A short time after the interview Harry Whewell wrote offering me a job on the
Manchester Guardian
. The salary was a thousand guineas a year. Jack Dibb was not pleased when I told him. It ended up in a shouting match, with me flouncing out of his office and banging the door so hard the glass window fell out and shattered on the floor. My last view of my editor was of him leaning through the broken window bellowing, ‘And you’ll pay for that out of your bloody wages.’
13
WATCHING NEVILLE CARDUS
I joined the
Manchester Guardian
in 1958. In those days, it occupied a unique place in British journalism – a daily newspaper printed in Manchester with a nationwide circulation and international reputation. It paid lousy wages but was a joy to work for if you were a reporter who wanted to be a features writer and vice versa.
The journalist who joined the paper was expected to be as adept at covering a pit disaster as a sheepdog trial. The
Manchester Guardian
took sheepdog trials very seriously. My friend and mentor Dick West once had the idea of brightening up his report by writing it from the point of view of a sheep. When he returned in triumph to the office he was called in, accused of trivialising sheepdog trials and given the sack. He took no notice of the dismissal because he knew nobody ever got sacked on the
Manchester Guardian
. Two years later, he was still working there.
In many ways the most relevant characteristic of the paper was that it belonged to Manchester, along with the Hallé Orchestra, the Free Trade Hall, and Manchester United Football Club. It was a declaration of excellence, a statement of independence, and a contradiction of the notion, more common then than now, that Britain ceased to exist north of Hampstead. The people of Manchester, indeed Lancashire, were proud of their paper and for the first, and maybe only, time in his life the journalist found himself both admired and accepted when folk were told for whom he worked.
All this, and more, made me proud to have been given a job on this prestigious paper. My fear was that the great majority of my colleagues had been to university and I had not. I tried to console myself with the thought that while they might make a better job of explaining unilateral disarmament – a hot topic at the time – they wouldn’t have a clue about reporting a chip-pan fire in Oldham.
Two things I remember about my job interview: when I was being escorted into the reporters’ room I saw, leaning against the wall, an old cycle with a pigeon basket strapped on the back. Were they still sending copy by carrier pigeon, I wondered? Then, the first person I met in the reporters’ room was a tall, gangly, smiling young man who introduced himself as Michael Frayn. He said he too was a newcomer, having joined straight from Cambridge. He was friendly but incredibly posh. At first he terrified me, later we became lasting friends.
Harry Whewell was more identifiably one of us. He was a small, energetic, impulsive man who wore ties with the largest Windsor knots I had ever seen, which often ended up situated beneath his left ear. It would be unfair to say that Harry’s dress sense, or lack of it, set the standards for the office. In fact, as I came to know my colleagues over the coming months, I was forced to the conclusion that Harry was one of the better dressed journalists on the staff.
Roy Perrott, a fine writer who later worked with distinction for the
Observer
, favoured donkey jackets, polo-necked sweaters and large working boots. Once, when he came to the office wearing waders, Harry said to him, ‘Roy, how on earth can I send you to the Town Hall looking like that?’ At the time Harry was sporting a tie with a knot the size of a grapefruit and a jacket that gave away the fact he’d had an egg for breakfast.
An old Etonian, David Bruxner, wore pin-striped suits, blue striped shirts with plain white collars, braces and cracked patent leather shoes. I was never quite sure what he did, except he had perfected the art of drifting in and out of the office.
Norman Shrapnel was the chief reporter. He later went on to be the parliamentary correspondent. I can’t remember exchanging more than a couple of words with Norman because he was pathologically shy. We never worked out how he managed to be a journalist, and a good one, while being unable to communicate with people. The famous story about Norman was of him running away from a public-relations man who was trying to give him a story and locking himself in the toilet until the man departed.
Another colleague, Anthony Howard, was an Oxford graduate, who went on to become a perceptive and principled observer of the political scene, as well as a key figure in my professional life. Sensing my initial discomfort at the presence of so many highly educated colleagues and sick, no doubt, at my gruff disdain for ‘bloody graduates’, he dubbed me ‘the Barnsley Clodpole’. It was rude and cruel but not without an element of truth in summing up how I sometimes felt.
