Paul Callan

a pin stripe suit, suede shoes, bow tie, a loud voice, bundles of charm,  and a head for strong drink. Add in Nick Tomalin’s Plausible manner and rat-like cunning and you start to get a picture of  Paul, whose life we are here to celebrate today.

In truth he was much more than a movie-man’s caricature.    For a start, Paul was much kinder and generous than any journalist you have seen portrayed on the screen. He was also fearless, often asking the question at which some of us baulked.

But above all he was an extremely funny man who peppered almost every conversation with a story, usually involving some form of mimicry and ending with gales of laughter.

His first Diary editor on the  Evening Standard in the mid-sixties, Magnus Linklater, said that the reason that Paul became his closest friend at that time, was because he was such very good company, both at the bar and away from it.

“He was just jolly good fun to be with” was how  he put it.

A lot of those times, it has to be said were spent at watering holes in this parish, most of them within a decent drive and a five iron of where we are gathered. And how fitting that we are able once again to be here at St Bride’s because Fleet  Street was very much Paul’s manor. He was never designed for Canary Wharf or some of the other outposts whence we dispersed. He was at home here.

When I first knew Paul, the centre piece of that home away from the office was El Vino’s where he could be found most lunch times, usually accompanied by his great friends Charles Lyte and Michael Watts This would involve quite a lot of champagne, sometimes some gin too before  crossing the road  for lunch proper at the an Italian restaurant, the Val Ceno where more red and white wine followed. This of course was  just a prelude to the evening events which one hoped would provide the copy for the following day’s Diary.

It was not a life-style recommended for longevity.

Yet here we are, over 50 years on, and many rounds of drinks later, celebrating a life in journalism and broadcasting  which, even by Fleet Street standards, was peripatetic, eclectic- often brilliant- and just occasionally  rackety.

From early days on a local paper in Croydon, followed by a stint on   the Yorkshire Post, Paul joined  the Londoners Diary on the Evening Standard, then almost exclusively manned by Old Etonians: Magnus Linklater, Mark Amory, Michael Morton-Evans, Ian Dunlop, John Morehead. And Paul.

He became the column’s editor  towards the end of the sixties  but finally left to  become the first  diary editor of David English’s tabloid Daily Mail.

Broadcasting came next, as first  breakfast presenter of LBC with Janet Street Porter:

Cut-glass and Cut-froat as they became known.

While there he also became a contributor to Bill Davies’ Punch magazine.

Then it was back to newspapers with his own column on the Daily Mirror.  This morphed into  that field of journalism which had been so expertly pioneered by Vincent Mulchrone for the Mail: the application of feature writing to one of the main news stories of the day… in Fleet street short hand this was News Colour.

At the same time, Paul cultivated the celebrity interview- which frequently took place in Hollywood, and other sunny places where the living was good.

More often than not, Paul’s co-conspirator was that legendary photographer, Kent Gavin.

From Sirhan Sirhan in his prison cell, via Greta Garbo to Bo Derek, taking in the Kray twins and Oswald Moseley. He even engineered the rapprochement between Mandy Rice Davies and Christine Keeler.

Paul was a master of the chat-up line too.

He was a regular presenter of What the Paper’s say, and Classic FM’s more leisurely version of Desert Island Discs called Celebrity Choice. As the independent reviewer remarked:

“ Callan is more Plomley than Lawley”

Latterly, he wrote many features and   reviewed theatre for the Daily Express where he was one of the few journalists to endear himself to Richard Desmond.

Throughout all this, down the years, there was the constant which is Paul’s wife Steffi. They had met some fifty years ago when Steffi had arrived in London from New York, working for Women’s Wear Daily. Steffi and their children Jessica and Jamie  have been the family centre-piece around which Paul’s world rotated.

They are an object lesson in how much easier it is to ride the rough seas and squalls of journalism when one is blessed with good anchors.

