Some delicious memories from Frank Keating, ex of the Guardian, in the current edition of the Journalist’s handbook. He is recounting with some sadness the lost days of heavy drinking on Fleet Street (which, for overseas viewers, was formerly the home of most of Britain’s national newspaper titles until the late 1980s).
“Only this autumn, stately and eminent Mail-star Andrew Alexander richly reminisced on his Telegraph days in the bloom of youth when “amazing scenes” would take place daily in the Keys. “I once witnessed the features editor throwing a punch at the diplomatic editor, missing and knocking the deputy editor off his bar-stool, who lay on the floor puzzled about his sudden view of the ceiling…. [in mitigation] the old DT [Telegraph] never paid particularly well but it hated sacking anyone. So every drunken bum in Fleet Street dreamed of working for it.”
Heady days.
