The Malta Independent on Sunday
Miss World and other stories
“I was sprawled diagonally across a double bed in London’s Tower Hotel, when Helen Morgan, who had been crowned Miss World only six days earlier, announced that she was taking her knickers off. I pretended not to hear.
“I screwed up my eyes so that she could see I wasn’t peeping.
“What about you, Revel?” She had a beautiful Welsh accent. “Are you going to keep your pants on all night?”
“It’s the sort of quote that, when uttered in the illicit atmosphere of a hotel bedroom by a recently-crowned Miss World, stays with you for the rest of your life.”
Thus begins the most uproarious of all the chapters in this book.
Just to set the record straight – this was no lovers’ elopement and Miss World did not have sex in mind. Her intention was to run his knickers with her things under the tap. But quoted out of context, the words sound different.
Helen Morgan had just been crowned Miss World. The organisers knew she was a single mother but then they found out she could be named as “the other woman” in a divorce case. The organisers came to know this after the crowning ceremony and decided to sack her,
This is where Revel came in. He was sent as a reporter to get her side of the story. He bumped into her at Newcastle station, introduced himself and got on the train with her to London. He then offered the security guard to take care of her and see she got to London safely.
That was not to be. When the night train pulled in at York, half a dozen reporters boarded the train in their bid to interview Miss World on her way out of her crown. Somehow, he pacified them with a quote and they let them be. They left at Doncaster. At Peterborough, more reporters and photographers got on the train and Revel had a brainwave: he and Helen jumped off the train when it started to move. As luck would have it, they were met by a man in a blue Volvo who later turned out to be from Revel’s own paper. He took them to his house.
Thus began an almighty battle: between the Daily Mirror who Revel worked for and Julia Morley, the Miss World organiser who wanted to get her hands on Helen. The Mirror’s interest was to get Helen exclusively for itself for a day or so but Ms Morley claimed they had abducted her and threatened to sue.
The story had now become really big, the main item on the BBC News. It also started a war between the papers with the Mirror holding on to Helen and the other papers searching everywhere for her. At one point, the house she was in was surrounded by no less than 22 reporters from the Express.
Anyway, the story goes on and on. At the end, Revel was told to give her money (£2,000) and send her home. A centre spread already prepared was, as they say in papers, “spiked” – that is, not used. It was only much later that Revel found out the paper was being sold to Tiny Rowland and the Board decided to drop the Miss World saga because it had run for too long (three days of exclusives) and because the Board saw it as a “sex scandal” that would damage the paper’s image. Revel Barker now lives in Gozo, writing occasional pungent letters to the editor. Years back, our owners had got him to give us a brief course in journalism. His experience goes back many years and this book is his life story. Before the book, he was known as the “tireless archivist of Fleet Street memories” and he ran for six years a website that had 50,000 readers worldwide. Revel is from the North East, from Pudsey in Yorkshire. At 14 years, he decided to become a reporter and was taken on by the Pudsey News at the rate of three halfpence a line. He covered everything – amateur dramatics, weddings, funerals, council meetings, the magistrates’ court and even the local rugby matches. Then, at 17, he left to begin working at the Yorkshire Evening Post and his pay soared from three to seven guineas a week (from £3.15p to £7.35p). While there, he was one of the first reporters to interview the Beatles. Actually, he did more than that: closeted in with them in their dressing room and besieged by fans, he was handed a sheaf of autograph photos by John Lennon and told to sign them for the group. Then he heard from a source that the Daily Mirror was looking for reporters in the north of England. However, he could not join the Mirror at that point since he was only 19 and at that time peo- ple came of age at 21. In the meantime, he joined a freelance agency covering Heathrow Airport.
Reporters are great name-droppers and Revel is no exception. Sophia Loren, David Niven, Ian Smith and Harold Wilson … and the Queen Mother, who was speaking to a reporter for the first time in many many years.
He was also involved in two stories regarding the monarchy. In one case, he discovered that Diana Spencer had spent the night with Prince Charles in the royal train while it was parked in a siding. And he also reported that Princess Anne had been found in flagrante with Mark Philips in a horse box. Both stories were denied by the Palace.
It is quite ironic that one of his best stories regards Gozo, the place where he has retired to.
Revel had been reporting on the Poulson trial, the trial of John Garlick Llewellyn Poulson, an architect from Pontrefact who had declared himself bankrupt. He had been bribing hundreds to get orders, from ministers to MPs.
During the long trial, Poulson had revealed to Revel the story behind the Gozo Hospital. “The day I shocked the Queen” was how the paper reported it.
The Queen had come to Gozo to lay the foundation stone of the new hospital. But, questioned by Prince Philip, Poulson told him that there was nothing more to the new hospital than just the foundation stone. The tender had not been issued, but everyone concerned knew they would be the chosen ones to work on the new hospital.
Prince Philip called the Queen over and made Poulson repeat the story. The Queen was so angry she sent the silver trowel back.
The foundation stone (anyway it was in the wrong place, in the middle of an operating theatre) was taken away by a truck.
After the trial, Revel wanted to dig further. When the Palace did not confirm that the Queen had sent the trowel back, he flew to Malta. His two contacts in Malta were Godfrey Grima, a former Financial Times stringer and a Maltese developer mentioned by Poulson, not identified in the book.
Poulson had even shown him a letter he had written to the developer and a cheque for £5,000 to be used for bribes, for what Poulson described as “the always outstretched palms of the Maltese government”.
The developer did not speak to Revel but he called former PM George Borg Olivier who called PM Dom Mintoff. The result was a dawn raid by the police who ordered him out of Malta on the next plane.
The book is mesmerising in the details the author provides regarding a reporter’s job then and now. So much has changed in 30 years. In those years, the Daily Mirror had the biggest sales figure in the UK. That was before it was taken over by Robert Maxwell who then died alone in his boat after it was revealed he had dipped heavily into the Mirror’s pension fund.
And the freebees – the lax attitude to foreign travel and the hours spent at the pub next door. There were reporters who never put in an appearance in the newsroom but were always to be found in the pub.
Nevertheless, cub reporters in those days learned on the job the hard way – going round the courts, trying to find stories on their own instead of someone feeding them titbits. And certainly coming in at ground level, instead of floating in with a degree certificate and aiming to start at the top. And always ensuring they got their story right. And that they were fair in their reporting. But always ensuring that news, that someone wanted hidden, gets revealed – that is what news is all about.