One of those early squalls I’m ashamed to say was when I reneged on an undertaking to go as Paul’s deputy to start what was to be the new gossip column on the embryonic tabloid Daily Mail. After I’d agreed to go, Charles Wintour offered me the editorship of the Londoners Diary which Paul had vacated. I was allowed the following weekend to make up my mind which I spent with three others in Ibiza as a guest of some very rich socialite. Among our party was Quentin Crew who said I would be mad to pass up the Evening Standard job in favour of the uncertain Daily Mail adventure

I explained my trepidation about telling first Paul and then David English that I was welching on them.

“Quite simple “ said Quentin. “Just suggest that our mutual friend here who has been sacked from the Daily Express should go in your place”

And thus on the  Monday I withdrew my acceptance from English and Callan and suggested that my friend Nigel Dempster would be just the man they were looking for.

There were days subsequently when Paul did not thank me.

I have mentioned Paul’s kindness and this is perhaps the time to remove the blot on his escutcheon which says that Paul was once responsible for killing one of Doris Day’s dogs.

I am grateful to Kent Gavin for the true version which is as follows. The two of them visited Doris in her 21^st floor Penthouse on Sunset Strip for an interview. To assist Kent with his picture, Paul engaged the dogs by bouncing a ball across the floor. All worked fine. Interview completed. Pictures taken. Job done.

Two days later a tearful Miss Day rings up to say that while re-enacting Paul’s ball bouncing trick, her favourite dog had leapt to catch and disappeared out of the penthouse window, falling  21 floors with the  inevitable outcome. Did Kent have a set of photographs by which she could remember her much loved pooch?

A day or two later, Miss Day arrived to collect the prints at the Polo Lounge of the Beverley Hills hotel where Gavin and Callan were having breakfast.

Doris was ecstatic with the pictures and tried to pay for them. When this was refused, she asked what she might do by way of saying thank you. To which Paul said:

“I tell you what, Miss Day… would you sing Que Sera, Sera ?.”

Our Doris  duly obliged…. not anticipating that Paul would join in.

To rapturous applause from the Polo Lounge staff and customers the pair performed one of the most unlikely, never to be repeated, duets in Hollywood history.

I will leave the last words to Paul’s editor at the Mirror, Mike Molloy who sadly can’t be with us today.

“In times of peace, Paul could, shall we say, be the very best of exuberant rascals. But on a big story, he was truly superb, and worth three or four of the opposition.”

I think the best I can do today is just give you all a highlight reel of what it was like to have Paul Callan as a father.

When my sister Jessica and I were young children, he was constantly doing silly voices, and zany impressions of famous people, and blowing raspberries, and threatening to do outrageous things in public to embarrass us.

As we grew up and became adults, I would just like to stress that the silly voices, impressions, raspberries, and threats to do outrageous things in public, not only continued — but actually increased in frequency.

He was very often on the road when we were growing up, and he would always bring us back presents. In our childhood bedrooms, My sister and I accrued heaving shelves filled with exotic trinkets from around the world.

One such gift to me — from when he covered the Falklands war — was an Argentine military helmet, pilfered from the battlefield, complete with blood stains inside. I took it to school with me the next day — much to the horror of the teacher and the glee of the boys.

For my 9th or 10th birthday, my parents bought me a fluorescent yellow and blue BMX bike. My father decided it would be a good idea to collect it from Harrods, on his way home from the pub after work; even though I never actually saw him do this, I can’t forget the imagery of him riding it along the Fulham Road home while wearing his pinstripes and bow tie.

He had a propensity for mischief, rebellion and general disobedience.

Once during a family holiday in the Hamptons in New York, in the early 1990s, before Google, he pretended he was a lord in order to secure a table at a restaurant that was notoriously difficult to get a reservation at.

He was very committed to this performance, which continued when we actually went to the restaurant. So naturally, of course, the chef emerged from the kitchen wanting to meet Lord Callan and give a copy of his book to my father. When it became apparent that they were about to bring the camera out, Lord Callan announced that the meal was spectacular but he simply must get back to Washington.

