Work by the book

WHO is the most famous person you have ever met?” is a question most journalists get asked at some time or other. In my case the answer would have to be a trio of Margaret Thatcher, the Pope and Princess Diana.

I am stretching it a bit with Diana, I must admit. I fırst saw the then Lady Di at that infamous photo shoot at the nursery school where she worked in Pimlico. Identified as the next royal bride, she had agreed to pose for the press and the crafty photographers got her to stand with the sun behind her, thereby displaying a shapely pair of legs through her silky skirt. She said nothing but we exchanged nods and smiles, so I guess that counts as a meeting.

Years later she whirled by me in a dazzle of flashlights at the Ideal Home Exhibition. I came face to face with, and was blessed by (!) Pope John Paul II while following his 1982 tour of Britain and was introduced to our first lady prime minister during a press reception at Downing Street.

So that’s my Premier League of encounters with fame but there have been many other heroes and villains. It was a love of English and a desire for a bit of devilment that took me into journalism in the first place, but as a music fan, I was always on the look-out for a chance to meet famous stars. My chosen career provided some rich pickings. I chatted with Paul McCartney on his first Wings tour backstage at the Bournemouth Winter Gardens in 1973. I’ve interviewed Chuck Berry and Little Richard, the Motown founder Berry Gordy, the great Ben E King, country star Tammy Wynette and Don McLean of AmericanPie, to name but a few.

This reminiscing has been sparked by the discovery of my old “contacts book” in boxes of paperwork I am ploughing through. You might expect I should be writing about the parliamentary election results or my expectations for North Cyprus this year, but frankly, little has changed and although, as we know, nostalgia isn’t what it used to be, I hope you’ll indulge me.

My tatty dark blue hardback notebook, barely hanging together with tape these days, pre-dates not just mobile phones but even the Filofax. It was a treasure trove of addresses and phone show on an obscure satellite channel) won’t say hello without referring you to an agent.

The book contains direct lines to numerous police officers, from a Scotland Yard commander to scores of detective sergeants and detective constables, plus a named contact at the office of what was then the Director of Public Prosecutions (now the CPS). There are pages for fire brigade and ambulance controllers, more than enough these days to get them, and me, locked up for corruption in public office. Yet they and I knew we were more or less on the same side. We had been taught law and were trusted. If we strayed across the line that might prejudice an inquiry, we had experienced editors and the office lawyer to pull us back.

Here, then, sits the almostsaintly Cliff Richard alongside torture gang boss Eddie Richardson and the Great Train Robber, Bruce Reynolds. My worlds collide again further along the alphabet where TV coppers Regan and Carter of TheSweeney, actors John Thaw and Dennis Waterman, follow the real-life Jack “Slipper of the Yard” — with a Brazil number for his nemesis, Ronnie Biggs

Seventies and Eighties TV and pop music is well represented, with stars such as Olivia NewtonJohn, Lynsey de Paul and Paul Nicholas, then making it big in JesusChristSuperstar, Gibert O’Sullivan and, in the absence of the man himself, David Bowie’s mum.

I also had the home numbers for every member of Slade, with whom I once enjoyed a fun afternoon of drinks at a West End hotel, continuing with them for an appearance on TopofthePops, and Gary Numan, who flew me over his Wentworth home in his private plane.

Here are Michael Crawford, Des O’Connor, “Jesus of Nazareth” Robert Powell, two Dr Whos, John Pertwee and Tom Baker, and bad boys like Oliver Reed and George Best. There’s not many of us from around that time who didn’t share a drink in the King’s Road with poor old George.

Curiously I have one collective number in Hertfordshire for Morecambe and Wise. I can’t remember whether this was Eric or Ernie — unless perhaps they really did live together and share a bed in stripey pyjamas in some magical TV age of innocence.

Not so innocent, as it turned out, was lumbering Cockney actor Arthur Mullard, the first person ever to show me a domestic video recorder, an enormous lump of brushed chrome with piano keystyle push buttons which he proudly demonstrated at his council flat in Islington. Endless replays of Yus,MyDear — perhaps not. After his death, it was revealed that he had been guilty of domestic violence and sexual abuse.

And of course he’s not the only one in my book to have deceived us all. Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris and Gary Glitter — what happened to our reporters’ instincts with these people? Were we too easy in their company because they always played up and gave us what we wanted; a few jolly quotes and a gurning for the camera?

Still, I look back with affection and a degree of astonishment on those last days of Fleet Street, a hurly-burly of (often) drink-fuelled creativity, talent, gossip and rivalry where phrases such as, “I’m just off to lunch with Rod Stewart”, were greeted with a casual shrug. My old world is now populated by earnest, watersipping keyboard monkeys who are rarely allowed out of the office because it costs money to meet real people. We had our expenses to cover all that — but that’s another story!