Peter Bills: Tabloid trust a tad misguided

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The news that a majority of the British population, albeit the slimmest possible, believes most tabloid journalists are basically decent, honest people raises some intriguing issues.

The poll revealed 46 per cent backed the journalists, 45 per cent did not and 9 per cent did not know whether the moon was made of blue cheese or camembert.

But one has to wonder whether even 1 per cent of those who participated in the poll really knew anything about the world of the tabloid media. News of the phone hacking imbroglio in Britain has been devoured across the world partly, one suspects, because all kinds of nefarious practices were already long established procedures in any number of countries where the tabloid press operates.

For example, would Mr and Mrs Joe Public, stopped in the street and asked for their views, have known anything of the ways and means of these red top newspapers? Would they have known how the expenses system used to operate, for example?

So what is there to know about that, you may think? You do your job, incur a few expenses and reclaim them from the company. Simple? No, complicated. I remember from the days when I, briefly, worked for one of Britain's leading tabloids in what was still in those days, Fleet St. Asked to do a six-week stint "in house" to cover for a writer who was ill, I quickly became aware tabloids do not always operate in the real world.

At the end of my first week, the chief sub editor (who also happened to be the union man on the editorial floor) came ambling down the table. "Got your expenses?" he asked me.

A kind of surreal conversation then ensued.

"Haven't got any," said I.

"What do you mean, haven't got any?" he boomed?

"Well, I haven't left the office all week, just worked in here talking to people on the phones. Can't claim expenses for that, can I?"

His mood darkened. "You tryin' to be funny?" he asked?

"No, just haven't got any," I replied.

He looked to the heavens with a pained expression. "Oh my gawd, not anuvver one. All right, fill in this form. Now, what d'yer do on Monday?"

"Well," I responded, pencil poised above the large but blank expenses sheet, "I did a story on Tottenham. Rang their manager and..."

"Right," he shot back. "Taxi to Tottenham, 19 quid."

"Did an interview with the Arsenal striker ..."

"Right. Taxi to Highbury, 18 quid. Lunch £14.50, tea £7.90."

And so it went on. Every day was filled with ruinously expensive items that totalled, under the master's shrewd eye, an astonishing £135.

"What do I do with this?" I enquired. "Take it up to accounts, join the queue and collect yer money," he sniffed. But then, as I waited in line, a strange thing happened. I glanced at the top of the expenses sheet to see the name he had written: Dickens C. The guy in front was called to the pay-out desk. "Shakespeare W?" And so it went on.

I was clearly in august company. Hemingway E. brushed past my shoulder as Tennyson A. went to another counter. Here, encased within the newspaper's old, rambling office, walked the cream of literary history.

Now believe me, in those days, £135 was a very decent weekly wage. But this was your weekly "bonus". Anyone smart would have just banked their salary.

Funny times. And of course most of those ludicrous abuses have long since ended. But for those of us still in the trade, there is perhaps a smile on our faces when we read the public thinks most tabloid journos are good, solid, upstanding citizens without a wily, scheming thought in their brain.

Still, it's nice some people still have their dreams.