From:
Gentleman RantersI knew Eric WainwrightBy Colin Dunne
Goodness knows, those 30-odd years in Fleet Street produced very little for me by way of achievement, fame or trophies. All I’
ve got to show for it are a few divorce court appearances, arteries as congested as Shoe Lane, and a collection of anecdotes that can never be told. Why not? Because normal people would never believe them.
But I do have one claim to distinction of which I’m seriously proud, and it’s one that very few old Mirror men can make…
For I knew Eric Wainwright.
Oh yes, there are plenty who are familiar with the legend of Invisible Eric, the ghost of the Fourth Floor Features. But I doubt if any of them ever actually set eyes upon him. And fewer still who heard, first-hand, his explanation of why he found it necessary to wear his St James’s Street hat while seated upon the lavatory.
But I did. I knew him quite well. And his hat. And I’m glad I caught his show while it was still – just – in town.
It happened at a time in my life when I was obliged to spend Sunday mornings – and quite possibly bits of Saturday night – in the
Holborn office. We do not need to go into the reasons. Some sort of domestic dislocation, I seem to recall – you know how difficult women can be. Anyway, after breakfast in the canteen, by mid-morning I’d be sitting with a coffee and the Sunday papers at my desk on the fourth-floor.
I always had it to myself. Until one morning when in bowled this dapper chap. Although clearly startled at having to share the room, he gave a jovial wave and sat down at a typewriter. The telephone rang. ‘No,’ he said, with complete conviction, ‘there’s no-one hear called Dunne.’
At this point, I thought it wise to introduce myself. He apologised for not knowing me. In fact, he
didn’t seem to know anyone. ‘Who’s the features editor now?’ I said it was Bill
Hagerty. ‘Is he a little
blond chap with a moustache?’ I said no, he was a tallish dark chap with a clean upper lip. He nodded. ‘Bit out of touch these days,’ he said. ‘I try to keep out of the way.’
At that he was triumphantly successful. His contact with the office was his monthly visit, on a Sunday morning when the place was deserted, to do four weeks’ expenses.
A little cautiously, I said that I
hadn’t seen his by-line recently. ‘No, old boy, haven’t had a piece in for six years.’ I murmured something about how upsetting it must be to have all that copy spiked. He looked at me as though I was insane. ‘Lord no, haven’t written anything for six years.’
At this point, we need a little history. In the mid-seventies, the
Mirror features department had reached its zenith with a splendid one-way employment policy: new writers were shipped in, but no old writers went out. One idle day (there were about 342 a year) I counted the number of feature writers and gave up when I passed 40. They were a mixed bunch. Former girlfriends of long-gone editors, executives who’d forgotten what they were executing, columnists who’d misplaced their columns, foreign correspondents returned home, and some people who I think just came in for the warmth. There were even one or two who wrote features. This
wasn’t encouraged.
Passing the time could be a problem. Some took to the drink. Some took to adultery. Some took to both, and not always in the right order. Don Walker set up a music stand and taught himself classical guitar. Paula James made restaurant reservations. George Thaw was Scottish all over the place. Don
Gomery sighed a lot. Occasionally we’d move the desks and have a badminton tournament.
Several of the writers, like Eric, became no-shows. His sports jacket –
Daks, of course – was left over his chair, so that if anyone asked for him we could say he’d popped out to the bank and we would ring the number he’d left. The number, someone said, was for a drinking club in Soho in which he was a partner. We never rang it. No-one ever asked for him.
Years slipped by, and he became a sort of invisible yet indestructible folk hero. Once he put in a memo asking to be made Pub Correspondent. Tony Miles, the editor, asked someone to check with accounts to see if he was still on the staff. He was. ‘What the hell does he do?’ Someone said he spent most of his time in pubs. ‘In that case,’ said Miles, ‘he might as well have the title.’ So he achieved his ambition, and, true to the last, he never wrote a story.
