Fast Fiction: Frankly of the Blare
"It'll be the scoop of the year,'' said the man with a face like a rancid mushroom and a smell to match. But Rick Frankly of the Daily Blare did not believe him... Riochard Mallinson tells a story of every journalist's worst nightmare.
‘Are you Rick Frankly of the Daily Blare?’ a little man asked me in the bar of the Gem and Locket, miles away from the office.
‘I am not here,’ I said.
‘Then where the hell are you?’ he asked, looking around.
‘What I mean is I am off duty.’
‘A good journalist is never off duty,’ he sneered.
‘Well, then, I am not a good journalist,’ I replied, allowing him to score with, ‘You can say that again - but you’ll have to do for the time being. Now are you going to buy me a drink or not in exchange for some real info?’
I bought him a whisky on the off-chance that he had something worth telling and we moved away from the bar to a table in the corner.
It was an old-fashioned pub, just like the people (not many) in it.
The man had a face like a rancid mushroom and a smell to match.
‘Come on, then,’ I said, ‘get on with it - what’s the story?’
‘It’ll be the scoop of the year,’ he said and I groaned as I listened. . . It was all about a cabinet minister leaving confidential papers in the back of a taxi which he had shared intimately with a woman not his wife.
The taxi driver would be willing to tell all, for a fee.
‘What do you think?’ asked the little man.
‘It’s rubbish,’ I said.
A few days later one of our young reporters came up with a scoop for which he received much praise and a bonus.
He nodded to me and I followed him to the far end of the newsroom.
‘I understand,’ he said quietly, ‘that you were offered the story but turned it down because you thought it was rubbish. So he came to me with it…you know the chap I mean, don’t you, he has a face like a rancid mushroom and a -’
‘Yes, yes,’ I snapped, ‘don’t rub it in.’
