Snapper Henry Is Top of the Bill

Wee Bill Henry is polishing up his lens for a few last pics at the Edinburgh Evening News.

Snapper Bill has handed in his ticket after almost 19 years at North Bridge and Holyrood Road and finishes up on Friday.(27 Feb)

I had the pleasure of working with Bill at the News and it was a delight - and often a relief - when you heard Bill had been assigned to your story and we were heading out together on a job.

Small in stature but always a big man on the job, Bill was the ideal partner for difficult snatches and stake outs, and you could always rely on him to back you up, especially when the going got rough.

I remember one particular snatch of a pervy teacher in a tenement in Stockbridge. With Bill partially hidden by my generously proportioned trenchcoat (trust me, it was trendy at the time)the poor sod hardly had the time to get the sleep out of his eyes when up pops Bill and blasts him - job done, don't think he knew what had hit him.

Before joining the News in 1990 Bill was a photographer with Leyland Trucks, looking after their PR needs, and moved in to newspapers after a phone call to then news editor Douglas Smith (now Scotsman subs). Two days later he got his first shift and has never, well hardly, looked back.

For the first few years he was the News' West Lothian photographer when there was a separate WL edition, working at various times alongside Scott Douglas, Jacqui Brown, Alison Dewar and Richard Neville (now deputy editor of the P&J).

With impending changes at Holyrood Road and the expected amalgamation of three picture desks Bill reckoned it was time to head for the hills, or at least Cumbernauld: "I thought it was time to bow out. Sometimes it has felt like an eternity but most of the time the years just went zoom. I'm no martyr but if my going saves the job of someone else who has a younger family, then great."

Pretty typical of the wee man.

Bill is having a leaving bash on Friday close to the office - former colleagues can get more details by giving him a call. Gutted I won't make it.

Scotsman's Rab McNeil On Cronin Watch

For one day only I am pleased to welcome a guest blogger. Step forward Rab McNeil, Scotsman columnist and sketch writer, who contacted me following my recent post on sex offender John Cronin. Rab was himself on Cronin Watch on several occasions and I thought his email comments should be shared. So, with his kind permission:

"I remember being at Haddington Sheriff Court for him on one occasion, too. Afterwards, it was like one of those normally unrealistic Hollywood scenes you see, with reporters all barking questions at the same time.

He didn't answer any. Not even: "What's your favourite colour, ya muppet?" Or: "What do you think of the Barnett Formula?" Imagine if he'd stopped in his wee fat tracks and answered the latter: "Now, that's an interesting question. You're from the Local Government Chronicle, right? I recognise the picture by-line. Well, when you consider the spend ratio per capita, you find the north of England doing very poorly, while the quotient for the south-east is really rather generous. However, apart from that, I have a very small knob. A bit like an IKEA pencil. Look, I'll show you."

I remember, too, being part of the mob that gathered at Edinburgh Airport when he returned from Ireland(?). Except, they must have sneaked him in or put him on an earlier flight. Anyway, to paraphrase Churchill on Atlee arriving somewhere: "The plane pulled up and nobody got out."
Well, no Cronins at any rate. The poor folk off the Dublin(?)flight looked bemused at the sight of the hack-pack. We said: "We were rather hoping there would be a pervert on the plane."
Passenger: "Well, I like dressing up as a moustachioed nun while my wife reads to me from the collected speeches of Joachim von Ribbentrop, if that's any good to you. The pressure's been building up in me. I'm happy to talk."

Later that day, a bunch of us from the Hootsmon were stationed at various points around the city and beyond. It was in the days when the paper was going through a tabloidy phase (before it went that shape), I think under the redoubtable Martin Clarke. I had to stand outside a social work office in, I think, Nicolson Square.

The trendy liberals inside weren't best pleased. Bizarrely, when I tried to pretend I'd gone away, and stood somewhere off, there was a bloke came out that looked a wee bit like him. I thought it couldn't be, but then again he was a master of disguise, and that social workie anorak looked awfully cliched. I had also to consider that, if I were to let him slip through the net, Martin would punch me very hard in the face when I got back to the office.

So, I decided there was nothing to lose – if it wasn't him, it wasn't him – and, anyway, I was bored off my tits. So I ran after this bloke, shouting: "Mr Cronin! Mr Cronin!" The individual, a real social worker as it turned out, felt somewhat inclined to question my parentage, and acted on that inclination.

Back at Haddington Sheriff Court, I sat next to Louise Batchelor in the press box. She couldn't have been an environment corr then, unless she was after the lesser spotted pervert. The bugger was certainly difficult to spot at times."



Rab McNeil

Cronin Cuts Loose

Sex beast John Cronin is on the loose again. Seems this is his reason for being in life - when he is not conning old priests. For a time I had a direct line in to Cronin (although he didn't know that) and it led to many a splash as well as a High Court appearance for contempt.

I love the tale of when Cronin was lifted for robbing St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh years back. He was questioned at length but refused to stray from his line that he was a bona fide Irish priest and there had been some kind of mix up. His accent, mannerisms, the whole shooting match was totally convincing, which impressed the seasoned cops grilling him but the interview was going nowhere.

So the DS called a halt and gave Cronin the ultimatum: "We're going to give you five minutes and come back in. If you persist with this priest shit we are going to kick **** out of you." He sang like a choirboy.

