Disqus - Latest Comments for NormanGiller

Re: Photographer Nick Stern removes permission for Sun to use archive in protest at treatment of Anthony France

NormanGiller — Mon, 20 Jul 2015 09:48:02 -0000

Well done Nick Stern. You won't dent the Murdoch empire but pricking a few consciences will hopefully give you the satisfaction you deserve.

Re: Alan Rusbridger on: Hacking, Snowden, Wikileaks and losing £300m to make The Guardian financially secure

NormanGiller — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 10:30:17 -0000

An excellent interview, Dominc, worthy of a Guardian spread. You ask in your intro: "Has there ever been a more dignified and lauded end to a national newspaper editing career?" I give you Arthur Christiansen of the Daily Express, who was a true Master of Fleet Street; but that is not to take anything away from Alan's magnificent career. Just don't want Chris to be forgotten.

Re: News UK indicates it won't pay prosecution costs leaving reporter Anthony France to foot the bill

NormanGiller — Fri, 29 May 2015 09:08:28 -0000

Please let me know if a Fund is started to pay Anthony's costs. All fair-minded journos and citizens will want to help.

Re: John Humphrys 'like a fairground prize-fighter' in Today interviews says BBC report

NormanGiller — Thu, 04 Jul 2013 09:47:39 -0000

The old sub in me will not go away. It is the Marquis of QUEENSBERRY, not Queensbury. But the heavy hitting interviews by the likes of Humphrys and Paxman are welcome as entertainment and necessary to prevent politicians peddling propaganda.

Re: Club reports papers to PCC over fan death coverage - Press Gazette

NormanGiller — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 10:20:11 -0000

Yet more "diving-in" reporting. I was taught in my first weeks in local newspapers that you never never never draw or write conclusions ahead of an inquest or police inquiry. Whatever happened to sub judice? I know I am a crumbling old ruin in need of a preservation order, but I speak for my generation of journalists when I say we are appalled by the standards of today's loose and legally dangerous reporting. Legendary Daily Express Editor Arthur Christiansen used to say: "Only report fact, not hearsay." A lesson there for many of today's journalists.

Re: Company Check on ON THE BOX PRODUCTIONS LIMITED

NormanGiller — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 04:59:37 -0000

Brian is as trustworthy and conscientious a man as you could wish to meet, hugely talented and energetic and always a pleasure to work with; Charmaine is all these things, too, but much better to look at :-) Anybody considering working on a project with On the Box can relax in the knowledge they are in harness with creative perfectionists. I speak as somebody who has worked with Brian on many TV and VDV productions over a period of more than 30 years. He is a pleasure to work with at all times.

Re: New claims over NoW redundancy payout dispute - Press Gazette

NormanGiller — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 19:11:31 -0000

This is disgraceful, and I hope the former colleagues of NotW journos on the stablemate papers at Wapping will stand up and fight the fight for them. If they hide away and let it happen they will be next to get shafted by the News International bosses. Wapping was built on the bodies of discarded printers. Now it's the turn of the journalists to get squashed. The Murderochs strike again.

Re: Phone-hacking: Brooks 'under no pressure to stand down' - Press Gazette

NormanGiller — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 08:25:51 -0000

Come on, any of us who knew Rebekah (then Wade) at the NotW will know she wouldn't have sunk so low to have supported the hacking of Millie's phone. This was the evil work of a private investigator not a journalist.

Re: Olympic Stadium: London 2012 chairman Lord Coe would 'have to vote for West Ham' to take over arena

NormanGiller — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 08:09:49 -0000

Spinmeister Mike Lee has done a magnificent job putting the Tottenham case for their move to Stratford. He would have done an equally great job for West Ham if they'd had the sense to take him on as a consultant. He is a genius at shaping and promoting an argument, but that does not make him right. The bottom line is that Tottenham belong, spirit and soul and morally, in North London. How would they react if West Ham announced they were going to build a stadium three miles away from White Hart Lane in North London? The last time something like this happened was when Woolwich Arsenal moved into Tottenham's patch in 1913 .... and 98 years on they have still not been forgiven.

Re: Football must take over the stadium after the Olympics

NormanGiller — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 17:25:43 -0000

Jim White has written his usual balanced and absorbing article. Just one thing, when I was last in Sydney I visited the Olympic Park to dicover that it stages more than 4000 events a year and the Olympic Stadium is always packed for a variety of major finals. To knock down the Stratford Stadium and build a new one in its place is the stuff of Alice in Wonderland. Who will be the Mad Hatter? How about West Ham merging with Leyton Orient and so calling on the width of East London as a catchment area. West Ham Orient has a good nice ring to it. Stratford Hotspur? I don't think so. The club's soul and spirit belongs in Tottenham.

Re: Press Gazette Editor’s Blog » Paul Dacre is worth every penny of his £2.8m

NormanGiller — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 10:51:20 -0000

A Fleet Street Editor earning nearly half as much as a Premier League footballer. Wow. The world has gone mad.

Re: Gary Mason

NormanGiller — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 07:22:44 -0000

"Lord Barnett, " your comment about Gary Mason is entirely inappropriate on an obituary page. Gary lost only one of 38 professional fights, hardly fodder. His one defeat was by Lennox Lewis when he was stopped with severe eye damage after giving as good as he got for much of the contest. Your ill informed comment devalues every other contribution you make on these Telegraph pages.

Re: Gary Mason

NormanGiller — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 06:52:48 -0000

Gary was a great, lovable character – a black Delboy, full of fun and mischief. He was a better all-round boxer than our mutual mate Frank Bruno but (and he admitted this) did not have Frank's dedication. I was his publicist for much of his career and considered him a jewel of a human being. Rest easy you wonderful big guy who brought sunshine into a lot of lives.

