Spike: An Intimate Memoir. Norma Farnes

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      After five years at ICI I was ready for a change. I stopped going to Saltburn Spa because Pat had moved to London and I was more or less engaged. Kenneth Kendall still looked benignly at me but one day I had a few words with him. ‘It’s time we moved on.’ What I needed was a more demanding job. I was lucky because that same evening I spotted just what I was looking for in the local newspaper:

      National newspaper journalist needs hard working secretary with good shorthand typing speeds. Clock watchers need not apply. This is a challenging post and merits a commensurately higher than usual salary. Telephone 4500.

      That was more like it. I made an appointment, dressed with care and set off with all the aplomb of a Lucy Clayton graduate. I sat in the waiting room and was about to leave after fifteen minutes when a girl walked out of his office, looked at me and mouthed one word: ‘Bastard’.

      Although based in the north-east Jack Clarke was probably at that time the U.K.’s highest-paid journalist. Savile Row suits and the latest sports cars were his badges of success. He had worked in Fleet Street and become a news editor, but decided he could make more money as a freelance investigative journalist. Jack would travel anywhere, any time to get an exclusive where others had been rebuffed, so he prospered. When I met him he employed six reporters, two photographers and a cine man, and supplied national newspapers and television stations with stories from the region. At the time, however, I did not know much about him.

      When the ‘bastard’ opened his office door, I saw a man in his mid-thirties, five feet nine or so, with a receding hairline but very well groomed and wearing a bow tie. Not dapper but smart. I liked that. He had twinkling blue eyes and, though no Hollywood heartthrob, had something about him. He smiled after the departing girl. ‘Come in, if she hasn’t put you off.’ How could he know? I soon found out that he read people very well, and quickly.

      It was unlike any interview I had had. Questions about all sorts of things; current affairs, gossip, all discussed at a whirlwind rate as if time was money. He asked me courteously enough if I would mind taking some dictation, handed me a pad and pencil, then rattled off a letter at about one hundred and thirty words a minute, which I only just managed to get down.

      ‘Now type it.’ He must have noticed my expression. ‘If you don’t mind, and you want the job.’

      I typed the letter quickly and confidently handed it to him. He read it and reeled back in his chair, as if in shock. ‘Christ! Didn’t anyone teach you punctuation?’

      The bosses were not rude like that at ICI. Who did he think he was?

      ‘When people dictate they normally indicate commas and full stops. You didn’t. I’m a secretary. Not a graduate in grammar and punctuation.’

      He grinned. I got three months’ trial at fifteen pounds a week, about fifty per cent above the going rate, plus a wonderful if tough initiation into the world of newspapers and television. I did not know it then but it was the beginning of the road to Number Nine, Orme Court.

      In addition to being his secretary I was the office’s general dogsbody, tea lady and wages clerk. I typed reporters’ copy when they phoned in their stories, read them over to Jack on the telephone if he was out of the office, altered them according to the Clarke gospel and then dictated them to the nationals. The work never seemed to stop. I wondered if Jack ever spared the time to see his wife and children.

      The reporters’ room was thick with smoke, the desks dotted with a dozen mugs or so containing milky dregs of tea leaves and stubbed-out cigarettes. I could not believe the bad language they used and Jack was probably worse. The Sunday school teacher came out in me and I imposed a penalty of sixpence for a curse, which enhanced the contribution he made to nuns who called every month for donations to their missionary order.

      Jack’s television work was fascinating to me. When ITN came on air he soon became their man in the north and when the region’s broadcaster, Tyne Tees, was launched he had a weekly political programme and appeared in a nightly current affairs magazine. About six months after starting work for him I became his researcher and consequently he thought it would be a good idea if I met some of the producers. I got to know one very well, Malcolm Morris, a crinkly-haired, bespectacled young man who was bubbling with ideas. When Malcolm was appointed Programme Controller he gave Jack his own shows, which he wrote and produced.

      Increasingly, I made the round trip of eighty miles to the studio at breakneck speeds in one of Jack’s sports cars (this was before the days of speed limits). One evening, when his show finished after ten, we were both hungry, having existed since early morning on canteen sandwiches, and he suggested dinner. That was a surprise because until then it had been very much a boss and employee relationship but I was famished and agreed.

      In those days in the provinces most dining rooms and restaurants closed their doors around 8.30 p.m., but an Italian restaurant on the outskirts of Gateshead was daring enough to stay open as long as there were customers to serve. That evening I saw Jack in a new light. This often abrupt dynamo of a man changed into an attentive host. I found it difficult to believe I was with the same person who was so focused in his work that anyone who got in his way had to look out. Even the waiters seemed to find him charming. I found him attractive and fascinating. Whether, like an angler, he had been casting his line for a catch I do not know but by the end of the evening, I was hooked and ready to be hauled in.

      In the meantime Michael Williams had gone back to sea and I simply stopped writing to him. My parents were sad about Michael, but they never knew the real reason we drifted apart. This is not to say that Jack changed overnight, only when we were out together, after hours. Whenever something went wrong in the office he flared up at the incompetents who had caused it, me included. Then of an evening that dazzling charm would return.

      As I became more researcher than secretary I also began to help Jack cover some stories and I was there when he met his match. He had unrivalled sources at the Army’s Catterick Camp, then the biggest in the country, and discovered that a certain eligible lieutenant in the Greys, who happened to be the Duke of Kent, was about to announce his engagement to Katherine Worsley, who was not royal or even titled but the daughter of Sir William Worsley, the Lord Lieutenant of the North Riding. Jack’s photographer got a picture of the Duke’s arrival at the Worsley home, Hovingham Hall. This was an exclusive and within hours of its publication reporters and photographers were sent to the sleepy village, which was still very feudal in its outlook. Journalists slaked the thirsts of locals in the Hovingham Arms but they were a tight-lipped lot. News editors were screaming for something new. Even Jack could not make any headway. Then he had an idea.

      At that time he owned one of the very first E-type Jaguars. I had often wanted to drive it on quiet country roads, but his answer was always ‘No’. Fair enough, I suppose, since I had not got a driving licence. Now he smiled at me.

      ‘There’s time to kill so why don’t we give you a lesson in the Jag? The lanes round here are very quiet so it should be all right.’

      I was so excited at the prospect СКАЧАТЬ