Watching brief - Amanda Platell relives her Sunday Express days
Published 03 May 2004
By going back to its conservative roots, the Daily Express is ending a terrible social experiment begun by Lord Hollick and Rosie Boycott
''Enough is enough, Mr Blair," screamed the splash headline of the Daily Express on 22 April. The newspaper was switching its support from new Labour to the Tories. A "historic decision", it said.
The Express has supported Labour in only one national election in living memory - 2001 - so the gesture was hardly historic, but it is a seismic shift. I had to laugh hearing the editor, Peter Hill, the man who made the Daily Star sparkle, on the Today programme that morning.
"No, my proprietor Richard Desmond had nothing to do with my decision to back the Tories," he said, seemingly appalled that anyone would think his boss capable of such dictatorial tendencies. What, that nice Mr Desmond? (By the following day, Desmond was making headlines of his own for goose-stepping during a meeting with the Telegraph and ranting about the Germans.)
Anyway, it is a big shift back to the traditional heartland of Express readers, both daily and Sunday. That heartland and those readers were abandoned briefly but painfully during one of the greatest newspaper follies of the 20th century. Enter the new Labour lickspittle peer Lord Hollick, as buyer, and the liberal, cosmopolitan Rosie Boycott as editor. It was April 1998 and a social experiment in newspapers was about to begin. It was like putting Charles Moore in charge of the Guardian. Appointing an editor with scant newspaper experience, certainly no tabloid skills, and who commanded little respect in the industry, was always going to end in tears - mostly those of journalists at the Express.
To produce this new bible of new Labour, Boycott sacked scores of first-rate journalists to bring in her mates, at highly inflated salaries. Many of the existing staff were not even sacked with proper redundancy packages but put on the drip feed, a salary until you get another job. Isn't it great how some socialist bosses treat their workers?
I remember, when I was editor of the Sunday Express, negotiating with one of the Indy's better writers to try to get him into the group. He told me his bottom line for a weekly column was £180,000 plus a company Jaguar, but he was expecting more to move. And you know, he wasn't out of the ballpark.
Most of the journalists Boycott brought over had nothing but contempt for the paper and its readers. It showed.
Boycott oversaw, as she had done at the Independent, the most swingeing staff cuts. There were days on the Sunday Express when we had so few staff that it was a miracle we even got the paper out. That was down only to the dedicated production team, not one of them a Boycott appointment.
Ultimately, the new Labour coterie could not change the views of the readers. They are and always were small "c" conservatives, not new Labour luvvies. All Desmond has done is face up to that truth and put things right. It's a commercial decision, not a political or moral one, although I do believe Hill is absolutely sincere in his view of the government. He understands his readers better than any Express editor since Nick Lloyd. He and Desmond have thrown the gauntlet down not only to new Labour but also to the Daily Mail. As Tony Blair would say, let battle be joined.
Parky off to ITV? No, Parky's just off. And anyone who doubts that should have watched his show on Saturday. Not since Blair tried to woo the Women's Institute has 60 minutes seemed such a lifetime. His guests were Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen, Davina McCall and Gordon Ramsay. Ronan Keating was also billed, but I and the rest of the nation had fallen asleep by then. These guys aren't A-list celebrities; they're not even C-list - they're listless, like the rest of us were after watching them. I could have sworn even Parky himself fell asleep at one stage as the terribly inconsequential Davina drivelled on.
And to think that he used to interview the likes of Muhammad Ali. From "I am the greatest" to "I just grate" in just a few years.
Good on Parky for taking the big bucks and getting out before they found him out. I hope Jonathan Ross gets his slot. And I hope that ITV will have the money to buy the guests Parkinson needs to make him a contender again.
Kevin Spacey: the final word, I hope. After rather graciously conducting a press conference at the Old Vic, following his nocturnal revelations, at which he gently declined all questions about what he had really been up to in that park at 4am, I was stunned to see the way Channel 4 News handled the story that night. There were more sniggers and sexual innuendos than a Carry On movie. The reporter even used the device of a mobile phone and implied text sex to top and tail the item.
It was puerile. If you can't do these stories straight, so to speak, don't do them at all.
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
