The new planet, hoax or not, and my dream about Evelyn Waugh (in tweed)

Interesting news this week about a possible ‘giant planet’ being discovered. It is said to be apparently part of our solar system but is so far away and hidden in something called the Oort Cloud that it hasn’t been spotted before. The report I read comes from the impeccably po-faced Independent, which is not known for sensationalism (it’s readers are far too well-behaved to fall for that kind of thing, and anyway as almost all of them – 52 at the last count, according to ABC circulation figures, although doesn’t included the editor’s extended family – can tell a shiraz from a merlot merely by the way it moves in the glass, they are naturally more accustomed to higher stuff).
You can find another report here and here.
The planet, which has been called Tyche, is said to be made of hydrogen and helium and has a surface temperature of -73c, although quite how they can know all this stuff if they haven’t yet even seen it is beyond me. It’s rather like all those claims about dinosaurs: we can apparently tell what its diet was, whether or not it lived in groups and how ferocious it was just from a 2cm slither of shin bone. Yeah, right.
The discovery – make that ‘discovery’ – is excellent news for those who believe in ‘aliens’ and suchlike, because although the planet Tyche is said to be wholly made of gas, it is likely, claim Bill and Ben Tugendhat, from the Wichita Academy of Space Exploration, Cancer Cures and Stem Cell Research Inc., who are behind all this nonsense, that it will have loads and loads of moons. And where to the aliens come from who spend most of their waking moments visiting the third rock from the Sun? Got it in one: the moons of various planets in our solar system. Case closed.
You’ll have gathered that I don’t believe in little green men or any other kinds of aliens, but I must confess that I find it utterly implausible, which is to say, a complete certainty, that life has evolved elsewhere in the universe, given its size. By life, of course, I include the kind of single-cell life forms from which we (and, I’m told even Tony Blair) evolved. And given the size of the universe, I think it is also highly likely that somewhere out their such single-cell life forms have also evolved into what we laughingly called intelligent life. However, and there’s always a however, given the size of the universe and given, for example, how long intelligent life has been around on Earth – the common comparison is that if the time life has existed on Earth is compared to a 12-hour clock, intelligent life has existed hereabouts for the last minute of the last hour of the day – it is also highly unlikely, not to say downright impossible, that one such form of intelligent life will come into contact with another form. The chances are that we do not coincide, and if we do, we are so bloody far away from each other, there is no danger that we will come across each other by chance. Many folk, of course, talk of ‘travelling through dimensions’ which would, if true, solve the problem of our astronauts dying out (and most certainly of boredom) before they got anywhere close to anywhere else, but I think it is complete cobblers.
According to the Independent’s report, more data on the new plant Tyche is due to be released in April, and in the meantime Bill and Ben Tugenhat, of Wichita, wonder whether they couldn’t interest you in a little more life insurance.

. . .

Alongside the report in the ‘Indy’, was a little feature as to why claims that the Apollo Moon landing were faked are bollocks. It goes through ten common charges, for example how come the astronauts’ boots left footprints on the Moon’s

surface then there was no moisture around? I once again belong firmly in the sceptics camp about claims that the whole thing was faked and was filmed in a huge warehouse in Wichita which Nasa rented from Bill and Ben Tugendhat, but looking at the pictures, I was struck by one anomaly. I have included one here: from the astronaut’s shadow, it is clear that the Sun is behind him, though at an angle. Yet from my life as an unsuccessful photographer I know that if the light source is behind your subject, it could well end up being completely underexposed, and unless some form of fill-in flash were used to illuminate the astronaut from the front, we should not be able to see anything at all. He would be an outline and nothing else.
However, we can see quite clearly. In fact, it is rather a good photograph. So some form of flash was used. But for some reason that strikes me as a little implausible, because the astronaut is almost opposite the camera i.e. not at an angle, and if flash had been used, there would most certainly have been a reflection of it in the astronaut’s visor. But there isn’t. One explanation is that flash wasn’t used, but another kind of light source. An objection to that, however, is that it, too, might well be expected to be reflected in the visor and also that it would have to be a light source of the magnitude of a studio arc lamp to cast that much light. On the other hand, the same objections apply if, as the conspiracy theorists claim, the whole thing was photographed in a studio. Then, too, given the strength of the light source behind the astronaut, another light source, whether flash or arc light, would be needed to fill in the detail of the astronaut. But again there is no evidence of it in the man’s visor. So, so far, even stevens. I suspect it’s those bloody little green men again.

. . .

