7/20/11

Sssh! I once worked for Rupert Murdoch

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.