After seeing off 10 editors, Telegraph’s Mandrake Tim Walker bows out…but who was his favourite?

With Telegraph Media Group currently decimating its editorial workforce the pubs around Victoria are doing a brisk trade in leaving drinks.

Among the last of the paper's old guard to take redundancy is Mandrake diary column editor Tim Walker who signs off after surviving a 12-year-stint in the Telegraph trenches.

Since the Barclay twins bought the Telegraph titles in 2004 they have made around 400 journalists redundant. Some 55 editorial staff have been given their marching orders in the latest round.

The daily Mandrake column is no more so Telegraph readers will miss out on Walker's waspish wit from now on.

He kept things classy in his leaving speech at the Star Tavern in Belgravia, where Axegrinder overheard this snippet: "In the 12 years I worked here, I got to count in and count out 10 editors. I once asked John Kay of the Sun – the man who worked for Kelvin MacKenzie in that paper’s glory days – who his favourite editor was, and he said to me: 'Well, there’s only ever one sensible reply to that question: it’s the present one.'

"I don’t have to be so diplomatic, so I will say that my two favourites – joint first – were Dominic Lawson, because he was the one who appointed me as Mandrake in the first place, and he was a brilliant, inspiring, agenda-setting editor. And Tony Gallagher because under him – and I am thinking, of course, of how he was the driving force behind the parliamentary expenses stories – we weren’t just marking time, like so many other papers, we made a difference, we were courageous and strong and we made this country better than it was before: that is my definition of great journalism."

Topics in this article : Telegraph Media Group