Many years ago, I had a very vivid dream. In it, the novelist Evelyn Waugh was cooking m a fry-up. He was dressed as you see him in the picture, and was obviously at the end of his life (he died at 66 from too much good living). In the
dream he was a very friendly man and very pleasant. I was just an ingénue pleased to meet a writer I whose work I liked a great deal. This would have been in the mid-Sixties, more or less around the time he died. Apart from having read all his novels up until that point (and having had the very good fortune of starting with Decline And Fall, his first, and then, fortuitously, more or less reading them in the order in which he wrote them, I had read nothing about Waugh. So I didn’t know much about him. I later found out that he wasn’t always very nice, although there is often the suggestion that he didn’t suffer fools gladly, but that if you were courteous to him, he could also be courteous and charming. I find his humour to be unique, and I do think he was able to laugh at himself, which is a trait not quite as common among the famous as it might be.
That dream has always puzzled me. Undoubtedly, by the time I had had it, I had come across the picture I have supplied or a similar one below, or else I would not have dreamed about him wearing a tweed suit. And why did I dream it. Who knows?

An ego writ large? Two of them? And Egypt: perhaps it’s best not to hold one’s breath

Rather a silly situation at work today, with which you might well be familiar even if you don’t work for a newspaper. The situation on the travel desk ever since the then travel editor was promoted to a commissioning editor (but has now left to become deputy editor of a very well-known magazine for genteel women and those who regard themselves as genteel women) is that a freelance journalist is employed as a part-time travel editor, and when he is not there at the beginning of the week, the role is taken up by a woman who was one the travel desk assistant. Before coming to the Mail, she had never worked as a hack and had no journalistic experience. In fact, I don’t know what she did. That she is not pug ugly (though I don’t fancy her – she is one of those tall, willowy types who don’t float my boat and never have done), is impeccably middle-class and graduated in fashion design will not have hindered her first being taken on as the travel desk assistant. She might well have remained in the position for some time to come had management decided not to appoint another full-time travel editor and would have carried on doing what the assistant always did, hunting down pictures, liaising with travel companies and generally – metaphorically – keeping the travel desk tidy. But these days, on Mondays and Tuesdays, she is acting travel editor which means she oversees the paper’s midweek travel feature. That she started in a relatively lowly position doesn’t, of course, mean that she must therefore be incapable. But the converse is also true: that she fulfils the role of travel editor for two days a week doesn’t necessarily mean she is any good. And I’m afraid her lack of previous experience does show time and again. That is not necessarily a bad thing in that the page is read and seen by many people, especially the deputy editor of the day, and they often make changes. But it would help if she didn’t think she could write well and it would help if she could write a headline, which she can’t. I used to get on with her OK, but when she was bumped up a notch to the role she now fulfils after the full-time travel editor left, she developed a bad habit of taking long lunch breaks, often ‘at a meeting’, delivering her ‘marks’ to us late, and then urging me to hurry up because she wanted to go home. I suppose it was that which first got up my nose. I also get rather fed up with women who reckon try to get their way around men with a false smile and by laying on the femininity. I prefer to work with women who are good at their job. Today she read through the page, made her changes and then I read through it, and it was pretty bloody awful. The secret to any feature is to make it interesting, and what she had sent through read like a bus timetable and was even less interesting. There was little I could do about it, but start from scratch, which I did. And this rather got to her. So she decided she ‘wanted the picture to be bigger’, which entailed a cut in the copy, and she set about rewriting again, reducing the piece once more to its previous yawn-inducing state. The whole episode was bullshit from start to finish, because had she ‘wanted the picture bigger’, she could have made it bigger before I set to work and I would simply have had less space. The Mail being the Mail – actually, the Mail being a newspaper, but the Mail has its particular quirks – there’s this idea that the Wednesday travel feature is ‘her page’ and that we subs should bow to her decisions. That would be all fine and dandy, and I would have no problem with it at all if she was any good at what she does, but she isn’t. But I suspect she rather thinks she is. Oh well

. . . .

