Brian Hitchen CBE

This terrible year of tragedy has continued. Its latest victims are my old boss and first national newspaper editor Brian Hitchen and his wife Nelli, who died in Spain, mown down on a pedestrian path by a car driven in heavy rain by a retired Brit. A terrible accident.
 

I worked for “Hitch”, as he was known in the newsroom, from 1988 to 1994 while he was Editor of the Daily Star. 

I was its Showbiz Reporter and, latterly, its TV Editor and Columnist, and found him to be a great boss and a real character with his Churchillian persona, barrel of a chest, thick red braces and, of course, big cigar.

Joining the Daily Star at the Express Newspapers building, the so-called Black Lubianka, on Fleet Street from the relatively urbane Coventry Evening Telegraph in 1988, I was immediately in awe of Hitch. 

To me he was to me a fearsome yet fascinating figure – a great presence in the midst of a newsroom of the often-sozzled and sometimes mad.

I was a full time “casual” at first but when Hitch summarily dismissed my boss, a chain-smoking, fishnet-wearing pop hackette from the Black Country, I bailed out to spend a couple of weeks, working for the Features Department of the now-defunct News of the World a.k.a. The Screws.

There I fell in with the Features boss who promptly took me drinking at the Printer’s Pie bar on Fleet Street with my former chief, Hitch, and his coterie of old hacks. 

It was a most amusing evening.

Seeing him at close quarters, I learned what an inspired raconteur he was, with a crowd of ancient cronies around him whom he regaled with many a yarn. 

He was the centre of their working world and they hung on his every utterance.

Somehow, he took a shine to me and I returned to the Star to work for and, for a time, run the pop desk and then join the showbiz desk. 

Hitch was a tough boss but I felt he was fair and compassionate in his editorship.

Brian Hitchen was a huge figure on Fleet Street.

He had been a legendary Daily Mirror reporter and the paper’s man in New York. 

His investigative skills helped to find Martin Luther King’s killer and he was also instrumental in the tracking down of Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs.

Hitch seamlessly moved from reporting to being a Fleet Street executive as news editor of the Mirror and then the Express before taking a job in America where he ran the picture desk at the National Enquirer, infamously securing a photograph of the late Elvis Presley in his coffin.

He seemed to me one of those indestructible men who could survive any setback.

So, it was a huge shock when on 2 December he was mown down while walking with his beloved wife Nelli in Spain.

The funeral was last Monday (16 December) at a rain-lashed Downs Crematorium, Brighton. 

It was a very beautiful service, conducted by Father Jerry O’Brien, of St Peter’s Roman Catholic, Hove.

Nelli was Irish so it was so surprise that she was Catholic but I was surprised Hitch had “crossed the Tiber” to convert to Catholicism.

Gabriel’s Oboe, from the Mission, by Ennio Morricone featuring Yo-Yo Ma, was played, a lovely piece, and, later, the mourners heard Cinema Paradiso, also by Morricone featuring Yo-Yo Ma and Chris Botti.

The poem Death Is Nothing At All by Henry Scott Holland was read, and Father O’Brien’s eulogy was moving. 

He said that in almost half a century this was his first double funeral. 

His message was "death is not the end".

Indeed, the two coffins, side by side, were a moving sight.

The Lord’s Prayer was said, a Final Prayer and When the Saints Go Marching In by Fritzel’s New Orleans Jazz Band played out.

It was a no-nonsense service that Hitch would have loved.

Outside the crematorium, Brian’s son Alex – a chip off the old block – and his daughter Claire talked with the congregation with great charm. 

Among them were the Daily Express Editor Hugh Whittow, who did a lot to facilitate the return of the bodies to Britain from Spain, and the former Editor of the Daily Express and Daily Star, Peter Hill – both former leading lights at the Daily Star.

It was also very good to see the Star’s former Deputy Editor Nigel Blundell who was for years my main boss, former Sports editor Phil Rostron and legendary Fleet Street reporters Don MacKay and Dick Durham.

There were so many other familiar faces. 

I admit he trouble I have at funerals is recognising people from the past.

We have all become so much older, you do a double-take sometimes, wondering what on earth the ravages of time have done.

