The press
Nasty stories
Alexander Chancellor
The Sunday People started, I am told, as an organ of the Primrose League. However much it may since have changed, it still contains one or two interesting, if somewhat disgusting, stories. There was one last Sunday about Myra Hindley which reminded me inevitably of Lord Longford. Josie O'Dwyer, a beefy-looking former inmate of Holloway prison, recalls with no remorse how she flew at Hindley in the washroom and 'smashed her face into the wall'. As a result, Hindley had her nose re-modelled by a plastic surgeon. But Miss O'Dwyer's subsequent comments are the interesting bit. 'For years, Myra had pleaded with her lesbian lovers to smash her face into doors and walls so that she could have plastic surgery which would change her appearance. She thought this would help to get parole. On one occasion two of her friends did push her face into a wall, but the injuries weren't serious enough for surgery. So I ended up doing her a great favour.' Miss O'Dwyer concludes: 'Her power over fellow prisoners was incredible. Women fawned on her. Not just her lesbian lovers, but otherwise normal girls. Somehow she always managed to find a way to get on her own with a lover in a cell.' This portrait of Myra Hindley in prison stands in sharp contrast to that offered by Lord Longford in a letter to The Times last December. 'No one who knows her seriously,' he wrote, 'supposes that she would be a public menace if she was released. Her state of remorse is such that she will be haunted by it all her life.' To which portrait should we attach greater weight? I give up.
As you see, I have been reading the popular Sunday papers, something which I seldom do. You certainly find in them stories which you can find nowhere else, but the trouble is that these stories always contain the same ingredients. The popular Sundays are like restaurants in Italy where you so often get exactly the same dishes under different names. Still, credit must go to the News of the World for being the first newspaper to find the solution to the great weekend mystery story, the story of Andrew Knight's wife and the Italian chef. Mr Knight is editor of the Economist, I confess that I envy him. First of all he has an Italian cook who knows how to stuff roast veal. Secondly he has such interesting people to dinner — the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, Mr Healey, the Governor of the Bank of England, and Mr Norman St John Stevas, to name but a few. All this was revealed by Mr Knight in last week's Economist. What was also revealed — a little hastily as it turned out — was that Mr Knight's home telephone was tapped. His wife had long suspected as much because of the 'pints' and 'clicks' which occurred during her conversations. Mr Knight was more sceptical. But proof seemed to have arrived last week when Mrs Knight telephoned her cook and heard a recording of the conversation about stuffing veal she had held with him only a few minutes earlier. There followed Mr Knight's exposure of the wiretapping scandal.
One can sympathise with Mr Knight. Given such an extraordinary occurrence, anybody might have deluded himself into thinking that his telephone was being bugged. He could not easily have guessed the true explanation — that another Italian with a crossed line and a tape recorder had cut in on the discussion of this delicious recipe and decided to record it for his own use. Perhaps, however, Mr Knight still might have hesitated to go into print if he had been familiar with the telephone on my desk. This `pfuts' and 'clicks' almost continuously. The only conversations it picks up with any clarity are other people's. It is constantly flirting with other people's tape recorders. But it is not, I am sure, being tapped, any more than Mr Knight's was. The incident confirmed me in my conviction that conspiracy is the least likely cause of most human misfortunes.
In a letter to The Times, the Archbishop of Westminster has thanked the British press, television and radio for being 'both magnanimous and sensitive' in their coverage of the deaths of two Popes. He is quite right. The press has been extremely respectful — much more so than one would expect in, say, the Italian newspapers, which feel they can be far more critical of Popes than of Presidents of the Italian Republic. But the Observer, I think, has carried respect too far by acquiring what it calls 'exclusive access' to Pope John Paul's collection of open letters to characters from history and literature. The Observer could not of course, know that the Pope would die so soon, but even if he had lived, his letters would not have been worth serialisation in a Sunday newspaper. They are whimsical and embarrassing. The Spectator considered publishing his letter to Dickens in the week of his election, but, having read it, we could not bring ourselves to do so.
The Observer also poses a question which needs answering. Why is it that lead ing articles by the paper's Editor-in-Chief, Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien, are signed by him? This is a most unusual practice, for tht point of a leader is supposed to be that it gives the view of the paper rather than that of any individual. Is it that the Observer is so proud of having such a distinguished Editor-in-Chief (for he is truly dis tinguished) that it wishes to draw attention to anything written by him? Or does it wish to dissociate itself from opinions that are rather strong meat, such as his demands that Sir Harold Wilson should resign all public offices and that Britain should maintain the status quo in Ulster? It would be interesting to know.
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