The Biggest Man in Fleet Street
Short story about a tabloid editor who gets totally out of his depth
Greatest Love of his Life
The moment Bert saw her, he fell in love. Her curves twisted and gleamed, her body howled, take me, take me and that is what Bert did.
He bought that 1964 Ferrari 275 GTB Speciale for cash in 1975. The price was over a million even then but an arrangement with some East End villains and a dubious property developer had generated a lot of money. Bert was a high flyer.
Seven years later, he was still in love with the Ferrari. The same could not be said of his wife, the 24-year-old page three stunner he had married just a month and a half after buying the car.
As he stood in the garage of his palatial home in stockbroker belt, he stroked and patted the car - now worth nearly three million - and looked forward to what would be a most memorable day, the day his divorce from Helena would be finalised.
He would finally be free of her after what had been truly rancorous process - or as he colourfully put it to his lawyer, ‘like pulling rusty barbed wire out of my arse.’
She had belittled him with her sleazy boyfriends, outrageous shopping habits and her expensive tastes in foreign travel. For the past year, she had been variously studying Art History and Spanish, allegedly. They barely spoke, although they continued to share different wings in the same monstrous home.
Bert stepped off the train at Waterloo that morning and began his stroll - at a suitably regal pace - across the river to Fleet Street.
He was a self-made man in every sense. From the tip of his huge head to the ends of his disproportionately tiny feet, Bert Bobbins, was his very own creation. He had that air of self-satisfaction about him to which only the truly ignorant aspire.
Halfway across, he stopped a moment, put both hands on the parapet and looked across the river towards Westminster. Here he was, Editor of The Daily Growler and up for a knighthood any day now. Nineteen stones of tabloid genius. The biggest man in Fleet Street, oh yes.
He turned and took in the crowds of office workers speeding across towards the City but Bert Bobbins rushed for no man. Four million readers a day, he thought to himself, are sharing our crusade to rid Britain of mealy-mouthed liberals and lefty smart-arses.
A bus pulled up and he looked at himself in the windows. What a wonderful sight I am, he thought. On his head, a huge white flat cap dipped at a jaunty angle, conspicuously matching his full length white cashmere overcoat and red silk scarf.
The ensemble was set off with a gleaming pair of handmade brogues and a monogrammed hide briefcase. He carefully adjusted the hat’s very specific angle, consulted his Patek Phillipe watch and set off again.
His look was a carefully crafted blend of the Great Gatsby, The Quiet Man and Biggles Flies South.
He was stopped almost immediately somewhere near his right kneecap.
‘Oi, mate. Watch where you’re going,’ shouted a voice from the pavement.
Bert looked down and saw a raggedy-arsed man in a rage bearing a cardboard sign on which had been scrawled: ‘Need money for beer.’
Bert leaned over the hairy little homeless. ‘Fuck off or I’ll have the police on yer,’ delivered in the full richness of his Lancastrian accent.
For emphasis, he waved an immaculately manicured fist. The homeless rolled over and re-immersed himself in the filthy old sleeping bag that was his home.
The soon-to-be Sir Bert Bobbins strutted onwards across the bridge, past the palatial stonework of the Unilever building, past the dark, dank windows of El Vino’s, past the Old King Lud, The Bell, The Olde Cock, The Punch and the Poppins - legendary under-office boozer of the Daily Express - and strode majestically into the marbled opulence of the Growler’s monstrous Fleet Street offices.
The uniformed Commissionaire, former Warrant Officer Digby Darlton, immaculately turned-out veteran of the Korean War, the Mau Mau Emergency and Northern Ireland, snapped to attention and saluted as Bert walked up the steps. ‘Mornin’, sah’.
Bert carelessly waved a greeting.
‘Morning Digby - how’s yer mutha?’‘Not so bad, sir, well, as can be expected… ’But Bert was already halfway up to the mezzanine floor. Digby shrugged and stood at ease. It was a strange year, 1982.
The average Joe dreamt of owning a Ford Sierra and the Prime Minister was Margaret Thatcher, hugely unpopular until she launched an armada to take back the Falklands after an invasion by Argentina.
She won the war with the help of Two Para, a couple of aircraft carriers and, of course, the most powerful tabloid of all, The Growler.
The newspaper was reputed to have ‘sponsored’ the torpedo that sank the cruiser Belgrano, by paying one of our Jolly Jack Tars to chalk ‘Gotcha Galtieri from The Growler’ on the side of said missile.
No wonder Bert was in the running for a knighthood.