The wake took place at Brian and Nelli’s mansion apartment in Hove – coincidentally a few hundred yards from where I now live.

It was interesting meeting his family and friends. 

I enjoyed talking with the Irish contingent and hearing some very amusing tales of Brian and Nelli’s family life such as their squabbling over who should change a grandchild’s nappy and how it should be done.

As the fizz flowed, all the stories came out. It is always good chatting with Don Mackay and his actress wife Nicola McAuliffe.

 
Dick Durham (pictured here with Alex and Sabina Hitchen), too. 

He told the story of his falling out with the British Olympics squad on the long flight to South Korea. Drink was involved. When the fertiliser hit the fan, it sounded to me like Hitch has been remarkably tolerant of his reporter’s conduct.

 I had similar experiences at least twice while working for Brian.

Once, when I was unfortunate enough to have an altercation with a notorious film actor at a showbiz banquet, witnessed by my Editor, Hitch’s only question to me afterwards was: “Ollie, how hard did you hit Oliver Reed?”

Nervously I replied: "Pretty hard, boss!" and he boomed: "Good man!"

Hitch turned a blind eye to an even more unfortunate incident involving the cast of a TV programme called Soldier, Soldier on location in Cyprus, to my great relief.

Brian would proudly say I was the only graduate in his newsroom. He gave an interview to The Guardian newspaper's Education Editor to lambast graduates in journalism. 

Asked if he had any graduates on his staff, he replied: “Only one. He has a degree in astrophysics and runs the pop column!”

He was undoubtedly a reporters' editor.

For instance, he was very supportive of his pop editor, Linda Duff, who, sadly, died this year as well. Brian clearly thought the world of her despite her great scruffiness and unconventional, though brilliant, approach to reporting. 

It did amuse me at the wake to hear how Linda had invited the pop stars Take That to the paper's charity awards, The Gold Star Awards, at London's Savoy Hotel, but Hitch would not let them in because they were wearing jeans. That is until Take That agreed to his condition that they do a little jig for their fans in the foyer of the hotel!

Hitch worked a miracle at the Star – giving the paper gravitas by sheer dint of his personality. 

Few Fleet Street editors could have pulled off that trick.

The Star had been through a disastrous time before Hitch became Editor with an ill-judged merger with the smutty paper The Sport when “bonk” became its byword and semi-naked lovelies adorned every page. 

I don’t think I realised how newsy he managed to make The Star until he left and it became a fully fledged showbiz and sports paper. 

At the end of the 1980s, when the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was booed at a function, I filed copy on the story at past midnight and found my story on that morning’s front page. Hitch had also been on the phone instructing his backbench to change the front page to take my story.

Hitch was one of those guys who either liked or disliked someone.

It was a period of Fleet Street journalism when many of the tabloid showbiz reporters were simply inventing most of their stories.  

Hitch disapproved of the so-called “make-up artists”, getting rid of them where he could.

Of course there were mistakes.

The decision to hire at great expense The Sun’s Cockney TV reviewer went disastrously awry, resulting in desperate tannoy messages for the in-house lawyers, and published comments in The Sun that there were more drunks at the Star than on The Embankment! Though, personally, I found the whole episode highly amusing.

I recall that Hitch also hired the Liverpudlian singer cum TV dating show host Cilla Black to write a column, ghost-written by one of his more imaginative executives. 

It was a genuine shock to discover that even with the help of a most creative ghost-writer the affable Scouse star appeared to have little to say for herself. Perhaps, she was just too nice. The column was axed amid some embarrassment.

On the paper’s heavy drinking culture, he was extremely tolerant. 

He threw a massive surprise party for the entire staff to celebrate the Star’s success at being awarded the “Colour Newspaper of the Year” title. 

It ended with the feature subs breaking into his office and drinking all his whisky.

Brian was a forthright character – a jingoistic right winger – with a great admiration for Margaret Thatcher who he persuaded to visit our offices at Blackfriars Bridge when she was Prime Minister.

He was also hugely supportive of her successor John Major during a grim time for the Conservative Party when few editors (or even Conservatives) had a good word for the Prime Minister.

Remarkably, for a Lancashire lad who started on a local newspaper as one of the copy boys - known as "gofers" up North - Hitch became an establishment figure, the only tabloid editor to be a member of the Reform Club.

His former secretary told me at the wake of how Hitch took her to lunch at the Reform and very soon she was chatting to the Prime Minister.

He certainly had charisma and the gift of the gab. 

I could never really understand why he held such right-wing views.

The rabid rhetoric he sometimes poured out in his no-holds-barred weekly column did not seem to chime with his kindly nature and his love of people.

He was a good writer and one who hated his words tampered with. 

When his copy was sub-edited, you would hear him thundering down the office and furiously booming at the besozzled feature subs, one of whom would have been responsible: “Where's Ernest Hemingway?”

After Hitch moved from the Star to the Sunday Express, I did not see much of him, although one year at the UK Press Awards I enjoyed again his skills as a raconteur as he held court at his table.

He never failed to impress. Hitch turned up at another Star showbiz reporter’s funeral and gave the widow a personal cheque for several thousand pounds to help her – someone he had probably never met before - through tough times.

After his retirement, he was booked as a turn on cruise liners, regaling the passengers with his stories of Fleet Street derring-do.

For a time he embraced social media and I would occasionally banter with him on Facebook and exchange messages. He was enthusiastic about my book and said he would mention me in his. I understand his son intends to finish it and get it published and this is important work. It would be a major contribution to a key period of newspaper history.

It is hard to sum up his legacy. He believed in real news journalism but was a pragmatist in the tabloid marketplace. He was a right-winger flushed with compassion. In so many ways Brian Hitchen was a contradiction in terms.

There were so many great stories. He worked for James Goldsmith's Now magazine, but, when it went belly up, Hitch was espied manning a market stall, flogging off the office typewriters! 

And Brian Hitchen never lost the fire in his belly!

I recall that last year I posted a comment on Facebook, after being almost run down by a reckless Brighton taxi-driver, to receive a tirade from Hitch praising the mini-cab drivers of the city and roundly abusing cyclists in Brighton.  

And, you know what, when I am driving, rather than cycling, I thoroughly agree with him.

He had a reputation for grinding his foes into the dust but as one mourner said at the wake: “Even his enemies liked him.”

Absolutely right - and I am sure everyone who knew him will miss the big guy.

Brian Hitchen, 1936-2013.

Brian and Nelli are pictured below at Alex and Sabina's wedding in Chicago 

(image:Slack Photography).

Winter Wonderland

It has been a truly amazing November - I can hardly recall being happier (but can it last?).

Well, I hope it does. After going to hell and back in Leamington over the past couple of years, I am enjoying life at long last, and looking forward to my birthday and Christmas.

I headlined a poetry gig in Oxford - and it was fantastic.

The club, Back Room Poets, was in a Hardy-esque public house called Far From The Madding Crowd with an intelligent, attentive audience.

It was my very first gig as a 'featured' or 'future' poet and I leapt from reading one to three poems, as I have been doing at poetry club open spots for the past year and a bit, to doing 15 poems during a set which I think ran to 25 minutes.










I performed a mixture of the serious and the flippant, alternating between the two. I believe I kept the audience with me. It was great experience for me, anyway.

It was the first time I have played a poetry club where the audience was more interested in serious poems than the silly ones. I felt most honoured to be playing there at all.

I was most impressed by the other readers. The blind guy was awesome, reading his poems from Braille sheets pinned by crawling fingers to his chest.







A skyscaper of an American rower was also interesting. And a famous horse trainer present was also a talented poet.

Funnily enough, it was the night of the big anti-fascist demonstration outside the Oxford Union.

So, the audience's numbers were swelled by behooded demonstrators with angry anti-fascist eyes. Good for them!

At the end of the night, I was amazed and hugely flattered to be handed a cheque for 20 quid as payment. I have kept it as a souvenir. Like Byron, honour would not allow me to accept payment for poetry!

The day before - in Lewes - I went to a remarkable event at the All Saints Centre - a talk and one-act play about the model and photojournalist Lee Miller.

