I once worked for Rupert Murdoch, it can now be revealed. This shocking and unprecedented tabloid scandal began to unfold when I was a young sub-editor at the London Evening Standard and received a phone call on a strangely crackling line offering a trial shift at Murdoch's tabloid The Sun. I had already worked an eight-hour day at the evening paper and went straight over to the old News of the World building to work for another eight hours on next day's Sun, creating a "center spread" (two adjoining pages at the center of the paper laid out as one.) But I can't remember (this mysterious loss of memory affects all associated with The Sun) if I wrote a headline and caption for their renowned Page Three topless girl. Leering puns were mandatory: "Anne of Big Boobingham" perhaps. "Perky Anne, aged 22, really stands out on the streets of her home city of Birmingham where she is reaching the peaks of her modeling career..."
When I checked out The Sun the next morning, my lovingly-constructed center-spread had been revised from top to bottom. There had been no phone hacking that I was aware of, and nothing else untoward. I do vaguely recall a cop outside saying: "Will there be anything else, Sir?" as he rubbed together a thumb forefinger, but my mind is surely playing tricks on me.
I never heard from The Sun again. What a lucky break that was.
