Confessions of a former British journalist

From our overstocked archives

 Sam Smith, 2007 - I lay claim to be the only person to get the word "fuck" into the Illustrated London News, which was - until it collapsed in the muck of media modernity - the world’s second oldest continuously published magazine and which for more than 150 hundred years served the cause of empire and the better English classes. I was, during its declining era, its American correspondent as part of a futile effort to give rebirth to a publication so fusty that, according to my editor, the gardening correspondent had actually died in 1929, but the news had been successfully concealed from readers unaware that they were reading recycled columns well into the 1980s.

The ILN's view of its readers was well stated in the July 22, 1848, edition and did not change markedly over the years:

"As a people, it may be truly said of us that we are pre-eminent among the nations of the earth. our spirit rules the world… Our sailing ships and steam-vessels cover the seas and rivers. Wherever we conquer, we civilize and refine. Our arms, our arts, our literature are illustrious among the nations. We are a rich, a powerful, an intelligent, and a religious people."

The top editor's view of me fit this paradigm well. The closest he ever came to a compliment was when he told my boss, "I didn't know Americans knew how to write."

My view of "fuck" was that it was a word like all words, to be used in the proper place and the proper way, particularly not to be reduced to a hackneyed phrase. One of those proper occasions occurred in an article I had written for ILN, and to my pleasure the associate editor left it in.

The top editor did not discover the affront until after publication when he demanded of my boss, "how the fuck" the word had defaced his jewel in the crown.

It wasn't the first time he had missed the boat. When a competing publication celebrated its 2,000th issue complete with a well publicized party and a program on the BBC, the editor told his associate that the ILN ought to consider something like that. "When's our next big issue?" he asked. My boss said he wasn't sure. The editor pulled out the current edition only to find it was number 5,000.

When my editor departed this strange corner of the empire, he left me with a year's worth of assignments. On completion, I sent the editor-in-chief a dozen ideas for stories. He wrote that he would be back to me but never was. Sometime later, I mentioned this to my former editor. "You should never have sent him a dozen ideas," he scolded. "It was clearly too much for him to handle. You should have sent him one good idea and one terrible idea and hoped he made the right choice."

My advisor was an improbable New Zealander by the name of Des Wilson. After dropping out of school at 15, Des arrived in England as a young man with only a few pounds and a lot of ideas. He subsequently started a housing program called Shelter; wrote for a number of publications; ran for Parliament; and headed campaigns to get the lead out of gas, the secrecy out of information and the Liberal Democrats into office; chaired Friends of the Earth; and wrote numerous books including a couple of novels in one of which I appear as a harried homeowner in council housing and, in another, my wife was an environmental activist in Portland, Maine. Once, at Buckingham Palace, Des even stepped on one of Queen Elizabeth's corgies. I suspect he said, "Bugger off," but he has never admitted it.

In 1970, I heard Des speak about Shelter at a meeting of a housing and planning group on whose board I sat. I invited him over for a drink afterwards and -- with a few interruptions for campaigns of one sort or another or for gainful employment - he never left. He has advised, entertained, employed, and insulted me in no predictable order and I have tried to return the favor.

Among his gifts was to guide me in the way of British journalism, which still regards power with proper skepticism, the media as a lusty trade rather than a pompous profession, and words as something to be enjoyed and not merely processed. Thus it was that when a British reporter filed from Africa word of a colleague's demise, "Headley dead in uprising," his editor, with an eye on circulation, fired back a telegram: "Why you undead?"

Des knew a reporter for the Observer by the name of Fergie who frequently vanished for lengthy periods, wiring repeatedly for more expenses. Once he wired to London to say he had information about a tribe of 100-year-olds in Ecuador but needed funds to travel there. He received the money and disappeared. Weeks later he wired for more funds. Reply: "What about tribe of 100 year olds?" Fergie wired back: "Alas, died of old age."

Des’ later work led to a lot of speeches. Once he was speaking to a club in Lincolnshire. Before introducing him, the chairwoman bemoaned the small crowd and chastised the program committee saying, "We'll never get better speakers until we improve attendance."

On another occasion he was invited to speak to a dinner of county estate agents. The dinner dragged on and Des noticed that not only was a front table of agents getting drunk but they were betting among themselves on something.

Des finally got up to speak to a crowd that was half asleep and half inebriated. He was only a few minutes into his talk when one of the men at the front table held up a sign that read, "Please stop talking or I will lose my bet."

Finally, he reached what was, in his mind, a true pinnacle of achievement. He was named to the English and Wales Cricket Board.

Cricket, it has been noted, is the game in which "you have two sides: one out in the field and one in. Each man that's on the side that's in goes out and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in out. When both sides have been in and out, including the not outs, that's the end of the game."

But it is serious business. Harold Pinter even rated cricket ahead of sex among God's great gifts, although he admitted that sex wasn't all that bad.

Given my indifference, I was hardly prepared to deal with an early morning's call from Des announcing that he had resigned from the England and Wales Cricket Board over its planned Zimbabwe tour and that the decision was splashed all over the British media.

After further inquiry and a little multitasking at my computer as Des spoke, I came up with the Guardian's lead:

"English cricket's attempt to adopt an ethical stance over the proposed tour of Zimbabwe was in tatters last night after the resignation of Des Wilson, the former Liberal Democrat party president hired by the England and Wales Cricket Board to develop a 'moral' policy over the scheduled tour. Mr Wilson resigned citing 'profound differences' with the other members of the ECB's management over the tour, which is scheduled for October. The ECB has come under considerable political and public pressure to cancel the tour because of human rights abuses by Robert Mugabe's regime."

My respect for the man soared. Who else would think of using cricket as a weapon of mass destruction against the egregious Mugabe? Come to think of it, who in America would leave any board anymore because of a moral issue?

I had to hand it to Des. After all these years, he had finally come up with a good reason for the existence of cricket.

American journalism died when it began to take itself too seriously. Des has helped me keep in mind that it doesn't have to be that way. It also helps to have someone in your life who, when you write or say something about which you should have thought more, puts down his glass of Scotch and says, "Good God, Smith, have you gone completely mad?"