I moved to New York in my early 20s, and one of our favourite father-son bonding activities was going to the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel and drinking fish bowl-sized martinis. Given that my father and I looked absolutely nothing alike, the bartender on one occasion flirtatiously enquired to my father whether I was his young gay lover. Without missing a beat, my father immediately confirmed that, yes, this was the case, and could we get another round on the house.

This became a gag he liked to revisit.

When he was the theatre critic for the Daily Express, he once took me to a play and during the interval, introduced me to the other critics as his hot date.

Given almost any scenario, mischief and cracking jokes were the priority.

When I was writing this speech, my sister shared with me an email he sent her shortly before the birth of her son Gabriel, regarding the baby being circumcised.

“Would be delighted to pay for Baby O’s snip, he writes, “can I keep the bit the mohel cuts off? I could freeze and frame it in case the little lad becomes a Christian later in life and wants it sewn back on!”

Which brings me to one of his most frequent party pieces — doing his impression of Adolf Hitler, using his comb. Many of you here I’m sure witnessed this over the years.

He truly rivaled Mel Brooks when it came to being a Jew who relished mimicking the fuhrer.

(In fact, there is photographic evidence of this in your programs today.)

I could honestly go on and on with these anecdotes.

He was eccentric, he was Falstaffian, he was toad of toad hall come to life. He was a wonderful father and shall miss him terribly.

I’ll leave you with the words of Sir John Betjeman, one of my father’s favourite poets.

The Last Laugh
I made hay while the sun shone.
My work sold.
Now, if the harvest is over
And the world cold,
Give me the bonus of laughter
As I lose hold.

6 For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.

7 And he saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot of asses, and a chariot of camels; and he hearkened diligently with much heed:

8 And he cried, A lion: My lord, I stand continually upon the watchtower in the daytime, and I am set in my ward whole nights:

9 And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.

10 O my threshing, and the corn of my floor: that which I have heard of the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, have I declared unto you.

11 The burden of Dumah. He calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?

12 The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will enquire, enquire ye: return, come.

When I wrote Paul’s obit last November I talked of his blazing talents, his huge and infectious personality and his great wit. There might even have been the occasional reference to a glass or two.

But I had omitted another aspect of the man as various emails and calls soon pointed out: His kindness, especially to young journalists. He was, they assured me, prepared to listen patiently and to advise wisely, and that was rare from someone so successful and busy. Vodka and sympathy you might call it.

We first met in 1971 on David English’s Daily Mail but didn’t become the best of friends until he joined the Express in ’91. I was executive editor and therefore – nominally at least – in charge of this larger than life legend. It was a joy. Whatever task he was set, he excelled, at because he had the fine nose for a story that the best reporters have, knew the right questions to ask and most of all he had an eye for detail and the ability to write it all so brilliantly.

In 1995 I sent him to Auschwitz for the 50th anniversary of the liberation and, as I said in my obit, his piece on that monstrous edifice to inhumanity moved me to tears. As did the expenses he submitted a week later.

Another aspect of Paul I omitted was his ability as a mimic, a talent Prince Charles discovered on more than one occasion. When talking to Charles he spoke in the prince’s rather strangulated tones, all the while imitating his trademark nervous fiddling with his cuffs and signet ring. To his great credit Chares appeared genuinely amused and came back for more. I think only other person to get away with such ribbing was Spike Milligan.

Paul stayed with us one evening so we could be close to Gatwick for a flight to Bordeaux the following morning. That evening I roasted pheasants and was bringing them to the dining room when I tripped on the last step from the kitchen. I went flying as did the birds. A great cry went up from the dining table: ‘My god, they’re still alive!’

When we arrived at Chateau Magnol the following day I soon learned of another of the Callan armoury of talents: He joined an afternoon tasting of some great Haute Medocs. I’m not convinced he made great use of the spittoon provided but nevertheless that evening the master of wine told me the Callan nose and palette was as good as any he had come across.