On a lighter note, the ‘British travel industry’ (or whoever speaks for the ‘British travel industry’) today announced that the ‘troubles in Egypt’ will probably reduce this year’s profits by 20 per cent. My heart bleeds. The turnout in Cairo’s equivalent of Trafalgar Square surprised everyone by being far larger than expected. Until last night many of the media pundits were fearing that the protest movement was running out of steam. Despite today’s turnout, I have a terrible feeling that it will: unless the army in Egypt decides enough is enough and kicks Mubarak out, he can more or less hang on until the time suits him to leave, all the while ensuring that the current regime changes its clothes but then it is business as usual. And so far the army has stayed clear of everything. I heard on the radio last week that things will not be that straightforward anyway, as the army ‘owns’ something like 25 per cent of all ‘private businesses’ and will not want to lose that (although I must admit I am baffled as to how the army can ‘own’ anything). But unless the army decides to throw in its lot with the protest, the regime simply has to sit tight, make all the right noises (i.e. form several ‘committees of investigation’) and wait – it won’t be long – until the rest of the world’s media gets bored and shifts its attention elsewhere There’s lots of woolly talk about the winds of change blowing through the Near and Mid East as they did through the former Communist bloc countries, but that strikes me as mere journalism, cacking up the story to keep it on the boil. I’m not the best informed on either topic, but it does strike me that you can only compare like with like. And given that countries such as Romania and Bulgaria have got the same thugs in charge merely whistling different tunes while they count their fortunes, these winds of change – if the same ones are blowing - don’t necessarily mean the outcome will be any better.
The U.S. is coming horribly unstuck over the upheaval in Egypt and gives the impression it is finding it very difficult distinguishing between its arse and its elbow. (I would write ‘the Obama administration’ instead of ‘the U.S.’, but that would sound far too partisan given the George Dubya wasn’t exactly Mr Competent when it came to foreign affairs and I have no axe to grind.) But all those Brownie points Obama gained over the mass shooting in wherever (there are plenty to choose from) and ‘uniting the nation in its moment of grief’ or whatever miracle he achieved are well and truly down the tubes given his and Hillary Clinton dire and utterly incoherent performance over whether Murbarak should stay, leave or simply buy everyone a round or two, tell a few jokes and go home to his palace. Is the U.S. in favour of democracy or not? Well, actually, the real answer is: only when it suits U.S. interests which would be despicable, except that every other country in the world is equally hypocritical. But it has now lost a great deal of credibility over Egypt.
In a sense it is, in fact, quite unfair of me to single out the U.S. over its response to the crisis in Egypt. The rest of the West has also behaved like a one-legged drunk at a hoedown and in a way you can see al Qaeda’s point when it suggests that bombing’s too good for them, squire, and we had that Satan in the back of our cab once, not as bad as he’s made out to be, quite the reverse, really, got some good ideas, has that Satan, no sorry, I don’t go south of the river. (That last bit will be truly incomprehensible to each and every non-Brit reading this, but do I care? Do I fuck.)

UPDATE — We all like a happy ending but it seems that is not what is in store for Egypt. According to the Guardian, the army, which made great play of ‘remaining neutral’ over these past few weeks has ditched that position and is now firmly playing the regime’s game. It did all seem to good to be true.

Let me clear up a slight misunderstanding...

After I told the anecdote I had heard about Piers Morgan lording it over his one-time deputy, a regular reader has commented that she was glad I had given Piers a write-up as she has a soft spot for me – though she put it far more bluntly and regretted the fact that he is married – and that and very much appreciates his wit. Were I feeling more jaundiced, I would write ‘wit’, but it is the end of the day, I am due off work soon and I’m feeling reasonably mellow. Unfortunately, I am not feeling mellow enough to put my reader straight: sorry, K., but my piece was not intended to be complimentary. As far as I am concerned Piers Morgan is a 24-carat pillock. (‘Pillock’ might be very much an English expression with which non-English readers are unfamiliar, but I’m certain they get the gist of what I am saying.) Morgan’s comment to his former deputy – along the lines of look where all his deputy’s hard work had got Morgan – might well have been funny, but unfortunately a sense of humour is no guarantee that a chap is a straight-up guy, especially in our industry. I have met many lawyers who have had me in stitches but who were also complete bastards. Stalin had a tremendous sense of humour, but no one insists what a lovely chap he was. So, sorry, K., I’m not Piers’s greatest fan (make that second-greatest, as you are claiming the top spot). Nor, I should imagine, is the first Mrs Morgan. Incidentally, a columnist for this paper who I chat to regularly and who once co-hosted a TV programme here in Britain (and who is also no great fan of Piers’s) tells me that the new Mrs Morgan, a Celia Walden, is said to be very nice and sweet, but not the sharpest blade in the box, which explains why the gal hasn’t yet rumbled Piers.

. . .

