I'm Not One to Gossip, But...

(Hardback)

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From an embarrassing encounter with the late Jim Callaghan (and his impressive member) in the gentlemen's toilet of the Savoy Hotel, and being fleeced in El Vino by a drunken Kingsley Amis, to being accused of killing actor Derek Nimmo, John's McEntee's enchanting autobiography is not just another Fleet Street memoir. John was the last 'William Hickey' gossip columnist on the Daily Express and was the author of the spikey 'Wicked Whispers' gossip column on the Daily Mail. As London Correspondent of the Irish Press he covered the IRA terror campaign while regularly enjoying illicit hooch distilled by the office wireman - a noble calling rendered extinct by technology. Along the way he had a front row seat witnessing the theatrical editorships of Eve Pollard and Rosie Boycott. John also vividly recalls a curious Irish childhood dominated by a delightfully eccentric mother, though this book is a far cry from Angela's Ashes! He also confesses to inadvertently shortening the life of the oldest man in Ireland but that's another story...

Author Bio

John McEntee works on the Ephraim Hardcastle column of the Daily Mail. Previously, he was briefly sighted (before and after lunch) over a ten-year period at the Daily Express, and was the last editor of that once great newspaper's long-running and famed William Hickey gossip column. Starting his career on The Anglo-Celt, a weekly provincial newspaper in his native Cavan in the Irish midlands, over the years he has worked for a number of nationals, including the Evening Standard, The Times, the Sunday Express and the Daily Express. McEntee also spent fifteen years as a regular Sky News newspaper reviewer and co-wrote, with Keith Waterhouse and others, the hugely successful Book of Useless Information. John's pastimes are talking, drinking and lighting candles in churches.