The editors in my life (9)

With the collapse of The Star newspaper in London just before I started working there I seized my opportunity to continue as sleeve-note editor  for Philips in Holland a while longer, even though I had begun to tire of the job. But my eyes remained fixed on Fleet Street, and I was tempted in particular by an offer from Charles Fenby, director of the Westminster Press, whose chain of local newspapers included an opening that might suit me. We met a few times,and got on, but what he was offering meant living in Oxford as chief reporter of the Oxford Mail. Interesting though that might have proved, I turned it down and we amicably parted with the agreement that if anything more suitable turned up he would let me know. It never did.

Next came the chance to work as a sub-editor in the BBC’s newsroom at Broadcasting House. This, though hardly my scene, looked more promising. I was interviewed by a panel led by Geoffrey Hollingsworth, the newsroom’s deputy head - “what do you think of the new Forth Road Bridge?” I was asked -  and got the job.

Meanwhile, over in Holland, Philips had begun advertising for a new sleeve-note editor. My idea. which needed my boss Wim Zalsman’s endorsement, was that each candidate should be asked  to write a sleeve-note on the subject of a popular classic such as Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. My task would be to assess the results in terms of accuracy, liveliness, and originality. Zalsman agreed and we went ahead, even though I was aware, even then, of the risks involved in having a hand in the appointment of your own successor. Once a short list of possibilities had been selected from the hundreds of people - all men - who had applied for the job, Zalsman and I would fly to London to interview them.

At this repetition of my own interview nearly three years earlier, our choice was Bernard Jacobson, a young Oxford graduate who followed in my footsteps for two years before becoming a music critic in the United States, where he still lives. Our choice agreed upon, Zalsman  jovially dragged me to the cartoons cinema at Piccadilly Circus to see the latest Walt Disney before flying back to Holland to arrange my sleeve-note editor’s farewell, culminating in a lethal game of Dutch shove-halfpenny in the basement of his house.
6 August 2014