Salut!

When the obituary writer needs an obituarist. RIP David Twiston Davies, Telegraph character par excellence

Journalists who believe in heaven and hell, as David Twiston Davies undoubtedly did, probably live their lives with a degree of uncertainty about where they will end up when the time comes. Ours is not a uniformly saintly trade.

But if we can at least assume there’ll be pass-outs from the Pearly and Hades Gates for residents to meet up in the Great Newsroom in the Sky, the composition of The Daily Telegraph editorial team for the afterlife has taken another step towards completion.

Twisters, as he was known to anyone who didn't call him the Twister, died from cancer on Sunday, aged 75.

He was a wonderfully irreverent character, amply equipped to serve either as letters editor or chief obituaries writer for this fanciful reincarnation of what was until recent years a great newspaper. Since he fulfilled both roles with distinction in his 40 years on the paper, he may combine them when reacquainted with the many fine reporters, specialists, sub-editors, photographers and executives who were his colleagues and mine but have also passed away. 

Syd Young RIP: 'Daily Mirror legend', confrere and friend

Photo courtesy of Andrew Young

 

If I say a friend who has just died was a great reporter and an even greater human being, readers of Salut! who knew Syd Young will instantly recognise the description.

It would mean less to others, less again if I added that his great reporting was done for a tabloid newspaper.

Please put aside any such prejudice. Take it from me that Syd, who died last Friday (March 6 2020), was an outstanding journalist who happened to spend his career at the Daily Mirror but would have shone just as brightly in any other part of the media he had chosen to work.

More than that, he was a man of enormous charm, kindness and wit.

A star is reborn; once a shop assistant, then a reporter, now a photographer

In fact, Bill Taylor has been a photographer for several years and his work has been published - not least here - and exhibited. He's also a fine writer and was writing finely even when an ability to do was not required of staff hired by those marvellous objects we used to call local newspapers. Let him take up the story of how his love of the still image has developed (and if you like what you find, treat yourself to his series of short stories about the earlier stages of a County Durham man's life in North America) ...

Funny thing, ambition. I’ve never much had any, except perhaps for a vague yearning to be a rock drummer. That, of course, never happened and never will. Charlie Watts can stop shivering in his brothel-creepers/winklepickers/corrective, anti-slip footwear for the elderly or whatever it is he wears.

He’s even older than I am and I believe, though definitions vary, that I absolutely should now count myself as old.

Armistice: reflections on the war to end wars - that didn't - and respect for the fallen

I shall do three things in respect of this weekend's 100th anniversary of the Armistice that ended the Great War. I shall reproduce two articles written many years ago which touched the horrendous events of 1914-1918, and I post (above) a clip of June Tabor singing the finest version I have heard of Eric Bogle's superb song, No Man's Land. If I wear poppies this weekend, there'll be two, red and white ....

Newspaper craftsmanship, real ale and memories of coalfield slagheaps: RIP John 'Gaffer' Wade

Gaffer is first left in this pre-historic photograph from Fleet Street; Jules is behind him ...

At first sight, this fond memory of a recently departed colleague and friend is one strictly for those who not only shared his trade of journalism but knew him. In fact, Julian Young's tribute to John Wade, known to most of us as Gaffer, stands as a rather special obituary that may well appeal to Salut! readers who never worked for a newspaper, didn't come from Mansfield and would not have recognised a single line of Gaffer's evocative 'Slagheaps of my Youth', which he would recite - to a reception that included morsels of thrown bread as well as admiration - at gatherings of old hands at The Daily Telegraph, splendid lunches that John tirelessly organised. Over to Jules, who now lives in Paris but worked with this rather special man, whose funeral takes place in London on Wednesday ...

Clare Hollingworth, legendary journalist; Tony King, wise psephologist, even wiser judge of Parisian dining. RIP

Photo credit: University of Essex

Two important fixtures of what some of us call the old Daily Telegraph died this week. Clare Hollingworth was 105 and had been a wonderful reporter and writer who famously broke news of the outbreak of the Second World War, often described as the 'scoop of the century'. I knew her only a little, from reputation, occasional visits to the office where I worked and telephone calls. I knew Professor Anthony King rather better. He was a Canadian academic who made his home in Britain and covered shifts in political opinion while also being, without exception in my experience, charming company ...

