This article is more than 9 years old

This article is more than 9 years old

There is a British tradition that, at the helm of every best-selling newspaper, there must be a megalomaniac.

In the days when the Daily Mirror reigned supreme, the 1950s and 60s, there were two of them - Cecil King and Hugh Cudlipp.

But, compared to chairman King, editorial director Cudlipp was grounded and sensible. It was King who spectacularly went off the rails.

In 1968, King - convinced he was "a man of destiny" - tried to effect a bizarre coup to oust the then prime minister, Harold Wilson.

By the standards of political coups, it was comically ham-fisted. It didn't get beyond one meeting and a front page leading article written by King himself, headlined "Enough is enough". It made few waves even at the time.

Given the current dramas about the relationship between another powerful media tycoon and successive governments it's certainly an episode worth the re-telling - and BBC documentary-maker Adam Curtis is doing just that.

And he is going about it in an unusual way, by posting a (very) rough cut of his film, The downfall of a press baron, online.

On his BBC-hosted blog he explains that King, convinced Britain was heading for disaster, thought he could use the Daily Mirror to bring down the Labour government.

As Revel Barker points out today on the gentlemenranters site, King tried to recruit some of the great and good, and not-so-good, to join an alternative cabinet led, naturally, by King himself.

They included bank of England chairman Lord Cromer, coal board chairman Lord Robens, Cunard chairman Sir Basil Smallpeice, the government's chief scientific adviser Solly Zuckerman, Lord Mountbatten and Tony Benn, who leaked the details of the nonsensical plot to The Guardian.

At around the same period, BBC producers happened to be making films about Fleet Street newspapers, and Curtis has drawn on that material for his film (along with some from ITN).

He writes: "I have no idea who most of the journalists are who appear - but I'd love to find out."

Well, that's easy enough. Barker has pointed out several former Mirror staff and I can identify a couple more. They include Tony Miles (who became editor in 1971), crime reporter Tom Tullett (with a wonderful anecdote about a man confessing to a murder), fashion editor Felicity Green (styling a model for a photo shoot), and night editor Geoff Pinnington (later editor of The People).

Other future editors are glimpsed too, such as Peter Thompson (Sunday Mirror), Richard Stott (Daily Mirror, People and Today), Mike Molloy (Daily Mirror) and Bill Hagerty (The People, now British Journalism Review editor).

There were glimpses too of news editor Dan Ferrari, picture editor Len Greener, deputy night editor Mike Taylor (later the Mirror's northern editor), David Lamb (carrying tea for fellow subs), Ted Graham, Roy Pittila, Fergus Linnane (in his trademark dark glasses), Geoffrey Ross and Chris Evendon.

There is also footage taken in the Daily Express office, with David English, and a short, rather misplaced, piece of film featuring the Sheffield Star.

One sequence shows a Sun page 3 photographer explaining his art. I can't be sure who, but it could just be a youthful John Paul. (But Alastair Buchan thinks, probably rightly, that it is Brian Aris). He refers to the naked model only as Carol. Any clues? Carol Needham maybe?

The pen-ultimate clip shows James Cameron in a pub puncturing the Fleet Street myth. Great stuff!

Extra! Extra! John Dale (ex-Daily Mail, recently departed editor of Take A Break) identifies two more faces on what he calls "incredible archive film."

They are Peter Hardy, the Daily Express reporter questioning the Miss World spokesman, and Jim Thurman is the foreign desk man talking to David English.

And a second look at the Mirror sections reveals Roly Watkins. Barker, incidentally, thinks Paddy O'Gara and John Grewcock may be there (though I couldn't see them).

Source: Adam Curtis blog. Scroll to bottom to view film.