The slide-illustrated lecture, Discovering The Art of Lee Miller was given by Mark Haworth-Booth, the photo-archivist in charge of a definitive Lee Miller exhibition, The Art of Lee Miller, currently at the V & A in London, and Tony Penrose, Lee Miller's son.

Tony also wrote and appeared as himself in the play, The Angel and the Fiend, which was illustrated by slides too.

It was a superb afternoon. The slide show and talk was excellent and revealed a fascinating divide between the two men behind the exhibition.

Mark was driven by Miller's photography, seeking a photojournalist the world had under-recognised, almost forgotten.

Tony was driven by the fractious relationship he had with the latterly alcoholic Miller, seeking the mother he never truly knew, the lost love.

Clearly the two men had almost fallen out over one image with Penrose eventually getting a photo of personal importance to him included in the exhibition.

I walked away with very mixed feelings. Miller was a remarkable photographer, although perhaps not, in my humble opinion, a truly great one.

What was more extraordinary about her was her gift to place herself where she wanted to be when she wanted to be there; her skill at re-inventing herself as a Vogue model and photographer, war photographer and reporter. I would have loved to have met her in the 1930s or 1940s.










I could not help but admire her, and seeing her humorous or chilling wartime images reminded me of my long conversations about photojournalism with my former college tutor Sir Tom Hopkinson, who had been Editor of Picture Post during the Second World War.

Like Tom, Lee was truly formed by that traumatic time.

And, yes, I liked the way every last aspect of Lee Miller's life was celebrated as if a surreal masterpiece.

My head has been ablaze this month. I have been enjoying my work and life in the Leamington Garret.

Enormous (and hugely expensive) curtains have been hung over the living room windows overlooking the Pump Room Gardens, making the garret a good deal warmer.









My flatmate, a charming Hungarian called Attila, has been a delightful companion these past 12 months: intelligent, funny, easy-going, polite, and surprisingly English in his attitude to so many things. A tremendous guy!

At the Lewes Garret, it has been a strange month. I managed to break a window after a sloomy bee got in (attempts to get it out led to a picture being trapped under a window frame, my efforts to free the picture shattered a large pane and ended up costing 200 quid!)

Ladettes have vandalised the car wing mirror (another 90 quid down the drain!).

But the Allotment is going well. It is very pleasant to get out to Earwig's Corner to do a bit of digging. It is such a beautiful spot.










Moreover, I am starting a poetry club in Lewes which will kick off at the Lewes Arms at 8.30pm on Friday, January 18, with a tremendous line-up.

I intend to stage it on the third Friday of each month right through 2008, excepting August which is Edinburgh Time!

Talking of Lewes clubs, I dropped into SalsaMagic, the salsa dancing club at the White Hart Hotel in Lewes, and was shocked to see how terribly it has declined.








Since its founder and owner, Miguel Angel Plaza, fell sick, this once-great Sunday night club has fallen into apparently terminal decline.






A couple of years ago, you would have expected more than 100 salseros at the regular Sunday night event, with four classes going at the same time, followed by a huge Merengue lesson and then a lively DJ-ed club night until 11pm.

When I turned up the other Sunday, only four punters were there at the start (plus five teachers or helpers). The night was cancelled.




Afterwards, we all went for a hot chocolate upstairs at the hotel and discussed the parlous state of SalsaMagic and what could be done. Very little, it would seem.

Miguel is said to be unwilling to reliquish the reins while seemingly and sadly not running the business himself. Only the loyalty of his friends keeps it going at all - and hardly. . .

At its peak, SalsaMagic had four club nights on the South Coast; the others being at Eastbourne, Bognor and Portsmouth.

Now only the former flagship at Lewes remains. . and for how long?

We all wish Miguel a full and speedy recovery. However, unless he allows another dance promoter to run the club for the time being, it is doomed, and, when he is well, he will not have a business to return to. A tragedy in itself.

So, I am sending out an S.O.S. - Save Our Salsa! If you loved SalsaMagic and can think of a way of saving it, please do so.

As things stand now, I reckon it is only a matter of time before the White Hart Hotel takes it out of its misery, and the magic is no more.



