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Manchester Confidential: Yes, Glinert is in Fact a Wind Up
Have always had a soft spot for Manchester Confidential. Since the convicted porn baron Mark Garner started this experiment we have been watching completely non-judgementally. 
Anyway, within moments of being set down by rally drivng cabbie Konnie Huq at Euston, I bumped into the object of MC's desires, a Mr Ed Glinert (right). Repeatedly authoring books. Factual, but always controversial. And his journalism often, in the past, just a tad sloppy if truth were told.
We did our best with the kid. At Mancunion, and at City Life. He's improved. It's not always been easy. But the kid's done good.
Ed's taken to writing these "factual Books" rather than investigative journalism of yore because basically he got really fed up with the idea that that stuff had to be true or balanced or real. Even in Private Eye.
Which does not apply to factual books. Apparently. Anything that winds up pompous and soon-to-be ex-Lib Dem councillors to apoplexy is alright by me.
POSTSCRIPT: Where's that review copy?
3 comments:
Chris, as ever I find this utterly obtuse but maybe Ed is just earning a living......he's also suffered desperate personal graumas so lay off.....
Ed's my mate. He will not mind this. All publicity is good publicity as they say. And winding the Lib Dems up - terrific.
Please don't over react Susan.
Ed here. Sloppy journalism? What's that supposed to mean? Have you had a look at the supposedly professionally written newspapers recently? The Express with their ludicrous Madeleine McCann stories on the front page every day? Those buggers are getting paid a lot more than me to write such guff. Or perhaps the Evening News where NCTJ trained journalists spend day after day rewriting press releases from Coronation Street?
None of us on Mancunion or City Life were trained. We all - even you, Chris - wrote sloppy stuff, but we improved the hard way.
After nearly ten years of it I got a job at Private Eye. There I learned a lot, so I hope I've improved a little. I was also very successful. Cost them only £20,000-odd in ten years, which was a lot less than any other journalist there.
The reason why I'm no longer involved in investigative journalism is not because I was fed up "with the idea that stuff had to be true or balanced or real" but because it was time to move on. Who wants to spend their whole life doing that sort of journalism?
My "factual" books still have to be "true and real". Read them and calculate the ratio between the true/real and the made-up/lies. I bet the former outweighs the latter a lot more than it does with most other publications.
And what do you mean "balanced"? Every medium has its own agenda; even the Guardian and Radio 4.
As for "Where's that review copy?" What I'm supposed to do? Download each page and send it over the Web? Have you phoned Penguin and asked for a copy?
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