Like many people, I am rather fond of the very long list of colourful expressions we have in English, but, of course, all languages have their colourful expressions. Not the sharpest blade in the box is one, and along similar lines there are a sandwich short of a picnic, the lights are on but no one’s home and the lift doesn’t go to the top floor. Expressions with other meanings I’m fond of include referring to a man’s wedding tackle and describing a practice men engage in on their own (well, usually, I suppose) as the five-finger shuffle. Then there’s describing shoplifting as a five-finger discount. A neighbour once said of my father-in-law, a retired Cornish farmer who would rather not spend money than spend it, that he would skin a turd to save a penny. Of course, there are all the standard expressions and phrases which you will have heard – a great face for radio, fur coat - no knickers, and up and down faster than a whore’s drawers. Then there’s describing someone one knows who has a tendency to corpulence as having more chins than a Chinese phonebook.
I’ve got to get off now, but if I think of any more, I shall record them here.

My man Mozart, the egregious Tony Blair, three cheers for Neville Brody and Mandy Rice-Davies (again. Hi, Mandy)

There are times when a beautiful piece of music demands to be pissed about with. This is one of my favourite short pieces. and when I hear it, I think of just one thing - traffic. Some things simply have a companion with which they will forever be associated whatever the weather: strawberries and cream, Russia and corruption, Britain and rain, and, of course, Mozart and traffic.



I am indebted to my good friend Jacques Pernod for all the help and advice he has given me over the years, and he, I’m sure, would also like me to mention his assistants Peter Schnaps & Dieter Esel.

. . .

Few crises survive beyond a few hours without an appearance by the egregious Tony Blair. So with the crisis in Egypt: Blair appeared on Sky TV and did what he always does: state the bloody obvious at great length and with apparent authority as though dispensing a unique wisdom from on high. Here are two quotes from the interview he gave Sky News:
‘What is inevitable is that there’s going to be change and the question is; what change and how do you manage it?’
Then there is this startling insight:
‘Change is inevitable in Egypt and that the country cannot put the “genie back in the bottle”.’
Well, call me a cynical fart, but anyone seeing the images being screened on TV at the moment will have gathered that it isn’t a storm in a teacup. But that’s Blair’s schtick: he says what everyone else knows, but appears to make it sound profound and wise.
I have long, long believed that he suffers from some kind of psychological flaw akin to sociopathy, but without the violence. I have no doubt at all that he really does believe his own bullshit. A few years ago, at a Labour Party conference and when he was still PM, he gave a speech which became increasingly unreal. He seemed to go into a trance. But what he was telling his audience was merely what he knew his audience wanted to hear.
It is always difficult to be objective about someone one dislikes, and I readily admit that I am open to the charge of being biased against him. I also admit that there might still be some who still believe Blair is a man of principle, but I should imagine their number is diminishing by the day. But I do believe that Blair as the man who gives all conmen a bad name, and I am proud to say (although there is no way I could prove as much) that I regarded him as a nine bob note (nine dollar bill, nine kopek piece) long before he was first elected Prime Minister in 1997. As, of course, did a large number of ‘old’ Labour, but who went along with the man because he could apparently deliver an electoral victory. Looking back, and bearing in mind the slow-motion car crash that was the last few years of the Major government, it’s pretty obvious that Sooty and Sweep would also have delivered that victory. The big mystery is how on earth did Neil Kinnock (now Lord Kinnock, natch – nothing seduces an old leftie faster than the smell of ermine) manage to lose against Major in 1992?
I shall not recite the list of Blair’s misdemeanours here as that list will be well-known to those who loathe him and those who still have a soft spot for him (rather as one might have a soft spot for a rogue uncle who you know is purloining any small change he comes across and regularly finishes off the whisky, but who has a raffish charm it is hard to resist). Well, I for one have never found it hard to resist Blair’s raffish charm, his faux sincerity, his ‘man of the people’ act. The only positive thing is that he is now yesterday’s man, and for someone with his ineffable conceit, that will rankle. Good.

. . .

