The Diaries of a Fleet Street Fox (here)
Published Constable 2013.
(c) FleetStreetFox 2013
This book, a mix of fiction and semi-autobiographical, is a very easy read. It is unpretentious, interesting, and has a story (even though it breaches the author’s number one rule of “never become the story”). You can easily understand why, towards the end of the book on day 204,
“That’s it: I declare defeat. I am over, broken, empty, finished, done. I woke up this morning feeling as spent and faded as a tattered five-pound note that’s been passed around between too many grimy heads.”
Even the title is quite telling. “The Diaries of a Fleet Street Fox” – in other words, not THE Fleet Street Fox. That I think is because the author, despite now being a celebrity, has a very realistic perspective on celebrity culture.
I have followed @fleetstreetfox for a few years now on Twitter, and I remember when Lily Miles (as she was then on Facebook) posted that she was having a great time in Wimbledon. I did not realise Lily was a pseudonym before then, and to be honest it would not have made any difference.
This book is exceptionally well written. I took it as a compliment when ‘A Fleet Street Fox’ had called my blogpost about the death of my own father, when I was in a state of absolute shock, very moving. It is with great pleasure that I now have evidence to return the compliment. You don’t get a sense of the depth of sincerity from the tweets, especially on those famous ‘benders’ often on a Friday night starting at ‘Vodka O’Clock’. You get some sense from the articles in the Daily Mirror. But wow – you get a really polished narrative in this book.
This is for example the beginning of day 38:
“You don’t have to be casually racist to work in a newsroom, but it helps. It’s also useful if you can be sexist, ageist, heightist, fattist, classist, nationalist and, if you work in features, unable to see a picture of any female without spotting some cellulite and zipping off two thousand words on the subject.
It’s not that journalists start out that way; but after long years of contact with mankind at its most extreme and unemotional – death, lust, birth, Kerry Katona – you become so injured to the human condition, that mockery is inevitable. There’s something strangely fitting about the fact that all cabbies hate driving, doctors can’t stand illness, and journalists like people.”
There is no clue as to the identity of the ‘ex-husband’, but the description of a failing relationship will be familiar to very many people. That’s the odd thing about the whole approach. Whereas the identity of a Fleet Street Fox has not been known for ages, the descriptions always have been very authentic. They are uniquely insightful, in that there seems to be a clear schism between the author’s work and the author’s non-professional life. The narratives switches seamlessly between divorce and the newsroom. Having been in a police cell for drunk-and-disorderly, known to the Solicitors Regulation Authority before they allowed me permission to be a law student, I could relate to the description of being in a police cell.
The attitude to the law is very precise. Reference is made to the Press Complaints Commission, RIPA, and phone hacking, but it is remarkably helpful to get a perspective from a young journalist sandwiched (not literally) between an interesting boss (Bish), the law, the newspaper industry, and readers. This book says nothing defamatory under English law – whoever the lawyers are for this book, they certainly did a good job.
Having been interviewed personally, I found particularly amusing the description of a ‘typical interview':
“The ideal interview, from a journalist’s point of view, starts with flirtation, leads to seduction, and resuts in betrayal. In my case, it’s more usual to flirt, fall over and fuck it all up, which I suppose is why I don’t get asked to do the big chats everyday.”
That’s the thing. The book is incredibly funny, and the author is clearly more than someone who is famous-for-being-famous (but the book reminds the readership that people who are famous-for-being-famous are constrained by the narrow scope of the media anyway.) The attitudes are vey real, and far from superficial. Day 153 commences with, “Beneath the fun of being single again there lurks a darkness which I have no idea how to face: a complete lack of self-worth.” But this to be fair is a feeling shared by many people, particularly those who do contribute most to society.
The book is endearing in its use of language. I knew who ‘Dishface’ was (this is the customary description of the Prime Minister), but ‘Twatface’ is an onrunning theme of this book. I know what ‘Faceache’ is, in the sense that my personal sagas are well known there for my 3298 ‘friends’. Some of the lines are priceless, e.g. “.. the shame of it – be told by Twatface I was too drunk to talk. It was like being told the Queen telling someone they were too posh.” I particularly liked the ‘Cubbaroo!’ tale on day 153.
Day 213 starts with,
“Sincereity must surely be the most abused, cheaply treated and misunderstood virtue in the world: only those who don’t have it lay claim to it, insisting on what nice people they are while those that seek it seem only to find the disappointing opposite in everyone around them.”
This book has sincerity in abundance, however.
#goread!