He didn’t know it yet but that morning when Bert Bobbins strolled into the Fleet Street offices of The Daily Growler was to be the beginning of his downfall.
As Bert strode towards his palatial office, a smile of self-satisfaction on his face, Mrs Helena Bobbins was executing a plan that had been years in the making.
Nighty Knighty
Bert bowled into his office with the energy of a man who debates nothing. He hung his coat and hat, revealing a snazzy double-breasted Italian suit, silk shirt, ridiculously wide tie and a set of trademark red braces.
The office was dripping with wood panels and dominated at one end by a huge bay window overlooking Fleet Street and from whose extreme right end you could see St Paul’s.
At the other end was Bert’s desk, a vast mahogany affair big enough to land aircraft on. Above it was a vast portrait of Her Majesty, flanked by two enormous Union flags.
In one corner was a cocktail cabinet creaking with expensive scotch and other booze. On his desk was a beaming picture of Bert at Brands Hatch, centrepiece the Ferrari, alongside Jackie Stuart and Stirling Moss. Bert’s office would have done credit to any tinpot ambassador to the Court of St James.
He looked down towards the picture window to the entirely white team of middle-aged execs seated around the room awaiting his pleasure. This was the daily conference, the point where they collectively agreed on the contents of tomorrow’s newspaper. Or rather where Bert dictated them.
‘Right. First thing’s first. Did we get the free crisps for every reader?’
He stared at Digby Darville, the old Etonian marketing director who was looking decidedly more nervous than usual.
‘Er not yet, I’m afraid, Sir. We had some problems with…’
Bert cut him off.‘I want four million bags of cheese and onion! I want this sorted by tomorrow or you, the man with the double-barrelled name, will be out the fucking door. Gottit?’
‘Double-barelled name, sir?’
‘Digby FUCKING-Darville. Now fuckoff.’
Digby nodded weakly and slid shamefully out the door, scribbling furiously into his notes as he departed..
‘Right, News. What happened with that killer bug ate my face story? Is the kid still alive? I want pictures on 1, 2 and 3. Spin up the nurses who’ve been caring for him - hearts of gold weep for the boy whose face turned to goo. Put Lucas on it, he’s got kids.’
New Zealander Miranda Brittle, the News Editor, nodded and took another note. She spoke in that Kiwi voice that we all know and love.
‘We hiv an ixclusif on the kid who was mirdered at the weekend in the sticks. Main suspick is a teacher frim the local primary…’
‘Clean around the neck, the kid? Not scum?’
‘Looks respiktible so far.’
‘Run it as a colour piece for the weekend supplement. Need a bit of chair-fecking-scuro in the paper today - too much crime floating about…and a bit too much pus too with the killer bug.’
‘We’ve also got a piece on the black guy who chased a robber who’d beaten up a 92-year old woman.’
‘Pictures?
‘Yes, we have the black guy and the granny.’
‘Splash with the granny. You’ll never sell a newspaper with a black face on the front. Next…Bingo?’
Bingo Man looked up cheerfully.
‘Well, we’ve got a rollover from last week so it’s a million pound jackpot tomorrow.
‘Odds of a win?
‘About fourteen billion to one, Boss.
‘Love it. Great work. Slap a big blurb on the front. ’
And so it went on. Bert whizzed through the features section, women’s supplement - One Hundred Ways to Turn Him on in the Bedroom, with suitably saucy pictures - then finance - secrets of the supermarket money-off coupon millionaires. This was Bert’s idea of ‘aspirational’ journalism for the masses.
When it was all over and the execs had departed, Bert sat at his desk, his arms spread, fingertips on the mahogany top and allowed himself a smile of utter triumph. The phone rang.
‘Good morning, Mr Bobbins.’
It was his his rather nubile 19-year-old secretary, a former Miss Blackpool. ‘I have Lord Dalwhinney on the line for you.’ Dalwhinney was his main conduit into the corridors of power and the upper levels of Establishment. He was also The Growler’s owner.
“Put him through, love,” said Bert.“Good morning Albert, my dear chap. Sorry to be the bearer of rather bad tidings this morning.’ Every syllable oozed public school privilege and the tone of a headmaster addressing the boys.
Bert’s shoulders sank.
Going out with a bang
While Bert was soaking up the disappointment of his lost Knighthood, Helena was back at the house in Stockbroker Belt waiting expectantly. She had spent years pulling her little plan together, dealing with the same villains who had arranged the Ferrari for Bert.
She had also been around all the tabloids with an entire dossier on Bert’s dodgy property deals, weird sexual tastes and managerial lunacy. She was now confident the Sunday tabloids that weekend would lap it all up.