I stopped feeling sorry for myself when Harry Whewell called me into his office to discuss an article I had written. He said, ‘I am not going to accept this article.’ I asked why. ‘Because you’re trying to write like the mythical Guardian Man. Just be yourself. That’s who I hired,’ he said. Harry gave me the confidence to do as he advised and it seemed to work.
After my first year I had more articles in
The Bedside Guardian
, the annual publication of what was deemed the best of
Guardian
writing, than Anthony Howard, an achievement I still remind him of. One of the sure-fire ways of making
The Bedside Guardian
was to write what was called the Miscellany Page lead. This was, in effect, the top-left corner of the features page, which was reserved for offbeat stories and quirky writing. If Harry assigned you a certain miscellany page lead, it meant an extra five bob in the wage packet. I remember Michael Frayn (or it may have been Roy Perrott) rejoicing at the news Harry had assigned him to cover a mouse show in Bradford. ‘Lucky bugger,’ we said. My triumph was a man in Doncaster who made boots for elephants.
There was hard news as well and, because I had shorthand and knew which foot to place in the door, I had my fair share, along with another journalist who had made his way through the ranks, Joe Minogue. We were particularly in demand at party conference time when we were expected to fill a couple of pages with verbatim reports on debates. We were regarded with curious affection by journalists from other papers who had never before met a
Guardian
reporter who had shorthand.
I have never been more happy and fulfilled in all my long career in newspapers as I was at the
Manchester Guardian
. The work was challenging, the company stimulating and humorous. It was my university. The newsroom itself was a scruffy, dark place with sepia prints of past
Guardian
men on the walls and sloping desks with inkwells from a time when journalists wrote their articles with quill pens. There were three or four ancient and armour-plated typewriters stacked around the room, each weighing about the same as a small car, which, when placed on the sloping desk, slipped inexorably into our laps. Michael Frayn used to joke that the damage done to our reproductive organs by sliding typewriters made it highly unlikely we would ever have children. There were two telephones hidden away in a corner of the room.
I was in one of the booths late at night, ringing round the emergency services, trying to find a story, when a white-haired man wearing a black cloak swept into the room. I realised it was my hero Neville Cardus. He discarded the cloak with a flourish and began battering away at a typewriter. I watched him closely, convinced I might discover the secret to his flowing style. In fact he typed one word, and then discarded the sheet in a crumpled ball, before loading another and repeating the process. This went on for about ten or fifteen minutes by which time he was ankle deep in crumpled paper. Then, for no apparent reason and with no perceptible change of gear, he typed without stopping a review of a Hallé concert at the Free Trade Hall, his beloved Barbirolli conducting. When he left I picked up the discarded sheets, looking for clues. On each page was just one word: ‘Cardus’.
It wasn’t until sometime later that I actually met my hero and was able to approach another mystery surrounding Neville Cardus, namely how he managed to extract such marvellous quotes from cricketers. I was writing an article about the great Yorkshire and England cricketer Wilfred Rhodes, and was particularly intrigued by one of my favourite anecdotes featuring Rhodes and written by Sir Neville. The story concerned Charles McGahey, an old Essex player, going out to bat on a sunny day at Bramall Lane, Sheffield. As he walked out to face Yorkshire, the sun darkened with black clouds moving across its face. Fearing rain and the possibility of batting against Rhodes on a sticky wicket, McGahey said, ‘Ullo. McGahey caught Tunnicliffe bowled Rhodes . . . no score.’ And it came to pass – in both innings.
When I checked this line with Sir Neville, he said, ‘Oh, I made that up.’ He went on to explain that his job was to write scripts for cricketers who, in the main, were incapable of saying what they would say if they possessed his skill with words. I must have looked disappointed at his revelation. ‘Don’t be concerned, young man. What mattered was it came true.’
