daily Mail sparkle’, you cunt!” And he biffed him one in the face! Dacre was completely bemused by it. I don’t think it really hurt him, he didn’t fight back or anything and a couple of reporters pulled Allan off him . . . He didn’t hit the cunt hard enough in my view,’ growled the ex-Mailman, ‘we all thought Allan was a legend after that. But Dacre, to be fair, is not one to hold a grudge – the paper has given Allan a lot of work since as a freelance.’65
Dacre may not have been comfortable in company over in the Harrow pub but he was certainly comfortable inside the Daily Mail office, where he was on the rise. In the late summer of 1985 he was promoted to the role of assistant editor in charge of both foreign and home news, and then English moved him across to run the features department – the beating heart of the Daily Mail. News by its very definition comes and goes, whereas features, generally, require more time and thought. And he was soon joined in conference by Tim Miles, who later followed him into the news editor’s chair; promotion into the executive ranks, so often the curse of the best reporters.
‘I was on a foreign job in 1987 and David English was in Milan,’ said Miles, ‘and he actually summoned me to come and see him in his hotel there and offered me the news editor’s job. “It’s time for you to move up and mature a bit and become a Mail executive, Tim,” he told me. English could be very flattering, very persuasive. And I took the job, quite honestly, reluctantly – because I enjoyed life on the road. So, I was duly appointed news editor . . . and I fucking hated it.’66
Miles was one of those reporters who liked to go for a beer or two in the Harrow of an evening, but he soon realized this was not the done thing for an executive when Dacre pulled him aside one day and offered him some advice, telling Miles, ‘Look, you can’t really go out drinking with these guys any more. You’re the news editor. You’ve got to put distance between you and reporters because all they’re going to do is give you a hard time over a story that didn’t get in or a story that was cut. And your relationships are going to founder.’
Miles ignored his advice. ‘And I spent every evening getting shafted about why a story didn’t get in or why a story was cut or why those expenses were cut,’ he laughed. ‘So the dynamics of the relationships did change. But I wasn’t prepared to not drink with reporters – my friends – because I’d become the news editor. And I also wasn’t prepared to rip these people to pieces [in the office]. I was a reporter myself, I knew how easy it was to fuck stories up and how stories could go sour on you and not from lack of trying or lack of expertise or ambition. It’s just that shit happens. If a reporter was lazy or indolent or cocky, yeah, sure, I could give a bollocking with the best of them. But I understood the frailties and difficulties of being a reporter which often weren’t recognized by Dacre and English.’67
Miles was never going to battle Paul Dacre for the editor’s chair. He didn’t want it. An office – though it may be a mighty big office with a secretary or two – was to Tim Miles, and to many a hack since newspapers began, just a dungeon with better decor. However, this wasn’t the case with Paul Dacre, who by the end of the 1980s had again been promoted, this time as an executive on the back bench, where he joined the clutch of key lieutenants and senior sub-editors alongside David English who actually put the newspaper together – these are the people who finally decide which story goes where with which photograph, have final copy approval, and write or green-light the headlines before the pages are sent off to be turned into a physical newspaper by the workers in the press hall.
‘I sat for months looking at the grey heads on the back bench,’ said Miles, ‘with absolute dread, thinking, “I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here . . . I don’t want to be here in another ten years’ time; I don’t want to turn into one of those guys.” So, I quit after about eight months as news editor and left the paper completely.’68 Miles soon joined a new full-colour newspaper called Today that Rupert Murdoch had bought and that was aimed squarely at the mid-market Mail and Express (unsuccessfully, in the end – it closed after less than a decade), and English never spoke to him again because of his betrayal.
English’s talent-spotting skills were, of course, not infallible, and Tim Miles’s fellow Mailman Stewart Payne (they also shared a house) had already proven to be a similar test for Paul Dacre. Payne had staggered in one morning after being up all night partying in mid-1985 and was called into Dacre’s office. ‘So I go in, still feeling horribly hungover and expecting to get the bollocking of my life and he’s saying, in a sort of droning voice almost like he’d rehearsed it and without looking at me – in a kind of reverie: “Well, young Mr Payne, I see a great future here for you. I have been very impressed with your work recently and your commitment. Therefore, I think it’s time for you to move on and I’m making you television correspondent.” And I was open-mouthed; not only was I not being bollocked – and Dacre was somehow completely oblivious to the fact that I had been as pissed as a parrot at work, he was quite blind to some things that might be obvious to other people – I was being promoted! I didn’t trust myself to say anything very much because I was so hungover. So I came out. And the guy I had been on the piss with all night had come in on shift and he asked how I’d got on at work after such a late session. And I gasped: “I’ve been made the TV correspondent!” And he fell about laughing, saying, “But you’ve not got a TV!”’69
Word quickly spread throughout the office, with much amusement, that the Mail ’s brand-new television correspondent didn’t have a TV and actually loathed the whole business of showbiz – a department he was now based in. Someone quietly informed the news chief of this fact and Dacre called Payne into his office a few days later and asked: ‘How the fucking hell are you going to be the television correspondent if you don’t have a TV set?’ Dacre turned it around,
however, quickly deciding a television virgin was actually a great choice for television correspondent – as he could watch telly with fresh eyes. So the paper rented him a set, which Payne watched for a few miserable months while his mates back on the news desk ribbed him mercilessly about the fluffy stories he had to write – about which he had not a clue; he’d even have to head to the library to check on even regular TV faces such as ‘Orville the Duck’. Dacre watched all this from the far side of the room with a look on his face that said, ‘I rammed that square peg into that round hole but why isn’t it working?’ Payne quit and joined Today.
Unlike Payne and Miles, though, Paul Dacre wasn’t going to be leaving any time soon, especially seeing as there were only a few rungs left on the ladder to the editor’s hallowed chair itself. Those hours and hours of hard work were finally paying off. He had long wanted to be an editor, he confessed in a speech years later: ‘Not just wanted, if I’m being honest. Hungered. Lusted with a passion that while unfulfilled, would gnaw at my entrails.’70
Yet there were several Mailmen ahead of him in the pecking order. If David English had decided to go and open a B&B on the south coast, there was only one Mailman that Lord Rothermere would have chosen as the paper’s supreme editorial being at the time: Stewart Steven. Steven had made the Mail on Sunday an even bigger seller than the Daily Mail after gently nudging it upmarket ‘against the inclination of senior colleagues’ (i.e. English). The Sunday paper was a different, slightly more thoughtful and edgier newspaper than her elder sibling. In Vere’s eyes Steven was almost, but not quite, on a par with editor-in-chief David English.
Sue Douglas was Steven’s protégée on the Mail on Sunday until English forced her to move to the Daily and work under Dacre running the features department. In true English fashion it was actually, in effect, two people doing the same features editor job.
‘Dacre and I were set against each other like two ferrets in a bloody bag,’ Douglas told the author. ‘David was designed to set people against each other and he really believed in that creative tension. But he would stir it up so much that it was actually disruptive. He was very female, bitchy.’71
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