FEBRUARY 1970
By JOHN SLATTERY
Bomb attack hero
Sheffield Star chief feature writer Len Doherty was injured as he
saved a young girl from a terrorist bomb attack at Munich Airport.
Though badly shocked, Doherty gave an eyewitness account of the attack
and ensuing gun fight to editor Peter Goodman. The picture on the front
of Press Gazette showed Doherty after he had flown into Heathrow. The
flowers were from a grateful El Al manager.
Doherty was returning from an assignment in Israel when his El Al flight came under attack.
He refused hospital treatment until he had filed his story which appeared in the nationals as well as the Star .
“Filthy, lewd, salacious” – The Daily Mirror
A Daily Mirror reader was so outraged by a Felicity Green article
about fashion designer Mary Quant, which mentioned pubic hair, that he
complained to the Press Council. Quant had predicted that future
fashions would see women’s pubic hair revealed and had confessed “my
husband once cut mine into a heart shape”. Green’s article was entitled
“Has Mary Quant Gone Too Far This Time?” and asked the views of five
women. HL Carter of Middlesex protested to the Press Council that the
Daily Mirror had gone too far: “I do not think I have ever come across
in any publication of any kind such filthy, lewd, salacious and
disgusting material,” he complained.
The Press Council rejected the complaint, stating that it was a matter of taste within the discretion of the editor.
Mail’s clothing revolution
Never mind Mary Quant. The Daily Mail had launched its own range of
outdoor clothing – Mailgear. An ad in Press Gazette described the
waterproof clothes as “well-styled, in bright colours, soft and
flexible yet unbreakably tough”.
It also boasted Mailgear had been sported by a prime minister. “Ted
Heath and his crew proved the value of Mailgear in winning the
Sydney-Hobart yacht race,”
said the ad copy.
Evans defends ‘Carma Sutra’
Another
complainant to the Press Council was the Bishop of Leicester. He said a
feature in The Sunday Times Magazine by Jilly Cooper was presented for
the special benefit of seducers. Cooper had “bed tested” different cars
to try to establish the best model for a would-be seducer. The article
headlined “Carma Sutra” followed a court case in which a High Court
judge had asked “can a chap be a romeo in an Alfa Romeo?” The Bishop,
Dr RR Williams, argued the article was “crude and physical.” Sunday
Times editor Harold Evans told the council that courting in motor cars
was a fact of life. The Bishop’s complaint was rejected.
Caption query for Sunday Times
Spot the man from The Sunday Times ? This splendid picture by Don
McCullin from the former-Biafra war front carried the caption query to
the paper: “Can you identify your foreign correspondent, Tony Terry?”
TVTimes axes regional offices
TVTimes announced it was to close its four main regional offices in
Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester and Bristol and its one-man branches in
Ulster and Norwich. Among the staff made redundant were 11 journalists.
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