Press
Biggs business
Bill Grundy
My aged Granny, one of nature's phrase-makers, used to say With boring frequency that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If the old girl was right, they MLISt be feeling flattered up to the hilt in the Daily Express building these days. Ever since that first full frontal story of the discoverY al Ronald Biggs in Rio, the other papers have been copying the Express so hard that it has become positively laughable. The Daily Mail, for example, in 3 pathetic attempt to get round the rules of copyright, actuallY employed an artist fellow Of provide them with a drawing a Biggs as he is today. As the chaP had never actually seen Biggs, the only thing the poor soul could do was to copy the Express's picture' which he did so faithfully that the end product looked like a photos" tat of the original. Lie Mind you, the copyright iss , was tricky. The Express attache° to each day's Biggsiana a sole. warning: "Today's Daily Expres! story and pictures of the trail'
robber Ronald Biggs are strictly world copyright. Legal proceedings will be instituted by Reaverbrook Newspapers in the event of any breach of this Copyright." Strong stuff. Not that it stopped the boys. It merely encouraged them to see how well they can re-write material.
The odd thing is that no one so far appears to have tried to find the story behind the story. Did the Daily Express work hand-in-hand With Scotland Yard? Did the Express tell the Yard where Biggs was? How long had they been With Biggs in Rio before Slipper of the Yard got there? Have they Paid — no, how much have they Paid — Biggs for his story? The answers to these and many other equally interesting questions are Still to be revealed. But a bit of careful reading goes a long way to laying them bare. For example, on the day the story broke, the Express's Mr Colin Mackenzie wrote from Rio: "Train robber Ronald Arthur Biggs was arrested by Scotland Yard men in Rio de Janeiro today.... And I was there to see it all." Not, you will note, and I was with them as they did Mr Mackenzie was clearly in the room already. That's obvious anyway, because of all those William Lovelace photographs of BIggs and his girl friends. Equally obvious is the fact that the Express were picking up the tab for Biggs's spot of elegant living at the Hotel Trocadero. According to Mr Mackenzie, Biggs hadn't been able to pay the electncity bill at his crummy flat for nionths. Yet here he was, whooping it up in a £25 a day suite. which makes me doubt whether Mr Robin Esser, associate editor of the Express, was telling the whole truth when he said, in a TV interview, that "We found him and we haven't paid a penny." The only suitable comment comes from Lord Gnome in the current edition °f Private Eye: "Let one thing be clear We have not paid a penny to We have paid him £2 111IIlion". Actually, the figure being 111ted abroad is £30,000, of which 'Iggs is said to have kept only half. The other £15,000, they say, has. been handed over to the Rio Chief of police to make sure that 1-Ir Ronnie stays in sunny South 'Irnerica, despite his public statements about longing for the green fields of Britain.
t take leave to doubt other tilitings as well. I do not believe at Biggs said not a word when h'IPPer of the Yard came into his y;:itel room in Rio. Nor does the r °I/Y Mail, which, on Friday, ,.ePorted Biggs as saying that he nwas betrayed by a Fleet Street ,seWsPaper. The paper in question "I., List be the Daily Express and eaccording to my source, one of its br°Ployees, Mr Brian Vine, was the tieltraYer. As Slipper stepped into Qpie„room, Biggs is said to have y"'? out, "Vine, you bastard,
ye shopped me".
s,which leads me to doubt s'rnet ng else Mr Robin Esser In his TV interview. He denied
„■111Usion with the Yard, saying OUr • thInquiries were parallel with
e Police inquiries." The implica
tion seems to be that they were not connected. Perhaps Mr Esser hasn't noticed that railway lines are also parallel, but are connected at very frequent intervals. Friday's Daily Mail quoted a Brazilian reporter as saying "Biggs told me that he offered his story for money, but the editor of the paper then told Scotland Yard that Biggs was in Brazil." He also presumably told them which city in Brazil, which hotel in that city, and which room.Biggs's anguished cry at being shopped becomes very understandable.
What is less understandable is why the Express printed its "world exclusive" in its first edition. Orthodox practice would have held it for the later editions, thus giving rival papers less chance to copy. Btt since the Express increased its print order by half a million that night, Fleet Street knew something big was afoot very early on. And so many stories leak out of the Express building these days that the management had every reason to believe their scoop would cease to be one unless they got it into print as soon as possible. Which is presumably why it appeared in the first edition, and not for the reason one Express hand gave me. "We printed it in the first edition," he said, "because we believe in getting the news to our readers as early as possible. It is just part of the Express service." The word 'service' prompts me to say: go tell it to the Army, go tell it to the Navy. But, most of all, go tell it to the Marines.
In our next gripping instalment a totally different version of the events described above.
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