Lord Lucan is dead: but looking for him was fun and kept me in suncream
How journalism works: looking for fugitive toff Lord Lucan was fun for Garth Gibbs, the Daily Mirror’s man on the tropical beat. Roy Greenslade writes:
Gibbs, who died in 2011, was renowned for his tenacious belief that he was only ever one step behind the missing peer. Not that he minded, however, because he spent a great deal of his employer’s money travelling the world while failing to get his man.
Reflecting on the matter after 30 years of fruitless journalistic endeavour, he explained that he had adopted as his motto an observation made by the canny Sunday Express editor John Junor: “Laddie, you don’t ever want to shoot the fox. Once the fox is dead there is nothing left to chase.”
Gibbs wrote: “With that in mind I regard not finding Lord Lucan as my most spectacular success in journalism. Of course, many of my colleagues have also been fairly successful in not finding Lord Lucan. But I have successfully not found him in more exotic spots than anybody else.”
Indeed, he had. He failed to locate him after three weeks in Cape Town, which was handy because Gibbs, a South African, was able to visit friends and relatives. Nor did he find him in Macau or Hong Kong or the Bahamas.
And that is how journalism works. They didn’t care about Sandra Rivett, the woman Lucan is accused of murdering. The story was all.
Posted: 8th, February 2016 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
