My working day would see me up at six and out by seven, and taking on a night shift meant that I finished at 3 a.m. twice a week. Most of my jobs were for the Daily Mail. I wasn’t on a shift rate and could pull in £65 a job, which was a lot of money then, especially when you do the maths in Aussie dollars (in those days you multiplied by three) – the most I did was twenty-nine jobs in one day! There was no hanging around; if I hadn’t been briefed the night before, I always rang in early to see if there were any loose jobs available. I knew that most photographers were quite lazy, so if I could get the first call in as the picture editor arrived, I would be away. Something usually always came up, though if I didn’t get a job for some reason, I would be out on the road looking for pictures. I craved that elusive exclusive.
Often when everyone else was in the pub, I’d be out looking for pictures. My average workday was eighteen hours. I enjoy getting up early, but it’s not so easy in England in the winter. I really missed the sun. Pushing the limits meant that I would always come home knackered. I didn’t have a large circle of friends in the early days and much of my socialising was work related. Despite that, I was never really lonely. People have always been drawn to me, and my home was always open to strangers.
Having arrived in the country with nothing, very quickly I had a lot. I was one of the first people to have a mobile phone – one of the enormous versions with a gigantic battery pack; I still remember the number. That was one of my brightest moves because it meant I was always ahead of the pack when the jobs got handed out. My first pay cheque was around £6000 and most of that was reinvested into gear. Whenever I got a new piece of kit, I was like a kid at Christmas.
Working like a dog during the week wore me out, so I would try and catch up on sleep at weekends. Fine in theory, but I was often offered extra shifts. Sometimes they were news shoots but frequently it was football. I’d never seen soccer before and was amazed by how fast it was. Though I was happy to take the money, the English winter was not for me and as soon as I could afford to give up the freezing Saturday arvos at the pitches, I did. On at least a couple of occasions I fell asleep on the bus on the way home and woke up in the depot feeling like Reg Varney of TV’s On the Buses: ‘Where are the clippies?’
Though I have always been a keen cook, I hardly went near the kitchen at Muswell Hill. My life was work and my work was life. I was very fit, but I was living off Kentucky Fried Chicken and burgers from the cafe round the corner – bloody great burgers, though. I didn’t want to let a minute go past without trying to make money. To this day, I won’t go near washing and ironing. It’s such a bad use of time. Thanks, Mum – but I would rather buy new than waste time.
My hectic schedule meant that I was getting plenty of exercise and my youth kept me going – adrenaline is an amazing thing. The excitement of chasing jobs and the thrill of competition meant that I felt strong.
Tracey and Tony – he grudgingly and only by extension – were really good to me and took me under their wing. A few weeks after my arrival, Tracey inveigled me an appointment with Andy Kyle, the picture editor of the Daily Mail. At stake was a ‘regular’ freelance position, still not a coveted staff position but one up the ladder from my truly hand-to-mouth role at News of the World. There was a real class system on Fleet Street. It ran on a sliding scale from staff photographer down to regular freelance to freelance to scum.
Tracey had got me the introduction; now I needed to seal the deal. I had to prove myself. Thankfully, my tenacity, enthusiasm and – let’s not forget – an excellent portfolio carried me through. I had done it. I was numb. This was a huge, momentous event in my life. I’d got my first job on Fleet Street! I called Mum from around the corner from The Mail’s Tudor Street offices, crying tears of happiness. At The Mail I would be working with photographers of incomparable quality.
When I first started at The Mail I was on around £60 per job. I was doing multiple jobs, treble shifts. I didn’t sleep – fuck that. My sales reports very quickly totalled at least £8000 a month. I was cleaning up. It wasn’t long until the accountants got wise and forced me onto a day rate – but not before a memo had been circulated asking why I was earning more than the editor. The memo appeared after I had received a monthly statement from accounts that came to more than £10 000. This was a lot of money, but I did have a huge backlog of expenses that had finally come through in one chunk – and those galibeas weren’t cheap!
I was certainly making the figures, but I needed wheels. The first car I purchased in London came through one of the drivers at the Daily Mail, Dave Bully. He was a real character, very charismatic. It was a Renault 5, a total rust bucket that cost me £150. My first experience driving in England was terrible. A very troubled guy threw a rock through my window as I proceeded up the Archway Road. I knew he was off his nut because he threw an ice-cream first.
‘This gig was like being put into a tumble-dryer on full speed’
Scary as that was, I knew I was going to have to be tough to make it in this city. The requirements of the job were that I had to be physically and mentally very strong. This gig was like being put into a tumble-dryer on full speed. I could handle it, but I came out a different man. Working regular freelance was all about speed and efficiency. You had to be the best to compete with the best.
Getting jobs through the paper’s diary wasn’t enough for me. I also used to go out and look for pictures on my own and submit them. I had a couple of great page-three shows in the early days – I was only doing what I’d been doing at The Addy, but it impressed the picture editors. Most of my peers were very lazy and just sat in the photographers’ room waiting for the phone to ring and for them to be spoon-fed something. When it did ring, they’d be too scared to pick it up as they hated working, but I’d be diving for it. Sometimes the other staff photographers told me to say I was the only available person, so I would get the job. Good.
To get a great picture, you needed thought and a bit of luck. Ray Collins of The Sun and I rode our luck when we were chasing shots of a youngster who had committed a very serious crime and got sent down at Slough Magistrates’ Court. The police smuggled the kid out of the court and into a van; we jumped into Ray’s car and gave chase. We hit the M40 and charged along after the van like the proverbial bats out of hell. I opened the sunroof and stood up through it, camera at the ready. Ray pulled the car in behind the police van and then, at my signal, yanked the wheel around and moved up next to the window. The guy turned around in surprise and I melted him. Unbeknown to us, though, we weren’t allowed to take shots of juvenile convicts, and I got hauled over the coals when I got back for endangering public life and bringing the profession into disrepute. Of course, I told the desk that the whole thing had been Ray’s idea.
My bull-in-a-china-shop approach may not have been subtle, but it got results. Chief reporter Dave Williams and I were sent abroad to cover a story involving a British admiral who been taken to the cleaners by his mistress. After the whole drama blew up he had been hospitalised in Spain. While Dave was back at the hotel trying to go through official channels, I waited till siesta time and just walked into the hospital, took the admiral’s picture and asked him a few questions. When I got back, Dave told me I was out of order and there were protocols to be observed. He was happy to take a copy of my notes, though. As we were operating abroad, we got away with it.
Despite the staff’s differing work ethics, we all loved a good drink-up together at the old Fleet Street bars – the Punch, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, Scribes or the Mucky Duck, which was over the road from The Mail. The odd opening times used to confuse me at first,