In His Own Words

An extract from Lewis’s Grub Street Irregular.

One day, towards the end of 1996, Richard Ingrams asked me if I’d be interested in a very part-time job at The Oldie. Christmas intervened, and I started work at The Oldie at the beginning of the New Year.

The first-floor office was an L-shaped room, with a long row of metal-framed windows looking over Poland Street in Soho, and I was to share a desk with Richard. Since he lived in the Chilterns and came up every day on the train, he got to the office at about 11.30, leaving at 4.30 and strolling round the corner to Private Eye when not engaged on Oldie business.

Two things impressed me at once about life on the first floor: the noise, and the apparent chaos. The desks nearest to the door were occupied by two ebullient advertising men, Tony West and Dave Sturge. Tony was a large and heavily moustached ex-policeman, with a paunch straining the buttons of his immaculate white shirt; Dave was a dapper, more reflective figure, keen on American blue-and-white-striped poplin shirts and black slip-on shoes, referred to as ‘idlers’ back in the 1950s; both were extremely noisy, as was James Pembroke, the publisher, who lived in a state of permanent overdrive.

When not ringing up regular or potential advertisers – these included stair lift manufacturers, zimmer-frame merchants, massage parlours, retirement homes and makers of alternative footwear – Tony and Dave indulged in ferocious bouts of tribal chanting, repeating the same name or word over and over again in mock-African voices, and banging their desks in time with their fists.