Young hacks get a taste of history, and the pub

Q: What starts in a pub, continues in a pub and ends in a pub, but isn’t a pub crawl?

A: The 12th Fleet Street Experience

In 1996, Weekend magazine’s Robin Corry, The Sunday Mirror’s Robert Wilson and Take a Break editor John Dale realised that their young colleagues went blank whenever they mentioned ‘Fleet Street”.

They had no idea where it was or what it stood for, so the three of them initiated an annual Fleet Street Tour, which had its 12th outing at the end of last month.

‘As the years pass, and the further removed they are from the Fleet Street days, the more interesting the tour becomes,’said Dale. ‘It’s a bit like that Life on Mars show. It’s a different world.”

The organisers said that tour 12 was in some ways the most successful. Dale explained: ‘Wilson arranged for some of his old colleagues and friends to come along and there was great enthusiasm from the younger women to hear from the older women what it was like to be a female journalist in the Sixties and Seventies.”

Dale said: ‘All agreed it was a brilliant evening, both fun, illuminating, inspiring and at times moving. Robin said we didn’t seem to get very far – no Cheshire Cheese or Dr Johnson’s house – but that was because we were enjoying ourselves.”