Abstract
Stephen Glover is a brave man. He has produced a comic novel about Fleet Street and chosen to write it in a satirical manner: a decision that is bound to draw comparisons with Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece, Scoop. After all, who could possibly equal the brilliance of that work of genius? But hold on, that's not what Glover set out to do. Waugh was a hopeless tyro journalist who blundered about Ethiopia and was protected from his follies by his friend Bill Deedes, a more seasoned reporter. Scoop contains a few wonderfully surreal episodes at the Daily Beast, but Waugh's knowledge of actual journalism was paper-thin.
Glover has spent a lifetime in Fleet Street and although his book is amusing, it is close to the reality of Fleet Street, where today even the most famous newspapers teeter on the edge of economic extinction. Glover's anti-hero is Sam Blunt, a seasoned reporter with one O-level, who skipped further education and began his career on a local paper. When we encounter him he is a middle-aged, drunken has-been, but still attractive enough to gain the sexual attentions of his proprietor's wife. The proprietor, Sir Edwin Entwistle, is an oafish clod who made his money in carpets.
The editorial hierarchy of the Daily Bugle consists of Eric Doodle, the ineffectual editor, who dreams of living the life of a country gentleman, and Trevor Yapp, his thuggish deputy, who also runs the subterranean basement staffed with poorly paid young graduates who slave away their days trawling the internet for mindless gossip to fill the online edition.
For those readers who live in what is usually referred to as real life, the newspaper characters may seem improbable, but for those of us who have earned a living in Fleet Street they are all too real. I once worked for a proprietor who believed he could make himself invisible, an editor in chief who thought beards were a sure sign of homosexual leanings and an editor whose greatest wish was that West Germany and Great Britain unite under the Queen.
When the book opens, Blunt, who has been fired for appalling behaviour, yearns to break one last memorable story while working out his notice period. Glover neatly weaves an ingenious plot that involves Entwistle's plan to offload the newspaper onto either a Chinese billionaire or Russian oligarch, while a corrupt member of parliament is channelling illegal donations to the incumbent prime minister.
For all its comic episodes, there is a melancholy streak running through the book. A sense that Britain has lost its way in the world and become shabby and incompetent: maybe it is all a matter of age. I was brought up to believe that despite its terrible inequalities, being English was worthwhile. The kind of England George Orwell spoke of when he said we were a family with the wrong members in charge.
According to my father, all that changed in the second world war, when to cope with rationing and shortages the country went on the fiddle. He always claimed that we became a nation of petty criminals. Glover's story seems to echo that attitude.
The problem is that Splash! never quite comes to grips with the growing irrelevance of newspapers. These days only politicians and those working in the media seem to care about what is printed. The much-despised older generation may still take a daily paper, but the young get their misinformation directly from the internet.
We have a population of 65 million and only a fraction of them count themselves as newspaper readers. If The Guardian's circulation were even half the size of the membership of the Labour Party, the editorial team would be dancing in the streets. But there is no sign of such an event happening, and no wonder. With the honourable exception of Rod Liddle, in the run-up to the last election virtually the whole of the press, radio and television commentators swallowed the opinion polls and regurgitated the same conclusions. Day by day the readers are going, and not in anger, just from a sense of boredom.