Mike
Molloy once called a conference which was a must-attend for writers. Bars and bedrooms all over London emptied and by the time he’d begun, the room was packed. At that point in walked this distinguished figure with his rolled umbrella and perched himself at the front. Mike was saying the new policy was to attract young readers when Eric spoke. ‘Delightful little boozer just outside
Guildford,’ he said. ‘Lots of young people in there. Shall I pop down and have a look?’ A minute later he’d gone. It remained one of the great unwritten stories of our time.
Over the months, I got to know him well. With his slick of silver hair, florid face and drawing-room accent, he was of a type that even then was rapidly running out of fashion. He was – there’s no other word for it – a gent: British warm overcoat, yellow chamois gloves and tightly-furled umbrella with a
whangee handle, he was clearly an ex-officer from some smart regiment. Only he
wasn’t.
The story was that he was a Canadian who’d come over here with the Canadian air force and stayed on. There were rumours of military heroics. At one time he’d made a living as a cartoonist (some of his cartoons were on the walls of the Stab). Even more incredibly, he’d dressed up as a huge, ugly, half-wit woman called Cynthia who was the silent stage stooge for a northern comedian called
Hylda Baker. ‘She knows, y’know’,
Hylda would say, elbowing Eric in the ribs.
It was the sort of CV that could only end one way - in the
Mirror features department. Long before those Sunday morning meetings, he’d built up quite a name for doing first-person pieces under the by-line Danger Man. He was terrific. He rode a motor-bike through a hoop of fire. He went into a cage full of lions armed only with a chair. He even went to the photographers’ Christmas party… no, no, that was a joke, he
wasn’t that crazy.
He was what he himself would have called a genial sort of cove. Full of good spirits, full of good stories. Around noon, he would slip over the Stab, and return a couple of hours later, even fuller of good spirits. He would slump down in his chair and ring all his friends around the world. Occasionally, the odd snippet would drift over to me, and what collectors’ items they were…
‘
Yerrs, still got the same old place out in Bucks. Thatched roof, y’know. Trouble is, bloody squirrels in the thatch. Gnawed through the bloody water pipe. Drips through the ceiling. Bloody nuisance. Have to wear a hat when I’m on the lav.’
With the writer’s true eye for detail, Eric knew this required further definition. ‘Y’know,’ he said, ‘the one I got at Lock’s of St
James’s.’
There were stories that in his younger days he was an accomplished pub fighter. Someone who once saw him in action said he used the pub furniture like they do in cowboy films. To me he was never anything other than charming, apart from the day Roy Harris upset him. Roy, who was, I think, deputy features editor, sat in on a Sunday, and when Eric presented his expenses, he ventured a mildly casual inquiry about one item. Eric was furious. He went immediately to the Stab. He stayed longer than usual. When he came back, he was purple with, among other things, rage. He asked my advice. What was the silliest story I’d ever done? A talking dog, I said. Where was the furthest point from the office? Land’s End. With finger-jabbing anger, he typed away, took it downstairs and slammed it down in front of Roy. It was for a trip to Land’s End to interview a talking dog. It involved well over a thousand miles’ travel, several overnights, lots of entertaining and taxis. All with no bills. The final, some might have said contemptuous, item was the one that caught Roy’s eye. ‘Bone for dog - £10.’
Roy, who was not a big man, shivered in the shadow of the figure looming over him. ‘Must have been a big bone,’ he whispered weakly.
Eric slammed his hand on the desk and roared: ‘It was fucking big dog.’
Roy’s signature fairly skidded over the paper.
Someone somewhere must have let me back in, because my Sunday mornings in the office came to an end. I missed them. I missed Eric. With him, I felt as though I was catching the last act of a wonderful long-running comedy.
About a year after I left the
Mirror, Don Walker rang me up. I knew it was some sort of spoof because he was trying not to laugh. Eric was leaving, he said. They were having a farewell party for him. And would I go along because I was the only person who knew what he looked like.
Just me.
Sadly, Eric isn't around any more. Any more? What am I saying?
Colin Dunne was a Daily Mirror
feature writer from 1968 to 1978 when he left to freelance and write books.