Usual routine on a Monday morning (although later today, as my brother didn’t get up and thereby wake me, but had a lie-in. I assume he had a day off), and I listened to Andrew Marr’s Start The Week in bed, while getting up, and on the way to work. The man himself still irritates me – I cannot rid myself of the suspicion, which seems to be confirmed every time he opens his mouth – that he thinks of himself as rather a bright, well-informed, well-connected and cultured sort of chap, and I have no doubt at all that at some point in the future he will be considered as a suitable candidate to chair the Arts Council and might even land the job. The British Establishment are not daft, and their talent for
survival is without equal. But his guests are usually an interesting bunch, and this morning’s included a Neville Brody (left).
Neville is now about 55 years old, but grew up in the punk era and carried with him that age’s vitality. He first came to prominence as the guy who art designed The Face (which I never read as I was then entering my 30s and really felt it was a magazine for younger people). Many of that magazine’s stylistic devices, often developed because of a lack of money, have been – now there’s a surprise – taken one by mainstream graphic designers working for banks, insurance companies and international conglomerates. But that is not Brody’s fault. He has recently been appointed the head of Department of Communication Art & Design at the Royal College of Art, and started his job on January 1 by promptly renaming the department the Department of Visual Communication. He went on to say that he does not believe in the student/teacher relationship but in ‘collaborative research’. It was at that point that I felt my hackles begin to rise, but I listened on and I’m glad I did. Brody went on to bemoan that for the past 20 odd years, students have been in the grip of a ‘success culture’ where they learnt in order to grab some lucrative employment and make shedloads of money. But the times now being hard, he reckons all that is over and that instead there will be an ‘explosion of ideas’. Well, I bloody well hope he is right. There was nothing quite as disheartening as everyone buckling under to ensure they were fucking rich by the age of 30. And ironically it was the same culture which made the abortion of Brit art and all its ‘conceptual art’ possible. So here’s to far more interesting times. Let’s hope all these new students can somehow shock us without resorting to daubing their work with shit, as those two charlatans Gilbert and George did.
. . .
Part of my daily routine, at some point in between brushing my teeth in the morning and brushing my teeth at night, is
to check how many people have read this blog during the day. I started doing this when I discovered Google’s stats feature, and it tickles me that, for whatever reason, folk as far away as New Zealand, Russia, Canada and Indonesia drop in. How long they stay is another matter, and is not recorded in the stats. And whether it is the same people from those countries is also not indicated, but I do like to think that to a man and woman, they are astonished by the breadth of my learning and interests and do nothing for the rest of the day but tell their friends about ‘this amazing blog I’ve found, man, I mean it’s far out, too much, you gotta, just gotta check it out, I mean, you just gotta, man’. Or something like that. Note that I assume all readers are, like me, raddled sixtysomethings whose best days are long behind them and rooted in the days when we could think of nothing better to do than grow our hair and give each other beads and the clap.
One feature of that facility is to list ‘referring URLs’ and from this something very puzzling has emerged: a disproportionate number of visitors happen upon my blog after tracking down piccies of Many Rice-Davies (above). I can’t even remember in which blog entry she was mentioned, but
I do remember grabbing a picture of her from Google images and using it. And that is the one which leads others to this blog. It has to be said that she is a very attractive woman, although the picture was taken several years ago when she was still a spring chicken. But I like to think she is probably still as attractive, though older. She and Christine Keeler came to prominence in the Profumo affair. Mandy apparently has a head on her shoulders and seems to have thrived. Christine (and I've used the image which is always trotted out on these occasions - sorry, Christine, but it is a nice pic of you) didn’t do so well in life, although for all I know she is happy. Either way, I wish them both well.

Plus ça change . . . (or why dog can rarely resist the temptation to take a large chunk out of other dog)

