Goodbye to Fleet Street

Newspapers no longer come from Fleet Street but journalists still regard St Bride’s as their parish church. Memorial services for deceased journalists are usually held there. Inevitably the retirement of the Rector, the Ven David Meara, attracted attention in the press, including a long interview in The

Times. One of his innovations at the height of the Iraq War was to introduce an annual memorial service for journalists and their support staff killed in the line of duty. In The Times he reveals that fellow members of the clergy express distaste when he tells them he is involved with the media but says this is ‘misguided’. The church will never get its message across if it adopts a siege mentality, he warns. Commenting on the diverse range of people St Bride’s attracts, the archdeacon describes Clement Freud’s funeral in 2009 at which Bono sat next to Gordon Brown with Stephen Fry just across the aisle. Simon McBurney who played the archdeacon in Rev rang Meara for advice. “You need to be a bit evil,” the real Archdeacon of London replied. “The archdeacon is a bad man to the bishop’s good man.” As the series progressed, McBurney appeared less evil. Perhaps that’s the way it is in life. But Meara was unable to get the actor to drop his pectoral cross. “I told him archdeacons don’t wear pectoral crosses but he wore it anyway.”