Liz Jones’s long-running diary column has been hugely popular among Mail On Sunday readers for over 25 years – not surprisingly given its soul-bearing over toxic relationships, financial crises and various acts of self-sabotage. But are its contents 100% true?
Former colleagues of Jones at what used to be the Evening Standard are gobsmacked at her most recent outpouring, which includes the claim that while she was working on the paper there were “endless days when I’d have to wee in my chair as there were so many pages to fill”. Jones went on to claim that on the day of the 7/7 bombings in 2005, she sent a “pretty young reporter to the Royal London Hospital with an armful of flowers… so she could pretend to be a relative”, instructing her: “I want anyone without limbs. Photos, go, now!”
Some of those who toiled alongside Jones at the Standard question why, even on a fraught day, the paper’s life and style editor would be sending journalists out to cover a major news story and point out that the kind of
subterfuge Jones describes was by that time already banned under the
Editors’ Code of Practice. No one else could remember having to wee in their own chair, either.
Meanwhile, Jones’s own conclusion to this week’s tales of at-desk urination and the pursuit of the maimed was: “Journalism is not so Wild West these days, meaning a lot of the fun has left the profession.”
