Mail Men by Adrian Addison

Author:Adrian Addison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books

12

Scorpio Rising

David English was by far the strongest and most secure editor in ‘Fleet Street’ as he approached the anniversary of his second decade in charge of the Daily Mail, largely because he had cornered the female market in a way Sunny Harmsworth had never done.

Over half the Daily Mail ’s readership were women and, of course, the country was still being led by a female Daily Mail loyalist; Margaret Thatcher was English’s firm friend and neighbour. The supreme Mail being lived just down the road from Downing Street, in a house said to have been bought for him by Rothermere, and would often pop in for chats, and English was there in the early hours of the morning for three of the most special parties for any Tory: her general election victories. In Daily Mail headlines, Margaret Thatcher was usually referred to as Maggie but never Peggy nor Madge; short forms have to fit the personality or they just don’t stick. Likewise, even as a young man nobody ever seemed to refer to David English as ‘Dave’ and certainly never ‘Sir Dave’, which is what he became in 1982 as a personal reward for his newspaper’s help in returning the Tories to power. ‘She looks after you,’ English said of Thatcher. ‘She’ll make you a bloody sandwich if you want one.’1

Thatcher would also help her friend get a passport for a South African athletics prodigy if he wanted one, especially if the girl could run awfully fast in bare feet for Britain. Sports columnist Ian Wooldridge had written a piece about seventeen-year-old Zola Budd, who was running world record times at middle distance in her native South Africa but could not compete in the 1984 Olympics because her home country was banned due to apartheid. As Wooldridge recalled later:

The article contained one piece of information I lived to regret revealing: she had a British grandfather . . . ‘Brilliant,’ cried David English, our editor of the time. ‘Because of the British family connection she shall run for us.’ By ‘us’ he meant the Daily Mail first and Britain second. He was a dynamic boss with a strict sense of priorities.2

The bemused teenager who ran without shoes would become another of English’s celebrated ‘stunts’ – making the news instead of waiting for it like the Vietnam orphans airlift a decade before. The Mail editor flew the Budd family over and settled them in a house near Guildford with some minders – his reporters. He called the Home Secretary, Leon Brittan, and her citizenship was granted in ten days. Other newspapers, especially the Daily Express, were aghast at the speed with which the runner had attained a passport that could take months or even years in similar cases. One of Miss Budd’s minders was Mailman Stewart Payne, who recalled the first time she ran on British soil: ‘We were planted in the press conference to ask innocent, mindless questions to stop other much more pertinent questions being asked. So, we were

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