THE front men and women of ITN’s nightly news bulletins gathered on Monday night to celebrate the launch of Richard Lindley’s biography of the news service – and bemoan the tabloidisation of the TV news reporter.
Mr Lindley, who lives in Gospel Oak, invited to the Foreign Press Association’s home in Carlton House Terrace behind The Mall the BBC’s election night anchorman Peter Snow and his colleague Peter Sissons, Evening Standard editor Veronica Wadley with her husband Tom Bowers – who are neighbours of Mr Lindley – and Sir David Nicholas, who was a pioneer in news broadcasting.
They joined ITN stalwarts to toast what Mr Lindley described as the heyday of television news, an era he says disappeared when News At Ten was scrapped.
Mr Lindley, who worked for the service between 1965 and 1972 before joining Panorama and returned to ITN for another stint between 1992 and 1997, said he decided to leave and write the book when executives scrapped News At Ten.
He said: “It was a popular news programme. We regularly got 20 million viewers – more than Coronation Street. But when they said they wanted to shift it, I knew the programmes time was up.”
He still makes TV documentaries – “hacks never retire,” he says – and has turned his talents to working unpaid as chair for the St Pancras Almshouses, a charity that runs accommodation for the other-55s in King’s Cross. And, as his book lays out, he says nothing compares to the half hour bulletin. He said: “I don’t like rolling news. It’s a wonderful feeling to build up to a show and then they pull up the curtain. It’s a performance: we’d pour out of the building afterwards and go to the pub and shout at each other about what went right and what went wrong.”
He still watches ITN – but only on Channel Four. And his son Tom and daughter Jo joined him at the party – although his son admitted he had not read his father’s book.
Tom, 26, a student at King’s College and part time musician, said: “Dad wouldn’t give me a copy - not even for Christmas. He told me to buy it, so I checked the index to see what he has written about me.”