Abstract
Stashy Dan was the stingiest man in town. No mean feat in a city like Glasgow, where violent generosity – “will ye have a drink wi’ me, or will ah brekk this boattle ower yer heid?” – can sometimes be eclipsed by a combination of short arms and deep pockets. Dan earned a good wage as a “star reporter” on the Daily Express, but, like the Queen, he never seemed to have any money on him. Indeed, he once tapped her husband for 10 shillings when they shared a helicopter to a royal gig in 1971.
That was the year of the Clarkston disaster, when 22 people were killed by a gas explosion that ripped apart a shopping centre on the outskirts of Glasgow. Stashy Dan lived nearby and was the first journalist on the scene. “Till my dying day, the carnage will remain imprinted on my mind, my heart, my soul,” he regaled us in the newspaper pub, half an hour after similar of his sentiments had been splashed over the first edition. “Will someone top up my tumbler with a large one while I give youse an eye-witness exclusive of the drama that unfolded in leafy Clarkston today?”
He really did talk like that, but on this occasion we crowded round as he stroked his bristling black moustache and called for hush in the noisiest pub in the country. “I heard that brutal blast from the sanctity of my own home. Of course I grabbed my jacket and notebook and within minutes I was enveloped in a Dante's Inferno. Clambering over bodies, I tried to comfort, not as you'd expect the injured and traumatised, but wee lassie nurses who had somehow got there before me. Their Persil-white uniforms were stained with blood, sweat and tears, their equally pale faces were pinched and drawn by a nightmare in suburbia.”
“But you got the story down, Stashy?”
“Of course. But you know what nearly stopped me writing it? My own son! My 10-year-old. I saw him quite suddenly. He must have followed me out and was staring uncomprehendingly at scenes of devastation far too foul for innocent eyes.”
“So what did you do, Dan?”
He picked up the large goldie and took an enthusiastic swallow: “What else could I do? It was a question of a quick 10p and sending him straight home to his mother.” There was silence for three seconds. Then someone said: “Yer lucky the boy had two bob on him, Dan.”
I thought of the Clarkston disaster when the media was agog with the Clarkson debacle. It wasn't just the similarity in spelling, it was watching a 54-year-old man self-destruct while his employers fretted over sacking a lucrative talent. I've seen many pose that dilemma in newspapers and television. Granted they were smaller fish, but some could have given jumped-up Jeremy a race in the ego stakes.
Stashy Dan was a peaceful prima donna, normally sober, but the award-winning photographer who often partnered him on jobs wore a Nazi armband and a tin helmet when West Germany came to Hampden Park in 1973. The same guy roared out a vivid impersonation of the Bluebird death crash … in front of Sir Donald Campbell's widow (PC stood for Press Club in those days).
It wasn't uncommon for Express sub-editors to help legless reporters to their desks on the late shift. Across the city, the editor of another big paper got so drunk most nights that he sacked anyone who spoke to him after 10pm, including the imbibing chief of the Dundee Fire Service, apparently mistaken for his features chief-sub.
Broadcasting newsrooms were no different. One punch-up I witnessed arose from a misunderstanding over what constitutes common assault. A quiet and competent Canadian scripter's hairstyle had become the subject of pub debate.
“It's a wig,” said a well-oiled Australian.
“It's not,” argued a half-cut colleague.
“It is. And I'm the man to prove it.”
Back upstairs, Bruce the Goose crept behind “Canada” and yanked his brown bouffant upwards. The yell from the non-wig victim was quickly followed by an impressive right-hander that laid the Aussie out on the floor. Nothing more was said.
The UPITN TV news agency, based in London, broke scores of major world picture stories in the 1980s, despite being staffed by some of the most precious personalities in the business. We had a French guy who was a tremendous asset to the firm, able to identify the Peruvian deputy foreign minister or explain why Thailand and Cambodia were at war. Yet he was sacked – for being “anti-social” (he wouldn't join the rest of us in the ITN bar between stories. The union hard-drinkers colluded in his dismissal by negotiating his pay-off).
Margaret Thatcher's anti-union drives forced journalists and technicians onto the defensive. Managers cleared out characters who had survived on a “work hard, play hard” philosophy Casual labour came into its own, but freelancers didn't feel free either. Before I left the industry in 1998, zero-hours contracts were common. They weren't called that, but writers, producers and editors checking the roster to see if they had work next month were forced to toe the line. Many would work for next-to-nothing “to get it on my CV”.
Not much fun and games there for the characters who had dominated. Perhaps Jeremy Clarkson was one of the last dinosaurs, big enough to stamp around, unheeding of others, until evolution caught up with him. Wherever he careers now, one thing's for sure, the next time he lashes out at someone who hasn't served him steak … he's toast.