Salut!

Scoop: a reporter's reporter who made his mark unbribed and untwisted

 

 

 

One of the first books about journalism I read was Evelyn Waugh's classic novel, Scoop. And 82 years after it was published, Scoop is back.

This time, the author is not the long-dead Waugh but the much alive Terry Pattinson. Closer to 80 than 70, he not only rattles off a stream of gags and one-liners on Facebook but has found time for a hugely entertaining book charting his rise (or descent?) from the Blaydon Courier to Fleet Street.

From those honourable origins in local paper journalism in the North East of England, he went on to work for the pre-Murdoch Sun, the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror.

 

John Hays RIP: a road well travelled

A phone call from my friend Martin Emmerson, a BBC broadcaster from Sunderland, brought me shocking news of the death of John Hays [above, right], the founder of Hays Travel. John built the UK's biggest independent travel agency chain from the small business he opened in 1980 in spare space at the back of the children's clothing shop owned by his mother in Seaham. John was 71 and a good friend ...  

 

It was up in the East Stand of the Stadium of Light that I first met John Hays.

Charlie Hebdo, Islamist terrorism and the limits of freedom

This week, I have been challenged on my view that while Muslims, or anyone else for that matter, are fully entitled to take offence at something that is written or drawn about them or their faith, taking offence is as far as it is morally acceptable for them to go.

Nothing that has happened in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in the north-western suburbs of Paris, Nice or other locations where fanatics decide to arm themselves with knives or firearms to commit cowardly attacks on innocents, shakes that belief.