The Awful Truth

My adventures with Australia's most notorious tabloid

Adrian Tame

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Australia
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781760850500
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

Before Fake News, there was the real Fake News. There was Truth. Hailed as 'a fearless exposer of folly, vice and crime' when it first hit the streets in the 1890s, Truth was later condemned by a High Court Judge as 'a wretched little paper, reeking of filth, injurious to the health of house servants and young girls'. Much later it earned the nickname 'The Old Whore of La Trobe Street'. Truth was called many things but it was never boring. Adrian Tame knows that better than anyone as he worked for Truth for more than a decade as a reporter and news editor. In the years it was owned by the Murdoch family he worked alongside young Rupert as he cut his teeth on the shock horror scandals that graced the pages of Truth when it was selling a whopping 400, 000 copies a week. Funny, often outrageous and always thoroughly entertaining, The Awful Truth is a rollercoaster ride through an colourful era of newspapers and larger-than-life reporters that we will never see the like of again.

1 TOPLESS EDITOR IN PIG MASK HORROR

So this is the Truth?

I’m standing on the pavement outside a squat, grey, three-storey building in the centre of Melbourne, three days after my arrival in Australia from the UK. It’s late December 1973, and I have a job interview with the editor of Australia’s most scurrilous metropolitan newspaper of note… the Truth, or the Old Whore of La Trobe Street, as she’s widely known.

Out front of the Salvation Army hostel next door a number of homeless men are enjoying the mid-morning sunshine, reclining on benches, or sitting in a row on the pavement, backs against the wall, as they sip from bottles encased in crumpled brown paper bags. I climb the stone steps into the newspaper building and take a wheezy old elevator to the third floor. Here in the shabby foyer a receptionist directs me into the bustle and clutter of the Truth newsroom.

I am approached by the editorial secretary, Pearl the Girl, who is dressed in a faux leopard-skin trouser suit. I learn later her most important role is doling out Murdoch’s Magic Carpets – the taxi dockets that send reporters speeding to jobs or, more frequently, pubs across the city, courtesy of the paper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch.

‘Go right in,’ says Pearl, gesturing at a closed door next to her desk. ‘Mr Edwards has someone with him, but he said to send you in.’

Paul Edwards is the editor I’ve arranged to see, but as I open the door and enter his office, I’m unsure which one of the four men gathered around a desk is him. Two of them are naked to the waist, wearing pig masks, and are arm wrestling across the desk. The other two muscle in as close to the action as their bulky cameras will allow.

I should point out at this stage that my experience of newspapers and editors had so far been exclusively mainstream and conservative. I’d worked in the provinces in the UK, where the editor was a bland, faceless individual given to cardigans and shuffling acquiescence; a sports agency in Fleet Street, where they all aspired to become the jocks they wrote about; and the Vancouver Sun, a Canadian daily where the German editor’s most outrageous lifestyle choice was to wear red braces at weekends. Coming across any of them stripped to the waist would have been unsettling. Pig masks even more so.

The smaller of the two wrestlers tips his mask back from his face and glances across at me.

‘Adrian Tame? Have a seat, this won’t take long, and I’ll be right with you.’

I find a chair and try to appear unconcerned by the grunting and cursing of the arm wrestlers and, more alarmingly, the manic cavorting of the two photographers as they jostle and elbow one another for the best vantage point, while simultaneously bellowing their support for the boss.

Edwards breaks off from his exertions, tips the mask back once more and addresses one of the photographers.

‘Fuck off, Dog,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t need two of you. Spider’ll take care of it.’

The arm wrestle between Edwards and the other man, a hulking Victorian Football League player, quickly draws to a close after The Dog’s exit. Edwards explains that it is a promo for the paper’s sports pages, and introduces me courteously to both the footballer and Spider.

The Dog and Spider, I soon discover, are two of the paper’s senior photographers. Spider’s surname is Funnell, so it’s not difficult to work out how he came by his nickname. The Dog’s involves more research. The first fact I later learn about him is that he once handcuffed his wrist to the ankle of a stripper strutting her stuff on the bar of a Californian dive where he was drinking. Claimed he was making a citizen’s arrest on account of her lewd behaviour, and hurled the key to the handcuffs out the door of the bar.

His real name is Brian Fergusson and his canine nickname is another story altogether. Some years before my arrival a young copy boy arrived each morning with lunchtime sandwiches, lovingly wrapped in greaseproof paper by his mother. Each morning The Dog would remove the sandwiches from the boy’s possession and consume them in front of him. Eventually the boy complained to Spider:

‘Mr Funnell, it’s Mr Fergusson. He’s been stealing my sandwiches and eating them.’

‘Why’s he do that?’

‘Hungry, I suppose. But so am I.’

‘Yeah, OK. Here’s what you do. Come in half an hour early tomorrow morning, and tell your Mum to butter the bread, but not to put any filling in them.’

The copy boy did as he was told, and found Spider waiting for him in the dark room with a tin of Pal dog food, the contents of which he carefully spread between the slices of bread. The sandwiches were then re-wrapped in the grease-proof paper to await The Dog’s arrival. Spider swears The Dog ate every last crumb before instructing the copy boy: ‘Tell your Mum to get more of that liver pâté. It goes down a treat.’

So why wouldn’t they call him The Dog?

Meanwhile, back in Paul Edwards’ office, we are joined by David Dark, Edwards’ news editor. It is now I realise I’ve left my clippings and references – in fact any evidence of my previous experience of newspapers – back at the temporary accommodation where my wife, Ann, and two children are awaiting my return.

The only article of note I have is a letter written by Rupert Murdoch’s man in London.

Months earlier, when Ann and I had decided to come to Australia, I had written to The Herald, The Sun and The Age in Melbourne, to The Australian in Sydney, and of course, to Truth, seeking employment.

In late 1973 Australian newspapers, including Truth, were booming. All the papers except Truth wrote back saying they couldn’t possibly offer me a job on the other side of the world, and to come and see them when I arrived in Melbourne. Truth, surprisingly, had offered me the interview in London. I had duly presented myself at the appointed time, only to be informed by a secretary that the Truth representative was still at lunch. I sat waiting, growing increasingly annoyed, for the best part of 90 minutes.

When my man arrived it became instantly clear that his lunch had been a liquid one. He ushered me into his office, ordered black coffees for both of us, and began immediately to regale me with amazing tales of journalistic anarchy, drunkenness and general high jinx. The type of behaviour to which the good Dr Hunter S. Thompson aspired, and had, by then, christened gonzo journalism.

I still remember one deeply disturbing anecdote from the many included in that interview – I said barely a word throughout – involving a primitive rite practised in pubs by Sydney journalists. It was known as the Limp Fall, a title which said everything you needed to know about the sport. Practitioners would announce, when the mood came across them (generally something that happened while standing at the bar) that they were about to indulge. Conversation would end and space would be made for the self-elected faller to shuffle into. He would stand erect for as long as it took him to muster courage, and then slowly start to tilt his body backwards, sometimes from the knees, other times from the waist, but only rarely from the heels.

The challenge was to perform with dignity, and the acid test came, my informant assured me, at the precise mini-second when a bend becomes a fall. Preserving limpness is everything at this moment, and immense status is gained by those who defy the message their brain is frantically communicating to their limbs, and crash backwards to the ground. Those who sacrifice limpness for self-preservation, and jerk out an arresting leg or arm, are lost to all decent company.

That was the kind of local knowledge, most of it grossly inaccurate as it turned out, doled out to me that day in London during this one-sided conversation. It lasted for close to an hour, at the end of which Rupert’s man said: ‘Well, you’re in. I’ll recommend you for a B Grade.’

‘What’s a B Grade?’

It was, it turned out, significantly higher than the wage I had been earning in the provinces in the UK, Fleet Street, or Canada.

‘But you haven’t asked me any questions. You don’t know anything about me,’ I said, and instantly regretted it.

‘No, but you’re not a bad listener. I’ll write you a letter.’

And, surprisingly, he did, after minimal prompting. I delivered the letter to Paul Edwards, and whether as a result of its contents, or my studied nonchalance during the pig mask affair, he offered me a job, or at least a trial. He had brushed aside my lack of clippings, telling me: ‘Doesn’t matter, mate. Wouldn’t want to read your references, you probably wrote them yourself. Same with your clippings, except if they’re any good, someone else probably wrote ’em. Start tomorrow, that’s Tuesday, and you’ve got two weeks to show me what you can do. We’ll either make you permanent, or I’ll flick you.’

I learned later that both Edwards and Dark specialise in hideously dangerous behaviour with office cars. One contest in which they occasionally indulge after lengthy drinking sessions is seeing who can drive the furthest on deserted roads with their eyes closed. This has near-tragic consequences a few months after I join the paper. The car, inevitably, spills off the road into a ditch, causing Edwards severe internal injuries and a period in hospital.

At the time of the accident he’s too anaesthetised to realise the extent of the harm he’s done to himself, and is actually assisting Dark to heave the vehicle out of the ditch when help arrives. Before this happens it’s a regular occurrence, the morning after the twice weekly edition days, for Edwards and Dark to send scouting parties of copy boys off to the city in search of the office car. More than once it’s discovered, bearing recently acquired bruises, in a laneway, doors wide open, lights on, indicators flashing, and the radio blaring. Eventually those responsible for office cars decided Edwards and Dark should use Murdoch’s Magic Carpets like the rest of us.

The other character foible Edwards enjoys involves the meat mincer bolted onto the side of his desk. It’s one of those ancient, metal contraptions that everyone’s grandma once owned for mincing the cold roast lamb for shepherd’s pie. Only Edwards doesn’t use it for that. These are the days long before computers, and Truth reporters, as I soon discover, type their stories on separate sheets of copy paper before taking them into Edwards’ office and handing them to him for his perusal and verdict.

There were later editors, like Bob Gordon, who would balance the pile of paper unread in the palm of a hand, as if weighing it, and pronounce: ‘Feels good to me.’ Or: ‘Needs cutting. Take it back.’ But not Paul Edwards. His speciality with copy is far more twisted than that. On a purely random basis he occasionally takes the copy and wordlessly jams it into the maw of the mincer before starting to crank on the handle.

There’s never any explanation offered, nor even a hint of displeasure. It’s just something he does. It’s also the reason why most reporters keep carbon copies of their stories.

On my first day, the Tuesday, David Dark and a young reporter called John Grant graciously extended a lunchtime invitation to the pub. Within a few years David, a warm and highly likeable individual, had died from excessive indulgence, and John was to become a lifetime friend.

Had I known this was the way their lives would evolve, I might have been more circumspect with my behaviour at the pub. It was called the Duke of Kent, and was the lunchtime lair of one Bob Hawke, head of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (whose offices were just down the road), and prime minister in the making. John pointed out Hawke lurking somewhere in the restaurant section as we approached the bar, where David ordered three glasses of beer.

Less than a week in the country, I had never been in an Australian pub before and was shocked at the size of the glass David handed me. I was used to drinking pints of bitter in the UK, and this thimble-sized offering seemed bizarrely inadequate.

‘I usually drink pints,’ I ventured, totally unaware of the respective strengths of UK and Australian beer.

I missed the glance that doubtless passed between David and John.

‘You want a pint, do you?’ David said, then, gesturing at the barman: ‘Pour this man a pint.’

For the remainder of the hour we stayed at the pub John and David drank glasses, and I drank pints. Probably seven or eight of them. By the time we left – the subject of food had not been raised – I knew I was in deep trouble. I survived the 200-metre stroll back to the office, only just, but the lift was my undoing. By then both my companions had realised the precarious state I was in.

How could they not? All I knew was that the two of them had become four, the lift was travelling sideways instead of vertically, and the liquid contents of my stomach were rising inexorably to my throat. So David and John engaged me in the kind of conversation that demanded a response far beyond the capabilities of one whose vocal cords were drowning in something unthinkable. And the tide was rising.

By the time the lift doors opened on the Truth reception area my cheeks were puffed wide, my mouth full. I lurched across the newsroom, hand clutched to my face, and through the door to the anteroom of the men’s toilets.

I had time only to register relief that no one else was present, when the contents of my stomach erupted in one glorious projectile vomit across the row of wash basins and the mirrors above them. Jesus, was I mortified. First day, no, first morning, and I’ve drenched the joint in Pommy chunder. I took the only course open to me and raced through the anteroom to one of the toilet cubicles, sat down, locked the door and contemplated my future, or lack of it.

I learned later that, as I cowered in the cubicle, half the staff had been silently summoned by John to witness the spectacular outpourings of my gratitude over a friendly invitation for a glass or two. Had I but known it at the time, my conduct had instantly elevated me socially to the upper echelons of the reporting staff.

My foolish presumption was, that by cleaning up the revolting mess, I had miraculously escaped detection and instant dismissal.

Three days later, on the Thursday, Jack ‘Ace’ Ayling, the elder statesman of the newsroom, and a legend of Australian post-war journalism, approached me and threw a friendly arm around my shoulders.

‘How you settlin’, son?’ he asked.

‘Great, thanks Jack.’

‘That’s good. There’s a couple of things. It’s not MelBORN, it’s Melb’n. It sounds stupid when you say MelBORN on the phone.’

‘OK, I’ll remember, Melb’n. What was the other thing?’

His grip tightened around my shoulders: ‘We want you to slow down, you Pommy bastard. Subs reckon you’ve written four stories in two days. That’s more than most of us do in a fortnight. Sets a bad example. Slow the fuck down.’

‘But, Jack, listen. I’ve got one and a half weeks to prove myself, then they’ll make me permanent. Promise I’ll slow down when that happens, OK?’

‘You do what you have to, bu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Topless Editor in Pig Mask Horror
• Chapter 2: Folly, Vice & Crime
• Chapter 3: Undertaker Fury over Royal Slur
• Chapter 4: Tabloid Trash
• Chapter 5: Black Eye for Ol’ Blue Eyes
• Chapter 6: The Bridge of Death
• Chapter 7: Drugs, Murder & Rock ’n’ Roll
• Chapter 8: ‘That’s What We Pay You For’
• Chapter 9: Halcyon Daze
• Chapter 10: Things That Go Bump in the Night
• Chapter 11: Love Story
• Chapter 12: The Truth about ‘Truth’
• Chapter 13: Petrov Unmasked
• Chapter 14: Enter Thommo
• Chapter 15: Winging It with the Angels
• Chapter 16: Stormin’ Norman
• Chapter 17: The End of ‘Truth’
• Chapter 18: Is there Life after ‘Truth’?
• Epilogue: Bad News
• Photographs
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Copyright