Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Fleet Street editor before 30, he led the News of the World and the Mirror, pioneered celebrity journalism, and later became a TV personality and memoirist.
On the island
Eight records
The first disc is really the record that used to get me up to edit newspapers. It's called Start Me Up by the Rolling Stones and I used to genuinely play this almost every morning before I got into my shower and it just has that kind of energizing, reviving magic to it. By the time it finished I was ready for another day in the warzone.
The next piece was kind of a tribute really to all these extraordinary females in my life. So it's Charles Asnavore's For Me Formidable. And I think every man needs formidable women around him, I think.
Mambo ItalianoFavourite
On Friday nights my little routine at the Daily Mirror used to be that I would get my driver to pick up my kids, my three sons, and bring them to Canary Wharf and then we would I would normally drive myself and them down to Sussex and we just loved this song and we'd all sing along and some of the happiest memories I have of my kids were just sticking on this song, Dean Martin and Hey Mumbo, Mumbo Italiano. I defy anyone to listen to this and not just feel slightly uplifted by life.
I'm a secret uh jazz fiend and I was in New York about three months ago and I just heard this guy and I didn't know much about him. I knew vaguely that he was a great jazz saxophonist, a guy called Chris Potter and he was just spellbinding. I could just imagine being on a desert island, hopefully with a big fat cigar, thinking about my life and listening to Yesterday by Chris Potter and thinking, you know what, life isn't too bad out here.
It's actually one of the very few things that I can actually play on the piano. And I have, in fact, played this around the world whilst under the influence of alcohol, including in one memorable performance in a nightclub in Dublin where 300 people ended up chanting the chorus with me. It's the Beatles and Let It Be.
This brings me neatly to Sunset Boulevard, which I think is a wonderful anthem really for everyone who dreams of going to Hollywood, about what the reality is of Hollywood, which is it's the land of dreams but mainly broken ones... I heard it once when I was actually driving down Sunset Boulevard. And I just started laughing at the lyrics because I thought, yeah, this is kind of like me at the moment. You know, living a bit of a sleazy dream out here, but loving every second.
The next piece of music is just a really lovely ballad. This is a great love song by the greatest singer, I think, in the world, Stevie Wonder. It happens to be a favourite song of my girlfriend Celia and I's. And it's got really nice, simple lyrics which are self-explanatory.
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life
I was trying to think what I would have played at my funeral... I could be more realistic and play a piece of music as my coffin was led down the aisle to a weeping congregation of something that I thought would encapsulate my basic ethos on life. So I chose Always Look on the Bright Side of Life by Monty Python, which I think should be everybody's ethos.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:30What do you remember of that moment [when Rupert Murdoch handed you the reins of the News of the World]? Was it a formal interview?
No, funnily enough I have very vivid memories because I was back in Miami for the first time since I got given the job only two weeks ago. I was the pop editor of The Sun. I was twenty eight. Kelvin Mackenzie was editor of the paper and just said the boss wants to see you. Here are your tickets and Murdoch met me and then said let's go for a walk on the beach and we actually both took our shoes and socks off and walked through the surf of Miami Beach for about two or three hours.
Presenter asks
3:16Did you ever wonder if you were up to the job [of editing the News of the World]?
I wondered every day if I was up to the job editing the news of the world with its premium on exposure and scandal and all that kind of thing. I didn't know if I was really kitted out to do that kind of thing. I was younger than anybody else in the newsroom. And I could see all these older guys looking at me and I just overheard one of them saying, Good God, he's younger than my grandson. And I I remember looking at him and laughing and they were all just waiting for me to get it wrong.
Presenter asks
8:53Did you have ambition for yourself at that age [as a boy]? Did you think I want to be a whatever?
The keepsakes
The book
Brian Keenan
I ended up with a book called An Evil Cradling by Brian Keenan... it's one of the most powerful books I've ever read about the power of a human spirit.
The luxury
The luxury item would have to be my cricket bat. Cricket is the great love of my life after my children and family... I could literally keep myself happy for a couple of years.
I think that in all honesty I've never had any direct ambition for any of the jobs I've ended up doing. I think I had a love of newspapers, which was a bit weird for a boy of my age. Um so I think I had a love for that. I lo I love the feel of newspapers, the smell of newspapers. So that was my real love and passion. It remains the case now. But I don't think I ever had a game plan.
Presenter asks
13:20How did you feel about [dealing with people who rake through bins, tap phones, and take secret photographs]?
Well, to be honest, let's put that in perspective as well. Not a lot of that went on. A lot of it was done by third parties rather than the the staff themselves. That's not to defend it, because obviously you were you were running the results of their of their work. I I'm quite happy to be parked in the corner of tabloid beast and to have to sit here defending all these things I used to get up to. And I make no pretense about the stuff we used to do. I simply say the net of people doing it was very wide and certainly encompassed the high and the low end of the supposed newspaper market.
Presenter asks
20:22Was that when it stopped being a game for you, when you realized that actually you could not just lose your job, but lose your reputation [during the Viglen shares investigation]?
It certainly wasn't a game that... had that effect. It also gave me a ver a positive thing out of it. It gave me a very good insight, I thought, into being on the receiving end of the attack dogs. You know, I realized then what it was like to have people listening into your phone conversations. I was having paparazzi doorstep me, chase me down the street, shouting things.
Presenter asks
25:58What did your mother say to you about it all at the time [when you were fired over the Iraqi prisoner abuse photos]?
My mother was incensed and upset and furious. She would, has always been the most important figure in my life, incredibly supportive. And she knew that I'd published it absolutely believing the pictures to be genuine. I mean, this idea that somehow I would publish a picture that emotive at that time that I thought even had a chance of not being genuine. It's just ridiculous.
“I had an incredibly happy childhood. You know, we never had a lot of money. My parents both worked very, very hard, ran a country pub down in East Sussex and worked seven days a week. And despite the fact they had these four kids and worked so hard, we just had an incredibly, from my memory, incredibly blissful time.”
“I think as a newspaper editor, you are living in a very high-octane, adrenaline-fuelled life. I certainly, I don't think you feel untouchable, but you feel incredibly powerful. You feel like you can almost do anything. You are, in terms of the newsroom, you're the God figure. Everything you say gets done. And you start to feel fairly omnipotent.”
“I got fired by revealing, I believe, an absolute truth. Those pictures may not have been what we thought. The allegation behind them absolutely true.”
“I couldn't give a damn about privacy. And I don't think I just find it such a ridiculous squealing argument from a bunch of pampered multi-millionaire egotists. People hide behind their children in this kind of situation. They use them as a tool. Normally, when they've been rankly hypocritical and they have sold their kids on the front cover of a magazine for fifty thousand pounds, sold their christening, sold their wedding. That's where you have to draw a line as a celebrity. How greedy do you want to be? And if you want to be greedy and sell your own privacy, you are not entitled to any privacy.”