Derek Jameson: From slums to celebrity via Reuters, 'the best school of all'

Derek Jameson, teenage messenger boy turned Fleet Street editor and celebrity broadcaster satirised by Private Eye as “Sid Yobbo” for his rasping Cockney accent and acerbic irreverence, has been recounting how he began a lifetime in journalism at Reuters.

Born into a life of poverty and raised in a home for waifs and strays in London’s East End, at the age of nine he was evacuated from the slums to the countryside to escape the perils of the city during World War II.

“I wanted to be a journalist after winning a writing competition, so, aged 14, I returned to wartime London, hopped on a bus and got off in Fleet Street,” Jameson said.

“I walked into Reuters news agency and started as a messenger boy making teas and running around Fleet Street dodging bombs and air rockets. I progressed to junior reporter before leaving to become editor at The London American, a newspaper for Americans in Britain.”

In fact, Jameson became personal messenger to the editor, Walton “Tony” Cole, junior reporter “in the best school of all”, and before leaving Reuters in 1959 had capped his 16 years with the company as an editorial executive.

In the first of two volumes of autobiography he recalled how Reuters commercial services had to compete with general news for access to the company’s communications network. “‘Sorry, cock,’ we would say, ‘they’ve just formed their 29th postwar government in Italy. No room for your crap.’”

Now 79, Jameson says he is in good health apart from an irregular heartbeat and a mobility problem. “The angels have always looked after me and I think they still do today,” he told the Daily Express, one of four UK national newspapers he once edited (the others were the Daily Mirror, Daily Star and News of the World).

Jameson’s third book, Siobhan’s Miracle co-authored with his third wife Ellen, was published in 2008. The others were two volumes of autobiography - Touched by Angels (1988) and Last of the Hot Metal Men: From Fleet Street to Showbiz (1990).

PHOTO: Derek Jameson during his Reuters years. ■