Freebie and the Bean and other stories...

 

Being an after-dinner or an after-lunch speaker means that it’s most unusual to be entertaining audiences during a morning, but it happened recently when I entertained the ladies of Southwell Morning WI.

 

They were a lovely, lively audience and we shared a lot of laughter during my ‘Oprah Winfrey Touched My Elbow’ talk, but one astute member gave a preamble in the form of a commentary on a recent Daily Telegraph feature in which a young female journalist offered her impressions of life as a member of her own local WI.

 

The article was read out with evident distaste as the speaker provided a (fully justified) running commentary on what was wrong with it.

 

The piece was apparently riddled with errors and inaccuracies, so it wasn’t a very promising introduction for a journalist who has always taken great pains to be truthful and accurate in print.

 

Being teased about “making it all up” is just par for the course for any journalist, especially when working as an after-dinner speaker, and it’s usually just a case of laughing it off while at the same time making the point that not all journalists are rabid tabloid hacks, nor do we all defend the money-grabbing paparazzi who doorstep celebrities and drag us all down in the mud.

 

But bad journalism isn’t always confined to the tabloids, and the broadsheets don’t have a monopoly on the good stuff either.

 

This all came to mind after thinking about a small exchange with my other half, Mary, during a brief weekend lie-in. She asked me the time, and as I’d had a look a few minutes earlier I said ‘About 20 past seven’, but as I was saying this I scrabbled around still half-asleep, trying to find my watch in the darkened room, curtains still drawn.

 

Eventually my hand found the watch, peered at it and delivered the result. “It’s 7.22.”

 

Through the gloom I could see that Mary was wearing a small, slightly exasperated smile: “You went to all that trouble, just so you could give me the absolutely precise time? I only needed a rough idea.”

 

“But,” I explained, “I’ve spent my entire working life trying to give out accurate information. It’s too late for me to stop now.”

 

The fact is, almost all of the journalists I’ve worked with have always done the same, and any occasional exceptions were mostly down to laziness rather than any deliberate attempt to mislead.

 

One exception stands out, though. And this is one story that’s never been told in my after-dinner speeches or after-lunch talks.

 

Back in the mid-70s, I was part of a small team on the weekly Lincolnshire Chronicle, based in Lincoln, and we were very short-staffed. (The owners, the Lincolnshire Standard Group, had unwisely bought several lame duck titles during a 1974 mini-recession while the cost of newsprint rocketed, then they found themselves almost bankrupt as well…)

 

Staff recruitment was frozen and our meagre expenses were cut, while our wages were already pitiful. Staff turnover was considerable so remaining reporters had to work hard enough for two to make up the shortfall.

 

The idealistic and highly motivated young journalists, all of whom were paid buttons, slaved away selflessly. Our efforts saved the company. We were keen then, and foolish.

 

When the crisis past, the boss – Anthony Lionel Robinson, or ALR as we called him – rewarded us by allowing us to ogle his new Jensen-Healey sports car. That was a lesson learned.

 

But I digress. My patch was North Kesteven, where excitements included covering North Hykeham Town Council and lots of heated rows about companies digging gravel pits. Oh, and the visit of Dr Henry Kissinger to RAF Waddington – but that’s another story. That’s one I do tell in my after-dinner speeches.,

 

I used to rather envy my laid-back colleague Patrick, who covered the city rather than my rural patch and who had the pleasant weekly task of previewing what was showing at the local cinemas – which were then the ABC (or Savoy) and the Odeon (now the Ritz, a Wetherspoons pub).

 

Not only were these previews fun to write (I’d previously done the same job on the Sleaford Standard), they also brought the valuable perk of free cinema tickets. Until, that is, Patrick had to preview a new release entitled Freebie and The Bean.

 

This was a cop comedy-thriller, a crash-fest starring Alan Arkin and James Caan. I know that now, but back in 1974 I didn’t know that. Neither did Patrick.

 

And when he was unable to contact the manager of the ABC cinema, Patrick got around the problem by making up his preview. Unfortunately, Patrick described the film as a horror movie concerning a giant, Triffid-like bean plant.

 

He was bound to be found out, so perhaps it was a journalistic death wish.

If so he got his wish.

 

The cinema manager read Patrick’s imaginative but wildly inaccurate preview. He was livid, understandably. Patrick was sacked.

 

Quite right too.