I have been in London quite a lot this month through business and was highly amused by a story I saw in a free London newspaper about the Croatian national football squad being egged on against England by the mispronunciation of their national anthem by a British opera singer (booked for the gig).



Tony Henry belted out 'Mila kura si planina' instead of 'Mila kuda si planina', so that 'You know my dear how we love your mountains' became 'My dear, my penis is a mountain'!

Of course, the players cracked up with mirth and relaxed. . . and the rest is history. Now Tony Henry is being adopted as the national Croatian mascot for Euro 08!

A big fuss was made about England's failure to qualify and Steve McClaren's failure as coach.

Speaking as someone who only supports the national side and almost never watches club football, even I can say that from before his appointment McClaren clearly lacked the leadership qualities to make a success of the England job.

It is a disgrace that he was appointed in the first place and has trousered two-and-a-half million squid for his predictable failure (can I have a go at coaching these overpaid Premiership poodles?)

Still, the solution to this quandary is obvious. We should all support Croatia in Euro 08.








They are spirited underdogs and likely to fail, so ideal for England fans. I am leading the way by ordering my Croatian strip and 10 trillion cans of cooking lager, to prop up Mr Bean's (I mean, Brown's) fast-failing Government and economy!

At least their mascot is British! (and can sing).





My efforts to read the New Oxford Book of Verse continue apace. I am now on Poem 298 having read through much of the 16th centry since I last blogged about it.

I enjoyed John Donne, Ben Jonson and Robert Herrick among others, but was not so keen on Sir William Davenant, Sir Richard Fanshawe et cetera. Just 650 pages of poetry to go!

I am starting to revise my own humble collection of poetry of 2007 - about 38 or so. I would like to go through them all by year's end, as well as writing at least two or three new ones.



November was a good month for me. As I have previously written, I enjoyed bonfire in Lewes (and some more pictures from that magnificent occasion are sprinkled through this entry).

And in Leamington Spa, I find myself drawn onto the streets - which can be boring or buzzing.

The other Sunday I went to buy some milk and ended up at a student arts magazine gig at the Jug and Jester.

A tremendous band called the Rrrs were playing, with an utterly outrageous girl lead singer called Sharliza R.





I have also been enjoying the Wednesday nights at Kelly's in Leamington (when the bands turn up) - some images from which adorn this journal entry.

My mate Shanade, who has been poorly, put up a particularly spirited performance a few weeks back.

* I am in the Lewes Garret and, suddenly, life does not seems so wonderful.






It is raining cats and dogs outside and rather chilly up here in the rafters. I heard today that my old friend Mike Knapp is dead. My dear friend McJannet called with the terrible news.

I did my first Fleet Street shifts. on the pop desk of the Daily Star, with Mike. He was a tremendously kind and generous man, and a far more talented reporter than I.

I recall him giving me a picture exclusive story he had found to help me through a lean patch, and also fondly remember the lunchtime drinks we would have in the Punch pub on Fleet Street.



When I first knew him in 1988, he was a workabholic, doing a day-shift at the Daily Star followed by a night shift at The Sun.

His girlfriend (and future and then ex-wife Rebecca Hardy, who later rose to be Editor of The Scotsman, would chauffeur him between London and his home in Brighton.

I was never a really close friend but would always have a good chat with Mike when I saw him about.

Once I was drinking with him in the Express Newspapers bar and was astonished to discover, through a convoluted conversaton, that his parents were living in the exact same bungalow in Cumnor, Oxford, that I had grown up in - 15 Hurst Lane - having bought it from the people my parents had sold it to!

I last spoke to Mike about 18 months ago when he called me on a Saturday afternoon from the newsdesk of the Sunday Express.

He was handling a Catholic story and hoped I was still spin-doctoring for the Catholic Church and hoped I could give him a quick comment.

When I explained I had moved on and was currently sunning myself on the sunfront in his town of Brighton, enjoying a beer, we had a lovely chat. He said he wished he was there instead of stuck in a newspaper office.

We promised we would meet for a drink soon, but, of course, we never did.

I guess the smoking and the booze did for him in the end, but, all the same, mid-40s is far too young to go.

So, tonight I raise a glass to Mike Knapp - a fine fellow, sadly departed.