Helena had married Bert for his money for sure, but more importantly, for the power he wielded. She was the classic Page Three girl, busty and petite with blonde hair and the archetypal dizzy look she could make work in any photograph. But Helena was not dizzy in any sense.
After a year of marriage she had grown to despise Bert for his crude manners, his bullying nature, and his outright disdain for anyone he considered beneath him, which included almost everyone.
Her goal was to destroy him completely, and today was the day.
Helena had played the part of the shallow, spendthrift wife perfectly. Bert, in his arrogance, never suspected that the Spanish lessons, the extravagant shopping sprees, and the string of boyfriends - all of whom were Antonio Banderas look-a-likes - were a ruse.
Beneath her glamorous exterior was a woman driven by a thirst for revenge, meticulously crafted on a man who had humiliated and controlled her and so many others.
She had been on the phone all morning. One of the calls was from her lawyer, confirming the divorce was now final as was the settlement. Over a million quid when she last looked.
As a consequence, she was now working her way through a bottle of bubbly and dancing around the house in her silk nightie, the hifi blaring South American hits of the 1970s.
Bert had been such a bellend. She was tired of his ludicrous clothes, his arrogance, the appalling treatment he dealt out to those around him and the way he pampered that car above else. She also knew he had been banging the former Miss Blackpool for over a year.
The doorbell rang and a slightly squiffy Helena opened it to greet Ernesto Silva. ‘Buenos días, cielo mío,” she purred, kissing him passionately and pulling him towards her.
“Mí vida, we don’t have time for this. I have work to do and we have to move very quickly. Be ready to go in 30 minutes.”
Ernesto was a tall, handsome man of about 35 and looked like - well, Antonio Banderas, to be honest. His parents were from Naples and had migrated to Argentina when he was very young. He spoke in the musical sing-song Spanish that is typical of the country.
For the past six months, he had been living nearby and giving Helena lessons in Spanish, as she called it. Some of those ‘lessons’ were quite intense in nature and, as a consequence, Helena spoke Spanish almost as well as he did, among other skills she had taught him along the way.
He too had his plans, just as Helena did.
He was carrying a substantial canvas bag on his shoulder, which he laid on a sofa and from which he extracted a forensic-style, paper overall, pulling it on over his t-shirt and jeans.
As a final touch, he snapped on a pair of latex gloves.Ernesto opened a side door from the hallway to the twin garages. Helena had given him a spare set of keys to the Ferrari.
He sat at the steering wheel briefly and carefully considered what he was about to do.He took a large wrapped parcel from his bag. Opened the boot, at the front on this model, and for another 30 minutes was busy at his work.
He added one final, written flourish to his masterpiece then moved quickly out to the drive.
Helena, still drinking champagne from the bottle, but now dressed in jeans and a t-shirt was sat in the passenger seat of the stolen, soft-top Mercedes that Ernesto had arrived in. He jumped in over the driver door, revved the car wildly and set off, the tyres squealing. Helena squealed too. Woo-hoo!They would be travelling under new identities.The car would be found burnt out on the empty top storey car park a few hours later. This was long before the days of CCTV and auto number plate recognition.
As Helena had discovered almost a year ago, Ernesto was no language teacher. He was former Teniente Ernesto Silva of the Argentinian Navy, honourably discharged a year before, after he survived the sinking of the General Belgrano by the British submarine Conqueror.
Some three hundred of his colleagues had not been so lucky, among them his lifelong friend Cabo Principal José Guillardo. He had drowned, trapped behind a watertight door and went down with the ship. Helena knew this and saw a great opportunity for both of them.
Two hours later, at the gate for a mid-morning flight to Buenos Aires, Ernesto picked up a so-called burner phone from his bag, pushed a few numbers on it and knew that very soon, something wonderful would finally happen. He said a little unspoken prayer for his lost friend.
As the aircraft began its final approach for landing over the River Plate many hours later, Bert’s neighbours were woken by a loud bang and flash of flame. They looked out of their windows and could see a fire engulfing his garage and large parts of his house. By early evening, the fire was out and the area declared a crime scene.
Days later, Bert found himself picking through what was left of his home. As one of her final acts, Elena had cancelled both the house and car insurance. He was ruined.
The debris had been mostly cleared by police. Bert wandered out into the front garden. He noticed part of a red Ferrari door panel hidden in the hedgerow. It had barely been damaged.
Weeping for his loss, he looked down and saw something scratched into the metal. Bert strained to read the scrawled words.
His eyesight was failing, so he put his reading specs on. ‘Gotcha back’, it said.