Loose lips sink editorial depts…

Posted by Axegrinder on 2 July 2008 at 12:44
Tags: Uncategorized

Understandably there is much gloom at London free newspaper City AM where it has been announced that its entire team of six sub-editors is being axed. Where on earth can the paper’s supremo, Jens Torpe, have got such a crazy idea?

Back in March, media commentator Ray Snoddy reported Mecom boss David Montgomery’s belief that the “age of the sub-editor is coming to an end”.

Snoddy went on: “If Montgomery applies his own theories to the Mecom newspapers everywhere, from Scandinavia to Germany, the Netherlands and Poland, then costs should be cut and profits increased.”

Where did Snoddy’s words appear? In City AM of course.

On behalf of subs everywhere, please be careful what you write, Ray.

Champagne moment is in the post…

Posted by Axegrinder on 30 June 2008 at 08:00
Tags: Uncategorized

Activists from the NUJ used the Regional Press Awards at London’s posh Lancaster Hotel as a chance for a bit of impromptu leafleting, and to call for “award-winning pay” to match the award-winning performances on display from regional press journalists.

Journalists at Newsquest York are currently locked in an increasingly bitter pay dispute, and despite being nominated in two categories, no ordinary hacks from the papers were in attendance at the event. So when Stephen Garnett from the Craven Herald was announced as weekly photographer of the year, he wasn’t there to pick up his prize – and no one else was either.

Never mind Stephen, Uncle Axegrinder is going to send you a bottle of bubbly to
enable you to have your own private champagne moment.

Getting a book out of Africa

Posted by Axegrinder on 27 June 2008 at 08:08
Tags: Uncategorized

Alec Russell, the affable and charming Johannesburg correspondent for the pink ‘un, the Financial Times, is to write a book.

He’s taking leave of absence soon, and the book will be about his second sojourn in sunny South Africa – his first was for The Daily Telegraph.

Russell, one-time foreign editor of the Telegraph, and Washington correspondent until Con Coughlin sacked him, is heading back to London with his family in the autumn to become world news editor for the FT.

Will Lewis’s £4k party piece

Posted by Axegrinder on 26 June 2008 at 08:00
Tags: Uncategorized

So The Telegraph is forking out £4,000 for a farewell party for Alice Thomson, who is soon going to work for James Harding at The Times, and “quite a lot of nobs are being invited”.

Could one reason being mentioned for the party (at Home House in Portman Square) be that editor Will Lewis has an eye on a job at The Times should he ever be shown the door by the Barclay Brothers?

Ironically, says my mole at The Telegraph, there were no goodbyes or drinks of any sort for two other talented women journos who left recently, Rachel Sylvester (for The Times) and Jan Moir (for the Daily Mail).

Artist wades into a weighty subject

Posted by Axegrinder on 25 June 2008 at 08:00
Tags: Uncategorized

I bumped into Tracey Emin at a party at the Wilton Music Hall just last week, and she was banging on about Julie Burchill and being “Photoshopped”.

She told me: “I read this article Julie had written about celebrities getting Photoshopped, and she was saying how she totally understood it, and she didn’t see why people made a fuss about it when they did it.

“And then there was this picture of Julie and she looked amazing. I thought it was funny because she’d obviously got Photoshopped herself.

“Then I heard she’s actually lost loads of weight since I last saw her, so maybe she really does look like that now.”

Over to you, Julie. Do drop us a note on a postcard and let us into your beauty secrets.

Telegraph invitations get lost in the post

Posted by Axegrinder on 24 June 2008 at 10:21
Tags: Uncategorized

The Telegraph types are getting ready for their annual summer party.
Axegrinder has had a glimpse at an invitation and it reads:

“This year, the Telegraph Summer Party will be held at the Honourable Artillery Company, EC1, on Saturday, 28th June. Don’t forget to send your RSVP and remember to include, if you are taking one, the name of your guest. We need all RSVPs by Friday, 30th May.”

But there’s more to it – the cost-cutting management has banned the 11 Telegraph postroom staff from attending (who have turned out in good order every year) but are allowing their two supervisors to attend, providing they do not bring their spouses.

While on the spirit of giving, one of the postroom staff was given the sack just the other day and another will not be replaced when he retires in July.

Axegrinder says there should be protests and banners, until the postroom staff are allowed to attend. There’s still time to organise, chaps.

Middle-age sex aid is a bitter pill to swallow

Posted by Axegrinder on 4 June 2008 at 08:00
Tags: Uncategorized

What has come over Amanda Platell since she joined the Daily Mail almost four years ago? She used to be such a feisty, fun-loving lassie.

Responding last week to news that scientists have invented a new male libido pill that perks up both sex drive and emotional desire, Platell seems depressed.

“For women in middle age,” writes the middle-aged Aussie, “the prospect… is little short of terrifying.”
She concludes: “The ideal that so many of us aspire to is of life-long happiness, walking off into the sunset, hand in wrinkled hand… But it comes with love. It does not come in a pill or out of a bottle. And no amount of rump presenting or tongue flicking will convince us otherwise.”

This is a very different from the Platell of old.

In August 2004, she told readers of her Gym Mistress column in The Times that her first night with boyfriend Giorgio had left her “a little disappointed” because “he couldn’t maintain an erection”.

But Giorgio made amends and delivered the goods, as it were. She explains: “Let’s just say, in modern parlance, he is a generous lover and performed a certain sex act in a very satisfactory way.”

Book publishing – what’s the deal?

Posted by Axegrinder on 3 June 2008 at 08:00
Tags: Uncategorized

When Channel 4 News was seeking someone to discuss the recent spate of books from New Labour’s ranks (John Prescott, Lord Levy, Cherie Blair) they wisely chose publishing guru Caroline Michel.

She was asked by Jon Snow how publishers could expect to make a profit when they paid massive advances and were unlikely to earn the money back through book sales. It’s amazing he managed to keep a straight face. HarperCollins paid Snow a rumoured £600,000 for his memoirs in 2004, but sales proved a big disappointment. Who was the big cheese at HarperCollins at the time? Caroline Michel.

Giving TV gardener a new gender…

Posted by Axegrinder on 2 June 2008 at 08:00
Tags: Uncategorized

Garden News columnist and TV presenter Joe Swift has clearly some way to go before he becomes a household name. Before the start of a BBC1 programme on the Chelsea Flower Show last week, a continuity announcer called the bald, green-fingered Hackney geezer “Zoe” Swift.

Getting a bit closer to Frankie Howerd

Posted by Axegrinder on 30 May 2008 at 08:00
Tags: Uncategorized

We were left smiling, nay, tittering, after reading the lead story in Ephraim Hardcastle’s Daily Mail column last Thursday (May 22) about the late Frankie Howerd’s cottage and possessions being put up for sale.

They include his hernia belt that, according to the comedian’s former manager, Chris Byrne, was mistakenly thought to be a giant “sleeping mask” by a woman who, after the Up Pompeii star’s death, had stayed in his bedroom for one night.

It seems she attempted to tie it around her head but it kept falling off. Byrne is quoted to have said: “I think that must have been the closest any woman got to Frankie’s ****!”

The story bears a spooky resemblance to one that appeared three days earlier in The Stage newspaper’s Tabard column. But as the belt was there likened to huge “night goggles”, clearly it must be a different tale.

Naughty, naughty, naughty Ephraim, as the great man himself might have said.