I wasn’t to know it but the most significant assignment I was given at the
Guardian
was a teachers’ conference at Scarborough. I thought it might be a good idea to invite Mary, who was still working and living in Doncaster. The first night of our trip we walked along the cliff edge into a chill wind fresh off the North Sea. I told her I loved her and asked her to marry me. She said she would and we went to a coffee bar to celebrate.
On the jukebox the Everly Brothers were singing their number one hit, ‘All I have to do is dream’. It wasn’t ‘As time goes by’, but that didn’t stop me.
‘We’ll always have Scarborough, kid,’ I said.
14
THE BLACK PALACE IN FLEET STREET
We were married in Doncaster. Mary made her own wedding dress; I looked as if I had made my own suit. My best man spent the night in a police cell after being caught being pushed down the Great North Road in a large refuse bin. We borrowed Anthony Howard’s car and set off for a honeymoon in Devon. We were poor but overjoyed. We rented a flat on the second floor of an old Victorian house in Didsbury and Mary found a job teaching at a local school.
My father celebrated our union by bringing over a ton of coal in sacks, which we dumped in the basement. This arrangement lasted until I grew tired of going up and down three flights of stairs for a scuttle of coal and had the bright idea of transferring the load to the landing outside our bathroom. This wasn’t exactly the coal in the bath of my youth but certainly a nod in the right direction. Guests going for a pee would return looking like they had done a shift at Grimethorpe Colliery.
The highlight of our social life was an invitation to dine at the editor’s home. Alistair Hetherington was a chubby and rosy cheeked man who looked like he spent a deal of time walking the moors, which indeed he did. His dinner parties were strange affairs because the guests were journalists who, in the main, drank to excess, unlike the host and hostess who drank not at all. On the particular night we were invited I noticed that a bottle of sherry, for some reason, had been placed on the hearth near an open fire. Not only was it warm but the bottle contained a fly, which had probably been boiled to death even as it drowned. The evening came to an embarrassing conclusion when one of the reporters was discovered peeing in the sink. We put it down to drinking warm and contaminated sherry. They were happy and secure days. Newspapers were profitable and, it seemed at the time, impregnable.
Granada Television had just arrived in Manchester but there was a general view among journalists that it wouldn’t make much difference to our way of life. In those days, when it didn’t know how best to employ outside broadcast units, and when daytime broadcasting belonged to educational programming, Granada sent an OB unit to the
Guardian
to demonstrate the workings of a great newspaper. There was a memorable moment when the cameras in the subs room focused on the chief subeditor as he read a story and prepared to give it a headline to fit on the front page. The commentator set up the occasion in tones of breathless anticipation. The chief sub, a learned and dignified man who didn’t much care for the intrusion of cameras in his lair, studied the article for what seemed like a lunchtime and then, picking up a pair of scissors, cut the page in two. It somehow summed up what we felt about television; an insignificant and feckless intruder in our world, and, indeed, in our town.
A year after our marriage Mary told me she was pregnant. Our general delight was somewhat tempered by my father’s observation that if it was a boy child and born in Lancashire, it would not be able to play for Yorkshire. Even I dismissed this thought as irrelevant, but I should have known my father better, as subsequent events were to prove.
About the same time Tony Howard was approached by Brian Tesler, then Programme Controller at ABC Television, to produce a local current affairs programme called
ABC of the North
. He asked me if I would take a screen test. They gave the studio interviewers jobs to me and a reporter from the
Sunday Pictorial
, Desmond Wilcox.
We recorded in an ABC cinema in Didsbury and it seemed to me an easier way of making money than writing for a living. My new friend Desmond Wilcox agreed. The programme went out on Sunday evenings. After the first show I took Mary for a drink to a pub in Manchester just to test reaction. Nothing happened except the landlord, as he pulled my pint, did a double take.
He gave me my drink and said, ‘There’s been a bloke on telly just now who is the spitting image of you.’
I nodded in anticipation.
‘It wasn’t you, was it?’ he said.
I smiled modestly, awaiting the acclaim.