Barclays Blank

‘GOOD old Mr Anorak is a true hands-off owner – the last time he interfered in an editorial decision on this esteemed publication was in 1994 and that was only to correct a minor mistake in our recipe for a perfect pink gin.

The new Krays

Mind you, he hasn’t been seen since, well, since that day, and the few of us privileged enough to visit the top floor have remarked on a rather nasty smell emanating from his office.

If only Times owner Rupert Murdoch were so happy to let his journalists get on with their job while he drank himself to death.

But we see the dirty paws of the Dirty Digger all over this morning’s front-page story about the Barclay brothers, new owners of the Telegraph and therefore Murdoch’s media rivals.

We won’t bore you with the details of a story so boring that we defy any Times reader to get beyond the third paragraph, but the gist of it is this.

Sir David and Sir Frederick have had business dealings with a Japanese entrepreneur, Tadayoshi Tzaki, who in 1998 was banned for seven years by the SFA because of his dealings with Yasuo Hamanaka, a rogue metals trader.

If those are the edited highlights, you can only imagine how mind-achingly dull the full story is – so we will spare you the full horror.

But by way of illustration we will quote the by-line in full.

‘Special report by Leo Lewis, Richard Lloyd Parry, Elichiro Tokumoto in Tokyo and Dan Sabbagh, Helen Nugent and Stewart Tendler in London.’

Tomorrow, the sames crack reporting team reveal how at the age of five the Barclay brothers were once sent to bed early with no tea and how the editor of the Independent once got a parking ticket.’

Posted: 17th, August 2004 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink