The tricentenary of the first daily national paper, the Daily Courant, has been the cue for reminiscences of Fleet Street, so here - it was, after all, a very class-conscious place - are mine.
The start of my career coincided with the end of Fleet Street and the birth of lifestyle journalism. For my first proper job, I was based just off Fleet Street, working on a Saturday supplement of the Daily Mail called "Mail and Female". Or was it "Mail and Femail"? There was some pun involved, at any rate. Rosie Boycott, going through a frivolous phase between editing Spare Rib and the Independent on Sunday, was its deputy editor, and I remember her congratulating me on getting some pundit to say that Prince Charles looked really good in suede shoes. Or was it that he looked really bad in suede shoes?
Anyway, the work involved getting quotes about, or by, famous people, and my special responsibility was "My Saturday", in which international celebrities or, on one occasion, Tony Blackburn, told me what they did on Saturdays.
I seemed to be getting paid handsomely for making the literary equivalent of candyfloss, and to compound my guilt there were these hulking men wandering about in filthy boiler suits. As I wrote that Britt Ekland, or whoever, always began the day with a small bowl of muesli and chopped bananas, I would see steam billowing along the corridor beside me, indicating that the printers were sluicing down in the showers adjacent to the gents' toilets. As I noted that Britt (or whoever) ate half an avocado for lunch in a certain smart Chelsea cafe, the steam would be intermingled with a loud yodelling of pop songs, reverberating farts, burps and raucous discussions of football and beer.
I used to wonder whether the hot-metal men ever read my copy. I hoped not, except for the Anthony Burgess "My Saturday". Burgess told me that, on waking, he drank two pints of strong tea and smoked five Schimmelpennick cigars. "I've got a terrible cough," he said, "but the cigars give me something to cough on."
Producing gritty stuff like that eased my discomfort at being the Fauntleroy of Fleet Street. It was a very temporary condition, though, so I needn't have worried.