Now here’s an odd thing: New York’s esteemed Times is undoubtedly a heavyweight and serious newspaper of record. It is unlikely to carry reports about the most recent breast enlargement of whichever TV starlet is elsewhere flavour of the month or, given the number of other newspapers in the world, that one has just sacked an assistant editor. Like vice-presidents in US corporations, assistant editors on British papers are two a penny despite their rather high-falutin’ title. As a rule, when a senior hack is pipped at the post for the deputy editor’s job, he or she is sweetened with the title ‘assistant editor’ and, doubtlessly a pay rise, to ensure they aren’t tempted to jump ship and take with them editorial secrets to a new berth on a rival. But back to the New York Times and its surprising decision to report on a sacking at Britain’s News Of The World. The Screws, as we call it as the mainstay of its content is stories of illicit sex by footballers, soaps stars, politicians and businessmen, is certainly on of Britain’s bigger titles, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that the Times should therefore take an interest. But two days ago, it carried the shocking news that one Ian Edmondson, an assistant editor on the Screws had been sacked. It went on to explain that Ian (who might well be fat, paunchy and balding, but I really don’t know, so don’t assume he is) knew about a practice engaged in by Clive Goodman, one of the paper’s reporters, of hacking into the voicemail of celebs’ mobile phones. This practice is now officially frowned upon though when it went on under Edmondson’s indulgent eye, it most certainly wasn’t and proved to be a lucrative source of stories. But times have changed and our Ian now got the chop.
This was not the first time the venerable, oh-so-proper New York Times reported on the phone hacking allegations. Two weeks ago, it reported that an official investigation into the allegations was being reopened by the Crown Prosecution
Service which had earlier decided there was not enough evidence to bring charges against Andy Coulson (pictured and looking far younger than he has any right to do), who was Screws editor at the time the practice was going on. Coulson resigned after Goodman was jailed for his journalistic initiative, although he denied then and has always since denied that he knew what Goodman was up to. He went on to work as prime minister David Cameron’s ‘communications director’ and is credited with sharpening up the Tories’ public performance considerably, but he resigned that post, too, after the story of the hacking allegations and questions as to whether he knew more than he says refused to go away.
Well, you might think, there’s the story the New York Times was interested in: the ‘communications director’ of Britain’s prime minister leaves under a cloud. Not exactly world-shattering news, but certainly something a paper of record can take an interest in. Well, funnily enough, the Times didn’t take an interest in that aspect of it at all. So why is the Times so concerned with a relatively minor, semi-criminal practice engaged in by at least one (though we all suspect far more) more than 3,000 miles away? All becomes obvious when you mention the name ‘Rupert Murdoch’. It is a name which is most probably familiar to many: he owns, or largely owns, a ‘media empire’ which most of the rest of us don’t. It is called News Corp and part of that empire is a company called News International which owns the News Of The World. Oh, and another part of that empire is Dow Jones & Company which owns and publishes the Wall Street Journal which just happens to be one of the New York Times’s arch rivals. Oh, and Murdoch also owns the New York Post, another of the Times’s rivals, although given the Post’s constituency, it would be silly to describe the paper as an arch rival. Rival will do.
So there you might have it: serious ‘paper of record’ not above a little commercial mischief-making. Perhaps. Certainly, the Times has ample wriggle room and could well deny it is up to nothing of the sort, but to that I would respond ‘pull the other one, it’s got bells on it’.

. . .

There is no denying that, whether you love him hate him or – surely the view of the vast majority of people – you are indifferent to him, Rupert Murdoch has achieved a great deal in building up a his media empire. It has to be said that he did not do so from scratch but built it from a comparatively small newspaper group his father had owned. But before he inherited the business, he did spend a little time getting to know what life as a hack was like. I know this because around 1955, the writer and journalist Michael Green (The Art Of Coarse Rugby and The Art Of Coarse Acting, and the Squire Haggard column in the Daily Telegraph) spent some
time as a sub-editor on the Birmingham Post where, for a short time, Murdoch (pictured) was a fellow sub after graduating from Oxford. His time on the Post was quite short because his father died, and Rupe returned to Melbourne to take over the family business. I mention this because 25 years later, I spent two years working as a sub on the Birmingham Evening Mail, the post sister paper. So Rupe and I have a connection. Spooky.
I know Murdoch is the bête noir of loads and loads of people, but there is one comment he made which somehow endeared me to him for life. The Times is now part of News International and, as far as I know, still not making a profit. In fact, the last time it did make a profit, again as far as I know, was in the 19th century when it lease the patent for the then revolutionary roller press and was able to produce, distribute and sell far more copies than its rivals who still had to make do with laborious flatbed press. Eventually, the patent expired and the good times were over for The Times. It slipped into making a loss and even when it was taken over by Lord Norhtcliffe in 1908 (though he was then still Alfred Harmsworth and arguably the Rupert Murdoch of his day), it could not be coaxed into making a profit.
In 1981, two years after the Times was closed because of an 11-month strike, the Thomson Organisation realised it could not carry on and the paper (with its sister title The Sunday Times) was bought by Murdoch. By then it had firmly sunk into the habit of believing its own bullshit and regarded itself (though few others did) as the world’s premier newspaper. Murdoch’s British profits were firmly base on the decidedly downmarket Sun and News Of The World, and the maiden aunts who predominantly staffed The Times were horrified to be associated with such folk. It has long been regarded and had long regarded itself as the Establishment’s newspaper and there were even ‘questions in the House’ as to whether it was advisable that a paper of such a pedigree should be allowed into the soiled hands of some such upstart as Murdock. So its ‘editorial board’ demanded an undertaking from Murdoch that ‘he would not interfere editorially with the paper’. To which Murdoch, now perhaps the holder of a Yankee passport but in spirit forever an Australian, replied: ‘I didn’t spend fucking £5 million pounds buying a newspaper not to interfere editorially’. Even now it makes me smile with pleasure.