Re: Hats off to Big Mal, the visionary coach who was ahead of the game

NormanGiller — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 05:13:07 -0000

James, with his natural modesty, plays down the huge part he played in the making of Malcolm Allison. He ghosted him throughout the glory years at Maine Road in a brilliantly produced weekly supplement in the northern Daily Express, and collaborated with Big Mal on a superior autobiography. It was the Lawton words that gave shape and meaning to the often woolly and romantic Allison ideas. He was the Boswell to Allison's Johnson, and as we mourn Malcolm's passing let us remember those golden years when he was the brightest and most innovative of coaches and a good-times companion beyond compare. We will not see his like again.

Re: Head of news Anthony Harwood to leave the Daily Mirror - Press Gazette

NormanGiller — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 13:51:00 -0000

Sly Bailey was seen looking in the mirror (not the MIrror):

"Mirror, mirror on the wall
Who is the unfairest of us all?"

"'Tis you Ms. Bailey, tis you ..." came the response

Re: Southampton FC’s ban on photographers: the story so far… - Press Gazette

NormanGiller — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 09:34:46 -0000

The angle I have taken in my SJA blog (http://www.sportsjournalist... is that in future I will be the sole reporter of Southampton games, allowing the club to sell off the press box seats at premier price. I will split all lineage 50/50 with Southampton. Actually, it's not funny. If Southampton get away with this ban, the likes of Man United, Chelsea and Co will quickly follow the lead and it will be yet another erosion of press freedom.

Re: MGN faces costs of £382,000 over £15,000 damages case - Press Gazette

NormanGiller — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 10:29:09 -0000

Liz, I totally understand what you are saying and agree that journalists should be more disciplined and responsible. I am from the old school where we were told to check, double check and then check our facts again. The motto in my days on the Daily Express (many moons ago) was "Accuracy Above All." Those standards do not seem to exist any more in the modern newspaper world. But this does not weaken my view that lawyers charge far too much.

Re: The Times to offer daily live debates behind the paywall - Press Gazette

NormanGiller — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 08:42:09 -0000

Why on earth would anybody want to pay to debate behind a PayWall when there are thousands of free forums on every subject under the Sun (and Mirror)? Once the new (probably Alliance) Government is installed and having to admit they are not only making massive cuts but also raising taxes (bet on it) people will be less likely to want to put their hands into their pockets to debate on line when they can do it for free. And it is a very arrogant writer who believes his/her reader would pay to 'talk' to them.

Re: Mail Online MD: We need new measurement standards - Press Gazette

NormanGiller — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 08:01:02 -0000

The most telling stat is that the Mail claim 90 million clicks each month and that there are 14,000 comments left each day. I am to maths what Einstein was to ladies' hair dressing but I would say that is not many comments compared to visits (and how many of the comments are from the same people?). But at least the Mail have committed themselves to not going down the PayWall road that is going to prove a mountain for Roop and his troops.

As a dinosaur who has set up his own website with minus-nil technical knowledge (www.normangillerbooks.co.uk) I know that clicks mean nowt. On my brief visit here to this super Press Gazette site I have triggered at least half a dozen clicks. Clickety-click does not mean bingo-size business, and can often be as misleading as volcanic ash erupting from Iceland. James Bromley is 100 per cent right to call for new (and reliablle) benchmarks, otherwise advertisers will never completely trust the online publications.

Re: Bob Coole: 'Rewrite man of genius, a head full of ideas'

NormanGiller — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:36:48 -0000

Back in the 70s I used to submit a daily puzzle celebrity game (The Name Game) to The Sun, and once managed to make husband and wife duo Ike and Tina Turner brother and sister. Bob, then Sun features editor, fired off a memo: "To the best of my knowledge Ike and Tina Turner are not indulging in an incestuous relationship. Pull your finger out or, relatively speaking, you will get a mummy and a daddy of a spanking ..."

Bob had the gift of managing to make you laugh while kicking you in the balls. Cool, Bob, Cool.

Re: Meehan defends Hull Daily Mail over web-porn story row - Press Gazette

NormanGiller — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 10:46:40 -0000

Saddest thing of all about the exposure of the sort of porn websites targeted by the Hull Daily Mail is that the reporter can't write in time-honoured fashion: "I made my excuses and left ..."

The fun has gone out of the porn/prostitution exposure game.

Somehow "I made my excuses and deleted the website" does not have the same ring.

Purely in the interests of research, I make a study of the on-line porn websites and can declare with some authority that they are technically the finest on the internet. I will make my excuses and leave ...

Re: One in five staff cull keeps Trinity Mirror in profit - Press Gazette

NormanGiller — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 08:48:22 -0000

"The axing of 1,700 staff and the sale or closure off 30 publications helped the UK’s biggest newspaper publisher - Trinity Mirror – stay comfortably in profit in 2009."

Comfortably in profit, Dominic? I would say there has been a hell of a lot of discomfort.

My thoughts are with the 1,700 staff kicked out to please the accountants and shareholders.

Re: Lebedev will pay £1 for the Independent, claims report

NormanGiller — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:08:47 -0000

So how long, then, before the Independent is being given away free, with one edition and run by a skeleton staff? That will the question asked by a host of ex-Standard journalists.

Re: Deep cuts result from BBC strategic review, claims report - Press Gazette

NormanGiller — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:42:20 -0000

Auntie is having her knicker elastic pulled. This is just the start. Just watch the Tories removing a lot of her clothes if they get in with a decent majority. They will grab her by the Murdochs.

Re: Report: MPs to call for ban on companies suing for libel - Press Gazette

NormanGiller — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:00:31 -0000

No camment