But if Cronin is rampaging through the country - or more likely in Ireland - it must mean it's time for Scottish Television to roll out that old footage of me and others in the hack pack chasing down the fruitcake as he legged it from Haddington Sheriff Court.

So for a laugh, here is the clip (timed 2.52). Others giving chase are Simon Houston, Stevie Smith (now reinvented as a lawyer) Nick Thorpe and the late Geoff Brown.

Valentine Present Gives The Horne

Did you have an orgasmic Valentine's Day? I did – I got a sausage surprise. And even better, it was repeated on Sunday morning. My other half knows how to get straight to a man’s heart.

Her present to me was a batch of stunning sausages made by her IT guru Simon Kane. As well as being expert in all things byte related, Simon has perfected the recipe for breakfast bites.

Simon has a smallholding in rural Aberdeenshire and breeds his own porkers, raises hens and grows his own veg. I was promised these would be the best sausages I would ever taste and with a couple fresh eggs, (include a double yoker, but not including the hard boiled egg meant for one of Simon’s kids and which had got mixed in with ours) they lived up to the billing. What could possibly top this Valentine dish? A small pot of broon sauce made from the apples and plums collected from Simon’s parent’s garden. Mmmmmmmmm. Knee-tremblingly good and I just hope I don’t have to wait another year for a repeat performance.

Sticking with orgasms, I reckon there was a quite a few being achieved round about me on Friday night when we took our seats at the Witches of Eastwick at His Maj’s in Aberdeen.
Well, some strange phenomenon was taking place when Marti Pellow took to the stage as the lead Darryl van Horne.

Pellow was on top form and best bits for me were his Jack Nicholsonesque one liners such as (in reply to one of his New England conquests asking what he had ever done for her): “Let me give you a clue ladyee – it comes in multiples.”

With 98 per cent of the audience female I must have been half listening when I said yes, I would like to go to see this show. And casting my eye around the bar pre-performance it seemed most of the covens in Aberdeen had decided to make this occasion their annual night out. As for the wolf whistles from the stalls – they would put a building site to shame.

Scotty Puts PRs In A Tights Spot

Shock, horror. It seems former colleague Scott Douglas has gone and put the Scottish PR world in to such a spin that they might ladder their shiny tights.

Scotty has stuck in a Freedom of Information request to find out the nitty gritty details of recent PR tenders by firms who will be working on behalf of the Scottish Government.

You can take the boy out of journalism but . . .

Looking forward to further revelatons on his blog when he gets the lowdown back from the FOI request. No doubt some of them will be embarrassed when it's made public how much dosh they are creaming out of the tax payer.

Nothing To See Here - Move Along Now

Latest media horseshit from Lothian and Borders cops - check out Police Box blog http://police-box.blogspot.com/

Record Gives Fettes Press Office The Boot

My old colleague Steve Smith would have been happy with his Daily Record splash on Thursday

Smithy, aka Big Sheep(he's 6ft plus and from Aberdeen, original or what?)revealed how Lothian and Borders traffic cops cocked up big time when they found missing nurse Magdeline Makola who had been missing for 11 days.

Traffic officers from the Edinburgh force were dispatched to Airdrie where they discovered the woman tied up in the boot of a Vauxhall Astra.
But, according to Smithy's sources, the cops would not let paramedics treat the clearly distressed victim until CID arrived on the scene. It's hard to believe but the poor woman was left lying in the boot for some 20 more minutes until a DS with some common sense turned up and summoned the medics before she was whisked to hospital.

The story was bad enough for the Edinburgh force and no doubt their colleagues in Strathclyde, where the car and victim was discovered, were pissing themselves at the sheer incompetence of their east coast neighbours.

But I was curious as to why there was no comment from L and B or defence of their officers included in the story.

The Daily Record are more meticulous than most newspapers when it comes to bottoming out a story so I knew is was not a case of sloppy journalism, so why no input from the cops on such a serious matter?

It turns out the Record, like others in the media, no longer believe a word they are told by the Fettes press office, so they simply didn't bother contacting them.

It's a sad state of affairs but not entirely surprising. In the past year this media office, under the guidance of Dep Chief Constable Tom Halpin, has been transformed from one of the most able and respected in Scotland to a second rate operation which is tolerated rather than respected by the press.

The following day, the Fettes amateurs issued a statement to the media trying to play down the story but which added nothing, and in fact only underlined that the Record's tale was on the money.

The statement read: "Following the article on the front page of today's Daily Record, Lothian and Borders Police is issuing the following response:
A police spokeswoman said: "Lothian and Borders Police can confirm that Road Policing Officers discovered a woman in a vehicle in Meadowside Place, Airdrie on Boxing Day (December 26 2008). In this instance, the primary issue was the victim's care, not protection of a potential crime scene. Due to the level of her discomfort, it was considered absolutely essential that the attending paramedic and ambulance crew determined whether she was fit to be moved. Her health was the immediate priority."

Naturally, the rest of the media ignored this statement and I am sure the Record would have too if they did not have a follow up story on Magdeline's father "demanding answers on cop ordeal" and bunged in a few pars at the foot of Kevan Christie's story.

This £250,000 a year press office - they really earn their money, don't they?