All that aside, our hero had an extraordinary habit of producing scoop after scoop. He interviewed the Krays in prison where they boasted of their unspeakable activities. And we all know of his ability to write a full page for the Mail after the elusive Greta Garbo gave him a two-word interview. And in case you draw the wrong conclusion, those two words were ‘Why wonder?’ in response to Paul’s ‘Miss Garbo, I wonder…’

But the scoop that stands head and shoulders above all others was when he spent two hours inside the forbidding high security Soledad jail in California. It was 1979, Paul was a star of the Mirror, and he was there to interview Bobby Kennedy’s killer Sirhan Sirhan, the man who in 1968 probably changed the course of history because Kennedy was a shoe in to be the next US President.

Here was the militant Palestinian Arab confessing all to his Jewish interrogator.

This was Callan’s intro: ‘SIRHAN SIRHAN COILED AN IMAGINERY .22 CALIBRE REVOLVER AND POINTED IT AT MY HEAD. IT WAS A CHILLING MOMENT’

And then: ‘Sirhan’s FACE BROKE INTO A NERVOUS SMILE: He said: ‘THE TRUTH HAS NEVER SUNK IN THAT I ONCE HELD A GUN JUST LIKE THIS AND SQUEEZED THE TRIGGER AND KILLED ANOTHER HUMAN BEING. I AM DEEPLY REMORSEFUL AT KILLING ANOTHER HUMAN.’

PAUL WROTE: IT WAS DIFFICULT TO BELIEVE THAT THIS SMALL 5ft 1inch FREQUENTLY SMILING ARTICULATE PALESTINIAN COULD HVE CARRIED OUT ONE OF THE MOST VIOLENT ASSASSINATIONS OF THE 20th CENTURY’
SIRHAN WENT ON: ‘THE WHOLE PERIOD WAS STRANGE and DISJOINTED FOR ME. I REMEMBER BEING QUESTIONED AND THE DETECTIVES BEING VERY JOKEY, MAKING LITTLE QUIPS.

‘THE FIRST TIME I HEARD THE WORD MURDER,’ HE SAID, PAIN FLICKERING HIS MOBILE FACE, ‘I THOUGHT ‘OH BOY, MY GOD.’

BIZARRELY SIRHAN WENT ON TO SAY HE HAD BEEN A GREAT ADMIRER OF ROBERT KENNEDY. ‘I BELIEVED IN HIM BECAUSE HE FELT FOR PEOPLE LIKE ME.’

PAUL CONTINUED: SIRHAN READS VORACIOUSLY, IS CLEARY HIGHLY INTELLIGENT AND, WHEN NOT READING PREFERRED THE ENGLISH TV SHOWS LIKE UPASTIRS DOWNSTAIRS AND THE FORSYTE SAGA. AND HE TOLD ME, HE WAS THE ONLY INMATE ON THE CELL BLOCK WHO UNDERSTOOD MONTY PYTHON! AT THAT, HIS FACE BROKE IN GENUINE JOY.

PAUL WENT ON: YOU HAD TO KEEP REMINDING YOURSELF THAT THIS TINY MAN, WITH HIS MASSIVE FLOW OF WORDS, HAD KILLED ROBERT KENNEDY IN A WILD, UNREASONED FIT OF ARAB FURY.

‘We shook hands firmly, said we hoped to meet again, maybe in London for tea. And with that the only living man who killed a Kennedy was back to his cell for 16 hours, his books and his hopes for Palestine.

World Exclusive filed and rolling off the Mirror presses, Callan had one last task: He flew to New York and headed straight to Costello’s where he knew the cream of British hacks would be drinking. Beaming ear to ear he entered and shouted: My round chaps. And proceeded to tell them of his New Best Friend!

One last thing: When we last had lunch with Steffi and Paul, the subject of memorials came up. Isn’t it a shame that the subject of so much affection cannot be there to bask in the praise. Why not have a living memorial? Paul was taken with the idea.

So now I see this jolly chap in pinstripes and Turnbull and Asser bow tie heckling from the front pews. If only…

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance, fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of
dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.