Memories of Fleet Street
Sunday, August 7, 2016 at 14:57 I was sorry to read that "the last two journalists working in Fleet Street" – Gavin Sherriff and Darryl Smith of the Sunday Post – are leaving.
As I mentioned last week, it had been my ambition since the age of nine or ten to be a journalist.
Sherriff is only three years younger than me and as I grew up a few miles away the Dundee-based Sunday Post is a paper I could – and perhaps should – have applied to join when I left school instead of going to university.
The Holy Grail was of course Fleet Street but after leaving Aberdeen in 1980 I impetuously accepted a job in public relations.
I did it partly because I was offered the instant gratification of working in an office in Fleet Lane which, as the name suggests, was just around the corner from Fleet Street.
The temptation of working within walking distance of some of my heroes was impossible to resist. I might even meet them.
And so it was that on my first day in my new job I chose to have lunch in a busy Fleet Street pub awash with subs and reporters, many of whom worked at the iconic Daily Express Building a few doors up.
The next day I went to another pub. This time most of the journalists seemed to work for the Telegraph.
And so it went on. It was exciting (at the start) but I didn't know anyone and I felt a bit out of place.
In fact I quickly realised that while journalists had no time for PR execs (especially junior ones), my new colleagues were equally indifferent to smoke-filled Fleet Street boozers and had no intention of joining me.
Lunch for them was a wine bar on Ludgate Hill or a restaurant in Covent Garden.
What journalists and PR types did share was a fondness for long liquid lunches. The work still got done, though. We just stayed later, leaving the office at seven or eight o'clock.
What I didn't know was that everything was about to change. Although Fleet Street was still the centre of the national newspaper industry its days were numbered.
The print unions were rightly coming under pressure to abandon the outrageous working practices that had become the norm.
Hot metal was being replaced by new computer-driven technology but it was more than that – the whole culture of Fleet Street was changing.
El Vino, the establishment that wouldn't allow women to stand or be served at the bar, was one of the first to feel the wind of change.
As it happens I wasn't a fan of the place but not because of that. The reason I didn't enjoy going there was because of another rule that decreed men should keep their jackets on at all times.
The first time I went to El Vino I was unaware of the policy. It was a hot sunny day so as soon as I sat down I took off my jacket. Within seconds I was being asked, politely, to put it back on.
I sat there sweltering but didn't object. Why would you? As a private business it was the proprietor's right to set whatever rules he liked.
There were plenty of pubs and bars that had less restrictive policies so why grumble? If you didn't like it you could go somewhere else.
But grumble people did and in 1982 El Vino was forced by a judge to abandon its most famous policy – that of refusing to allow women to stand at the bar.
I stopped working in EC4 in 1983 and the really big changes took place after that as, one by one, the larger newspaper groups left the area in search of modern offices and state of the art printing facilities.
Abiding memories however include the sight of all those lorries parked nose to tail waiting to collect the first editions and deliver them nationwide via road and rail.
I saw them quite a lot because I'd often walk up Fleet Street in order to catch a bus home following an after work drink in the Old King Lud.
Built in 1870 on the corner of Ludgate Circus at the bottom of Fleet Street, this elegant Victorian pub sat directly beneath Holborn Viaduct, which meant it shook slightly whenever a train rumbled overhead.
Memorable evenings in the Old King Lud included meeting a runner who took part in the very first London Marathon in 1981. It was three days after the inaugural event on March 29 and he was still holding his medal and nursing enormous blisters.
I was hugely impressed but not enough to want to do it myself.
(By way of comparison, over 20,000 people applied to run the first London Marathon in 1981 and over 6,500 took part. This year 247,069 people applied and almost 40,000 took part.)
Twelve months and one week later we were in the Old King Lud when the first ships left Portsmouth for the Falklands.
The atmosphere that night was extraordinary. Everyone, it seemed, supported the decision to send the task force. I've never experienced a more patriotic occasion.
If the excitement in the pub was intense, goodness knows what it was like in the newsrooms just up the road.
The pub closed in 2005. Today the building is part bank, part cafe. The Victorian viaduct has been demolished so there are no trains running overhead either.
Thirty-five years ago EC4 really was another world. Hats off to the Sunday Post for being the last newspaper and to Gavin Sherriff and Darryl Smith for being the very last journalists to leave.
As of today, Fleet Street is no longer home to any of the UK's newspaper press for the first time in centuries.https://t.co/K9cushXLc6
— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) August 5, 2016
Reader Comments (4)
Very moving piece of nostalgia. I know, from personal experience from 1961 to 1991. I knew these pubs and many others. At risk of a cliché, I remember, as well as the vans, the 'thunder' of the presses - and the characters. Fleet Street was a sanctuary for the eccentric - as long as they produced their copy in time. I think much of individuality and freedom of thought has been lost through the conformities expected of employees today. Which is possibly my point here. Trade journals, local papers around the country,the Press Association, the Daily Telegraph and the PA again, at Fleet Street and Westminster. These were my offices. And I remember St Brides, and its rector, the Rev John Oates. There was one cafe, not a coffee bar, Micks, a little further up from the King and Keys, on that side of the street. I don't think it ever closed, day or night. Yes, hot metal was on the way out and there was a lot wrong with the set up. But there is very much indeed to mourn.
Norman, I think you've hit the nail on the head. Conformity has replaced individuality and eccentricity is frowned upon. It's a great shame. I'm sure you're familiar with it but for those who aren't I recommend A Short Walk Down Fleet Street by Alan Watkins. A very entertaining insight into a world that no longer exists.
Like.
Apologies; my response to you above reads rather abruptly. Anyway, thank you. Incidentally I haven't come across the Watkins book. I didn't know him personally but I remember seeing him around.