Some juicy tales from a delicious gossip

LET’S admit it, we all love to read what goes on behind the scenes of the rich and famous. Trouble is, half of it is third hand, copied from online stories that often have a questionable source.

So it’s refreshing to come across something that’s straight from the horse’s mouth. Peter Jackson’s Confessions of a Newsboy Editor – Adventures in the Golden Age of Print is a newly published book (Amazon £10.99) and is not only a page turner, it’s a first-hand account of wonderful anecdotes and true stories about everyone who is anyone. It’s also a difficult book to review because there are just too many stories to choose from.

Deliciously gossipy and hilariously funny, Peter Jackson has rubbed shoulders and more with almost every known personality from royals, presidents, Hollywood stars and famous sportsmen and women. How did he do this?

Well, Jackson has been a journalist man and boy, rising from local newspapers to editing some of the top magazines in the country, from the Sunday Times magazine, Elle, TVTimes, Classic Cars, The Field. It’s hard to find a publication that he hasn’t worked on.

His experiences relayed in the book are a wonderful insight into the mechanisms of newspapers and magazines and some of the magnates behind them – including how Rupert Murdoch and Robert Maxwell really ran their empires when he worked for them.

I had the privilege of working for Peter Jackson when he edited, and I might add, waved a magic wand over the circulation of TVTimes magazine back in the day when the franchise was owned by ITV. Buying TVTimes was the only way to know details of the channel’s programmes. Under his watch, Jackson created a hugely popular magazine that personalities were desperate to be featured in. He was and still is an enthusiastic and hugely innovative, energetic person, someone who is highly respected still for his editorial vision and skills.

Jackson’s personality and professionalism meant that people took to him easily. It accounts for the many in-depth stories he shares in the book where people have opened up their hearts and their homes to him. They’ve shared their private lives, their private their private yachts and planes, more.

The intro to the book sets the scene. “Starting his working life delivering newspapers before and after school, Peter Jackson went on to become a world-travelled journalist and Britain’s most prolific editor in an era when publishers could dream in millions.

“At the height of their success, four major titles he edited (three of which he created and two named Editor of the Year) could claim a total circulation of nearly 13,000,000 copies – in spite of clashes with rival publishers Rupert Murdoch and Robert Maxwell.”

One of the secrets of success, reckons Peter Jackson, is due to his first job – that of a paperboy. His powers of observation were keen, even as a youngster. He would note the type of houses he delivered to and the newspapers and magazines they read. Those observations set him up for life and made him the success he has become.

He says “Whenever challenged to create a new title I put myself back on my schoolboy news-round, saw myself trudging up the garden path to the front door and pictured what kind of people would want my kind of magazine pushed through their letter-box. It worked every time.”

Creating or editing some of the most successful magazines in the UK’s publishing history meant that Jackson, as I mentioned, met just about everyone who is anyone, from royalty upwards and downwards.

His journalistic skills took him to all corners of the world and his adventures are film-worthy. From the glamorous world of Hollywood where he hobnobbed with the rich and famous and was taken to their bosom – Charlie Chaplin rescued him from the embarrassment of having to dance in front of hundreds of people. Singer Buddy Greco’s wife insisted on taking him to dinner. Sleeping in Errol Flynn’s cabin on his luxury yacht – just some of the many anecdotes he tells.

Jackson covered a royal tour that ended in Burma. He decided to take a paddlesteamer from Mandalay to Rangoon. No romantic journey this. Gangsters fired on the boat and Jackson, suffering from dysentery, found himself in the thick of an ambush which resulted in a deck covered in dead bodies the next morning.

From pirates to permeating the private portals of John Paul Getty, Jackson went to the extremes of his profession. When invited to a ball at the home of the world’s richest man, Peter Jackson was amused to note that the only drink on offer was milk from a coin-operated dispenser.

When a tv company staged an outside broadcast for a rare interview, Getty noticed the masses of cables trailing from camera, microphones and lights. At the end of the session Getty presented the producer with an electricity bill, explaining that “he’d taken a reading of the power before and after they’d started”.

The book bounces wittily through wonderfully juicy stories about hundreds of people Peter Jackson has met and worked with. He pulls no punches and the anecdotes come thick and fast about the inside stories of those well-known faces of stage and screen. And it’s all true!