It was during my stay in Paris as The Daily Telegraph's correspondent for France, and the male Canadian voice on the phone was unmistakeable.

Could we join him and his wife for dinner at a location he would not reveal in advance? Since Tony King was one of nicest people I had ever worked with, it was not so much a challenge as a guaranteed pleasure.

Professor Anthony King died yesterday, aged 82.

Friends or foes: 'UK Muslims like everyone else', says one of two reports

The photo relates to Muslims in the USA. I just liked it and like even more that it is in the public domain. Look up the two reports I now discuss for yourselves. Both contain interesting findings, both can be challenged ...

Almost according to taste, two reports released within a few days of each other appear to tell contrasting stories. One says Britain’s Muslims are failing to integrate – or that Britain is failing to facilitate their integration – and identifies disturbing pockets of anti-western feeling. The other suggests they are pretty much the same as British non-Muslims in the way they view extremism.

Without wishing to cast doubt on the methodology of either Dame Louise Casey’s review, or the survey from the Policy Exchange think tank, it may be necessary to apply a pinch of salt to both sets of conclusions.

The death of Yitzhak Rabin: assassination and spittle, tweed suits and tears

It's not always so comfy. The press corps, covering a Prince of Wales visit to Gdansk in 1993, bash copy into those old Tandy computers we all used in those days. L to R: James Hardy (Press Association); Robert Jobson (Daily Express); Gervase Webb; Philip Sherwell (Daily Telegraph); Charles Rae and Richard Pendlebury (Daily Mail). Photo by Martin Keene (PA)

Salut! makes no apology for championing good journalism, especially newspaper journalism, since doing so offers a useful riposte to the dim and ungracious trolls who patrol online news sites in search of some reporter or feature writer to trash.

Gervase Webb is one of our trade's finest practitioners. His work for the London Evening Standard was beautifully written and compelling, two rare qualities when it is remembered that he was often gathering information, and then composing, at speed and in discomfort. He was also, incidentally, good company on the road, a virtue that rose above the often competitive nature of the job.

This week, at Facebook, he gave his friends and former colleagues a reminder of his perceptive and descriptive skills, recalling - better than many could remember the events of a week ago - the occasion he was dispatched to Israel after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin 20 years ago tomorrow (Nov 4 1995). Rabin, then serving his second term as prime minister, was murdered by Yigal Amir, an extreme right-wing Orthodox Jew opposed to the signing of the Oslo Accords, which sought conciliation between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Let's all Google Sundar Pichai

I did tweet Sundar Pichai, the new CEO of Google, and ask what advice he had for any bright young thing hoping to be, well, the next Sundar Pichai. I am sure he was just too busy to reply and is far to nice a guy to be planning online reprisals for anything in this profile for The National's Weekend magazine supplement*. By the way, is it true that Enid Blyton was the first to coin the word Google, using it for the name given by a character in one of her books to describe a tasty bun? ...

'What did the silly old weaselbag say?' A fond farewell to Guy Rais

Guy Rais, with another former Telegraph colleague, Wendy Holden, now a successful author

Stop Press: Guy Rais deserved an outstanding obituary and it now appears (bravo David Twiston Davies, its author) at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11713530/Guy-Rais-journalist-obituary.html. Not all the comments you see below were sent to Salut!, but appeared at Facebook, in e-mails or - in one case - at the Telegraph site. I hope their authors agree it was fitting to "import" as many as possible.

Media being part of Salut!'s beat, no apology is necessary for an item that will probably interest only journalists, along with any stray readers who happened for one reason or another to come across my friend and former colleague Guy Rais, who died yesterday at the wonderful old age of 95. I have added, I hope without objection, some of the tributes I have seen elsewhere ...