MINI BACKLASH
Motoring journalists came under fire from a British Leyland car dealer who was furious with the Bath and Wilts Evening Chronicle. The motor dealer, High Street Garages of Corsham, withdrew its advertising after the newspaper’s motoring correspondent Mike Averis had praised a Honda as a better buy than a Mini. The company said it would not advertise with the newspaper until Averis had “gone to work full time for a Honda agent or been deported”. The dealer fumed in a letter to the paper: “Even a second-hand Mk.1 1800 is harder to come by than a motoring correspondent with brains.” Editor Patrick Wheare defended his man: “In my view the motoring correspondent’s job is to test cars – not write eulogies on them.”
SILENCE IS GOLDEN
The Guardian’s Scottish correspondent John Kerr and photographer Frank Martin were pictured on the front of Press Gazette having breakfast in Greenland. They were covering a Joint Services Expedition. Martin said the most remarkable impression of the expedition was the silence. “We stood stock still and heard nothing, not a bird, not a tree moving – it was quite a change from the office.”
IRISH ATTACK ENGLISH ‘FILTH’
A feature on nude models was cut in Irish editions of The People after attacks on the English press by an opposition member in the Irish parliament. Stephen Coughlan had declared that “some of the photographs and stories carried in some English papers border on pornography”. His intention was to do “all in my power to have this filth stopped from reaching the eyes of our youth”.
NO MERCY IN KING’S BOOK
Three of the giants of Fleet Street, IPC chairman Hugh Cudlipp, Lord Thomson and ousted IPC chairman Cecil King were pictured at Foyle’s literary luncheon to launch King’s autobiography, Strictly Personal. Cudlipp said of the book: “In Strictly Personal, Cecil King bares not only his own soul without mercy, but also the soul of anybody who happens to be passing by – without mercy.
DRESSING FOR THE PART
This looks the right gear to wear when you are doorstepping short-tempered celebrities. In fact Daily Sketch photographer Monty Fresco and colleague Philip Jackson were dressed as a Cavalier and a Roundhead while covering the making of the film Cromwell, which was being shot in Spain.
IPC CHAIRMAN LISTENS TO YOUNG
It was a time of student demonstrations and IPC chairman Hugh Cudlipp urged communicators to listen to the voice of youth protest and stop patronising it as a cult. In a speech to the International Magazine Conference in the US, Cudlipp said: “The voice of protesting young people has always been an early warning sign.
It must be heeded now before a new class structure, not of rich and poor but of young and old, is permanently established.”
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