By chance I was reading “Stick It Up Your Punter”, a book about the Sun – and one of the best ever written about British journalism – when the story broke about Neil Wallis’s arrest.
The book has several anecdotes about him:
1] At the Star he was billed as “The World’s No 1 Reporter“. “The hacks at the Sun had since translated that into the ‘No-one reporter‘”.
2] The only citation against him at the Press Council was for a story headed “This Child was told Christmas Joy is Evil”. The council rejected the complaint.
3] He was involved in the coverage of Elton John’s private life which led to a big frontpage apology to the singer and financial compensation. “By the time the Elton John saga was over he had collected so many writes that the ‘Wallis Collection‘ had become a stock office joke.”
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey