When Macca met Maggie
And I took it down in shorthand
As this lands in inboxes I will be at a Raymond Blanc cookery school – a gift from colleagues at The Times when I left last year. Maybe I’ll pick up some foodie tips which will help with the tour. Have been struggling with post-Japan jet lag this week, waking up at 4am or 5am and wide awake. All remedies appreciated.
In September 2002 I arrived in Hastings aged 19 with a suitcase of terrible floral shirts, a small CD collection and an expectation that within four months I would return from the seaside a “proper” journalist. I had finished my A levels the year before, took a year out, got some work experience on the Taunton Times, and then they offered me a trainee reporter job. I ummed and erred a bit but realised that after three years of a degree I would be right back here wanting exactly this. So I said no to Warwick, and yes to the Taunton Times.
And a few months later they packed me off to the Editorial Centre in Hastings, with other budding journalists from local, regional and national papers, where we were thrown into an intensive education in media law, local government shorthand and heavy drinking.
Every day started with shorthand, with our teacher Sylvia reading out passages of imagined newsworthy events (“ladies and gentleman, and Mr Chairman, welcome to our annual general meeting”) at varying speeds, which we were to capture in a mess of squiggles, swipes and dots, and then write out again long hand to prove how accurate we were.
All of our editors had told us “don’t come back unless you get your 100 words per minute”. We were gripped by it. Morning, noon and night. Watching TV became practice. Listening to the radio it was impossible not to imagine the shorthand outlines floating in the air. (We learned teeline, which at the time was the hip and groovy successor to the Pitmans which your mum learned.)
Like Olympic athletes, various techniques were developed to shave off those extra seconds, edging up speed and improving accuracy. At one point we convinced ourselves that an Irish coffee with a shot of Baileys just before the test definitely helped. I think the day I got my 100wpm it was a knock-off energy drink which did it. I could not have been happier.
And I could not have been more annoyed when others on the course not only went back to their papers without 100wpm, but went on to have successful careers in newspapers, and beyond. The young people these days don’t even bother. Shorthand was dropped as a mandatory subject the National Council for the Training of Journalists Diploma in 2016. They are too busy holding clip mics in their hands on TikTok, presumably.
Yet I use shorthand most days. When I am on air, if we are taking a speech or press conference live and need to recap after, I will often take down the quotes in shorthand. But the 100wpm feels like a long time ago.
Which brings me to Saturday morning when I found myself trying to take down the words of Paul McCartney recalling the day he met Margaret Thatcher in parliament, in a shorthand battle with Radio 2’s Sally Traffic.
I was on Dermot O’Leary’s show to talk about the tour, and he had spotted in my biog that I had boasted of the 100wpm. And Sally apparently has form for having broken into broadcasting by lying that she had shorthand, and developing her own version of “writing very quickly” when taking dictation for letters from broadcasting bosses.
So they played a clip from when Dermot interviewed McCartney, and off we went.
“I remember meeting Maggie Thatcher, and it was very weird, because it was like, she's this woman off the telly and this prime minister, and you can't believe she's actually going to manifest as a live person. You're going to, like, touch her, and she's going shcoom... be a telly or something. How is she interesting? Yeah, yeah. She was kind of bloke-ish. I'd been to the Houses of Parliament with my father in law, actually, he was American, and he admired our sort of set up over here. And so I'd gone as part of that, and somebody noticed me there, up in the strangers gallery. One of the MPs, I think it was David Steele, didn't name drop, and he sort of said, you know, would you like to meet Maggie? I said, Yeah, you know, why? Not sure. Anyway. So I went down and met her, and she immediately, said, Do you want to drink? It was kind of latest, you know, sort of 11 o'clock. I said, Yeah, what have you got? She said, Scotch. I said, Go on. Then.”
Now, it’s worth pointing that by my calculations he was going at about 150 words per minute. But I got most of it down. And when we tried to read it back on air simultaneously like the Australian twins, I seemed to have got most of it. It properly wouldn’t hold up cover court cases, but it was better than Sally. (“Let Sally win” my wife had texted me.)
It’s a funny skill to have. And does feel almost Victorian in its antiquatedness. But I’m glad I have it. Even if it’s only for party tricks on the radio.
Anyway, I had a great chat with Dermot covering politics, food and the mouse problem in parliament. He suggested getting a cat. But my views on cats are well-known.
Have I got ewes for you
Thirty years ago this week I appeared in print for the first time. I posted the clipping online and said this was when I got bitten by the bug. (A different bug to the one which meant all of the lambs were dead by the time the Bridgwater Mercury actually hit the newsstands.)
Then my uncle Andrew, of Halsey Cross, got in touch to say actually three of the lambs survived. Although presumably they’re not still with us today.
Any other business
Trump’s Century: Next week marks 100 days since Donald Trump returned to the White House as US president. Only 100 days. Time flies when you’re having fun. I am presenting a special five-part mini-series of Americast on the 100 Days, with Justin Webb, Sarah Smith, Marianna Spring and Anthony Zurcher. We cover the tarrific economy; who is welcome in Trump’s America (and who isn’t); the war on woke; Musk’s chainsaw for bureaucracy and redefining what the American presidency even means. You can listen from Monday at 1.45pm on Radio 4, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The One And Only: Each week I take a guest to PMQs and then at 2pm in 2PMQs they tell me what they thought of it. Previous guests include Griff Rhys Jones, Prue Leith, Kate Mosse, Richard Bacon, Tim Rice and Alan Titchmarsh. Well next week it is… Chesney Hawkes. Listen at 2pm on Wednesday on BBC Radio 5 Live.
Vote Early, Vote Often: Depending on where you are there might be local elections near you on Thursday, and depending on how you feel you might even vote in them. It’s a fascinating fixture, with the emergence of a five-way battle between Labour, Tories, Lib Dems, Greens and Reform, with independents in the mix in some places too. I went on Newscast for a primer with Chris Mason and Professor Jane Green, with some good context to try to make sense of the results on Friday and into the weekend. Listen here.
For two decades I have feasted on politics, stalking the corridors, pubs and restaurants of Westminster. Now I have all the ingredients to cook up a brand new show looking at parliament's feuding food factions and how politicians really are what they eat. From Keir Starmer’s fish and cheese, to Kemi Badenoch’s hatred of sandwiches, from Nigel Farage’s proper milk to Ed Davey’s fig rolls, everything (and everyone) is on the menu.
WARNING: Politics may contain nuts.
As seen on Have I Got News For You (BBC1), Newsnight (BBC 2) and Lorraine (ITV1).
30th June Norwich Playhouse
1st July Farnham Maltings
2nd July Bristol Redgrave Theatre
3rd July Lyme Regis Marine Theatre
4th July Oxford North Wall
7th July Canterbury Gulbenkian
8th July Newcastle The Stand
9th July Edinburgh The Stand
10th July Birmingham Glee Club
12th July Salford Lowry
13th July Cheltenham Town Hall
8 November Taunton Brewhouse
10 November London Cambridge Theatre
Well that will do for now. Do hit the like button if you liked it. If you didn’t like it, just keep it to yourself, alright?
Matt....how about Cambridge for next tour please? Still mourning your move from Times Radio
Your tour ignores Wales - typical London media 🤣🏴