I do my best, I really do, to avoid wallowing in nostalgia. But it is hard to avoid sometimes, especially when attending yet another memorial service at St Bride’s Church.
Yesterday, I was among the packed congregation that celebrated the life of Steve Turner, subeditor and union leader, who I wrote about when he died, aged 80, in May this year.
Former Mirror group colleagues Dick Derwent and Andrew Golden spoke in their addresses of his remarkable qualities as a principled negotiator. Before each of their readings, Alastair McQueen and Pat Welland also paid handsome tributes to Steve.
During his favourite song, Part of the Union, which was beautifully sung by the choir, I noticed his widow, Debbie, singing along.
There were many veteran journalists at the reception in Fleet Street’s Punch Tavern afterwards and just by mingling with each other it was bound to stir memories.
I met a man I hadn’t seen since we were on the subs’ desk at the Daily Mail in Manchester in 1968. It transpired he had worked in the Far East and, after returning to Britain, had become a local newspaper publisher (he has since disposed of his titles).
Naturally, most of the throng were former staffers from the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People. Wine and beer flowed, as did the reminiscences about a bygone age of hot metal, heavy drinking, light discipline, high expenses and low cunning.
We know the current generation of dry digital revolutionaries yoked to their computer screens are bored by our stories of a golden age. It can’t be anything other than irritating to hear of the antics of the retired cohort of former Fleet Streeters who benefited from a period of management largesse and effective union solidarity. But we can hardly apologise for that, can we?
For those who wish to share memories of Steve, and read what others have said, there is a book of remembrance at steveturnermemorial.com.
Those were the days, part two...
By chance, when I got home from Steve’s memorial, I turned to the latest issue of The Oldie and came across a further reminder of the Daily Mirror of yesteryear and its influential editorial director, Hugh Cudlipp.
Conscious of the gap between the ruling elite and the working class, he was always eager to poke fun at the former while giving the latter - his paper’s readers - a chance to thumb their noses at their supposed elders and betters.
Cudlipp was especially delighted at the chance to embarrass Tories and following the Suez debacle in 1956, he found a way to ridicule the prime minister, Anthony Eden, who had decamped to Jamaica to lick his political wounds.
So the Mirror ran a “paradise holiday” competition. Whoever was adjudged to write the best 500 words on how to solve the Suez crisis would enjoy two weeks in Montego Bay.
There were 7,000 entries and the winner, Susanna Johnston, had described herself as a £6-a-week typist. True... up to a point, Lord Copper.
In fact, she was anything but a typical Mirror reader because Susanna was the 21-year-old daughter of Sir Christopher Chancellor, general manager of the Reuters news agency.
Aware that her contest win had already been published on the front page Cudlipp allowed her to accept the holiday and, as she tells the tale in The Oldie, her exotic holiday exploits - water-skiing, surfboarding, fishing for tuna and so on - were recounted each day in the paper.
Anything Eden could have, so could a “humble” Mirror reader (although, unlike the prime minister and his wife, she did not get to stay with Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond).
On Eden’s final day on the island, the resourceful Mirror reporter, Barry Harding, smuggled Susanna on to the tarmac at Kingston airport and “had me snapped within inches of the pale prime minister and his glacial wife, as he gave me a toothy smile.”
Susanna was later joined by her 16-year-old brother, Alexander, who was then at Eton (as Eden had been). And, of course, Alexander is now editor of The Oldie.
In yet a further Fleet Street twist, when a calypso band serenaded him with “Happy birthday to you” to mark his 17th birthday in the dining room of the Sunset Lodge hotel, “scowling at the next table” was none other than the Daily Express owner, Lord Beaverbrook.