Tabloid scum. It’ll have been The Sun and The News Of The World undoubtedly. Pure evil. And they’re both still going of course* and still have their dirty tricks.
(NOTW relaunched as Sun On Sunday)
In his diaries, Alan Bennett reported how the tabloid press played similar tricks on his friend Russell Harty when Harty was dying of Hepatitis. Bribing hospital porters, pretending to be doctors and demanding notes. Even renting a flat opposite his hospital room and training a camera on his window.
My dad was a prominent virologist, and we’d occasionally get calls to the house from “acquaintances” (ie the press) when a celeb or politician was ill. We got well trained to politely tell them to sod off.
I can remember an episode of Casualty that featured a gas explosion in a shopping centre, a journalist wearing a white coat sneaked into Holby A&E and began asking the wounded about what happened in order to get a story. I wonder now if it was based on crap like that 🤬
Comments
Felt like there was some racism mixed in to their attitude too.
(NOTW relaunched as Sun On Sunday)
I remember it clearly too. It was so sad at the time.