Lord Rothermere spoke with dewy-eyed sentimentality of “the magic that was old Fleet Street” when he addressed a gathering at Claridge’s in London to belatedly mark the Daily Mail’s 125th anniversary.
What has so far gone unacknowledged is that the following day the proprietor headed off to Lisbon with some of the last vestiges of “old Fleet Street”. It took the rotund shapes of Mail veterans Peter McKay, John McEntee and Jeff Powell.
“Rothermere wanted to play golf with them and to remember the good old days, but it was more like a re-run of Last of the Summer Wine,” laments my man in the Mail newsroom. “At least one of them is over 80 and 18 holes in the morning and 18 in the afternoon was a bit too much.”
Still, it isn’t just Rothermere who is living in the past: his newspaper is now averaging 879,102 sales a day, the lowest figure for more than 100 years.
