It's very easy to get distracted when I'm researching and that has been hammered home this week thanks to the
days I have spent re-reading old correspondence and just stumbling over little bits of information that has nothing to do with what I'm meant to be writing about—namely the
Air Ace Picture Library.
Apart from a lot of gossip that I can for the most part ignore (some is too good not to repeat, so you'll be getting to hear some of it when the book is out), there's the occasional fact chucked in as an aside that I just have to go and look into.
For instance, I knew that best-selling author Minette Walters used to write romance novelettes when she worked at Fleetway prior to writing her first crime novel (
The Ice Storm, 1992), but a little further digging proved that she'd worked at the firm between 1972 and 1977. She wrote her first romantic story in, I believe, 1973 as a way to show her contributors at
Woman's Weekly Library how to combine romance, character, plot and suspense to make a first-rate 30,000-word romance. Writing hospital romances, she went on to pen 35 novelettes under about ten different pen-names, as well as short stories and serials. I don't think the pen-names have ever been revealed.
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| Lane Meddick |
Something else I didn't know: Julian Clary used to work on the Underground as a guard on the District Line, and my correspondent recalls hearing him announce over the tannoy, "Oh,
do mind the doors!"
Here's another: the actor Lane Meddick was actually Leonard John Meddick, a wartime Spitfire pilot who became an actor and sometimes writer for the War libraries. I managed to get this screen-grab of him in an uncredited role in
Carrington V.C. (a.k.a.
Court Martial in the US, 1954).
When the DIY magazine
Easy: The His and Hers Do-It-Yourself Weekly was merged with another DIY mag,
Homemaker in 1969, there was an idea at IPC to replace it with a boys' magazine containing a mix of stories, sport and some simple DIY ideas called
Scope. Four of the staff from
Easy were put on it, including deputy editor
Denis Gray (who apparently later emigrated to New Zealand), two sub-editor, Susan and a guy whose name I don't know, and art editor Laurie Shrimpton.
The idea got as far as a dummy issue being printed, but after some consideration by management, the idea was scrapped and
Scope never saw the light of day.
Last one for now: I'd heard that a young girl who worked at Fleetway was murdered and it took a while to track down the story, which I was sure had grown more lurid in the retelling. Not the case... it was as tragic as rumoured.
"One girl used to come from Old Fleetway across the bridge to outside our War Pic rooms to get tea," recalled Roy McAdorey in 2006. "One morning on the underground on my way in to work, I read a news item about a “glamorous red-head” getting killed in a lover’s tiff. Got to work to discover it was this girl who used to get tea from Florrie’s trolley."
The girl was Carol Ann Lester-Smith and the
Evening News broke the story on 16 November 1964 under the headline "Girl, 18, Killed Then CID Keep Vigil" with a sub-heading "Friend And Father Hurt In Stabbing".
Detectives were waiting by the bedsides of two stabbed men, hoping to interview them about the death the previous night of 18-year-old Carol Lester-Smith outside her home in Kingsley Road, Wimbledon, the paper reported. The two men were 52-year-old Sidney Lester-Smith, the girl's father, and a friend, Godfrey Hodgett, a week shy of his 21st birthday. "Red-haired Carol started work with a magazine house a few months ago and hoped to make a career in journalism," said the paper. The next day, the
Daily Mirror claimed that she "had worked in London for two years as a £10-a-week editorial assistant with Fleetway Publications."
The two hospitalised men survived, but by then it was clear to detectives that one was not a victim. Geoffrey Hodgetts was taken from hospital on November 27th and appeared at a special court at Wimbledon where he was charged with murder.
The court case took place in December, revealing more details. Hodgetts, a Post Office engineer, had been dating Carol, but she—two years younger—thought she was too young to marry or tie herself to an engagement. Hodgetts, besotted with Carol, had, a few days before, threatened to kill himself; as she tidied her desk ahead of the weekend, she had ominously remarked that "If you don't see me on Monday, you'll know I'm dead", according to the
Mirror.
On Sunday, shortly before 10 pm, her father opened the front door and welcomed Hodgetts in, only for Hodgetts to stab him with a double-edged knife. He tried to defend himself with a broom, and the noise attracted Carol from upstairs. Running down the stairs, she attempted to grab Hodgetts from behind. Her father dropped the broom and also struggled with Hodgetts.
Carol ran out of the house to get help, and Hodgetts, leaving her father lying on the floor, chased her down and attacked her. When her father reached the street, he saw Carol slumped against the door of a house opposite, Hodgetts still striking at her with the knife.
Hodgetts then stood up, held the knife against his stomach, and ran against a wall, twice before collapsing.
Pleading not guilty to murder, he instead pleaded guilty with diminished responsibility to manslaughter and was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Old Bailey in January 1965.
With a company as huge as Fleetway Publications in the Sixties there are bound to be a enough stories over the years to fill a tabloid.
So, to the news... and it's good. The contract for
Mytek the Mighty volumes 1 and 2 has been signed and I can now get going with the last few steps towards getting it into the hands of readers. Expect more news over the next couple of weeks.
I spent much of yesterday trying to match images to issue numbers as I have a large number of photos of original artwork from the war libraries that have yet to be matched with an issue number. I managed to track down quite a few yesterday, but there are still many more to go. Wish me luck!
