Donald Trelford on The Press

Editors' chequebooks come out for Max Clifford's juicy memoirs

The book, written with Angela Levin, until recently a star Daily Mail feature writer, is due out from Virgin in September. The Mail connection might seem to make Paul Dacre the favourite for securing the serial rights - he is certainly known to be eager to get them - though Max will have to consider his future relations with all the newspaper editors. Cash may have to be the decider if he is to avoid annoying so many of his regular clients.

Lawyers are now poring over every page, for Max will not only talk about the stories he helped to publish but those he managed to keep out of the papers in the interests of his clients. Politicians will be among those eager to seize an early copy and check to see if their name is in the index.

IN THESE pages last week Charles Wilson, the new chairman of judges for the British Press Awards, outlined the plans prepared by Matthew Freud, the joint backer with Piers Morgan of Press Gazette, to reform the event, introducing "academy" voting as with the Baftas, Pulitzer-type awards for excellence, a hall of fame for journalists, etc.

Something clearly had to be done to revamp the awards to meet the editors' concerns, and to me, as the outgoing chairman for the past three years, these ideas seem to go a long way to meet the bill. My only reservation is the implied assumption that the previous awards lacked "total fairness and integrity".

The main objection, in fact, was the alcohol-fuelled boorishness that sometimes marred the evening - to which Morgan himself has been known to make a contribution. And the miscreants, it has to be said, were not the judges or the organisers, but the staff of the editors themselves.

ONE OF the first names in the proposed hall of fame should be Wally Fawkes (alias Trog), who sadly has been forced to retire from the drawing board because of failing eyesight.

Wally, who is equally famous as a jazz clarinetist, used to play video tapes of cricket matches while he was drawing his cartoons. He amused the audience when, at the age of 80, he received his recent award as Cartoonist of the Year by saying: "I was warned when I started out not to expect to be an overnight success. But I didn't think it would take this long."

I had to censor a Trog cartoon only once in my time at The Observer. It was when Robert Maxwell took a planeful of food to Africa as a publicity stunt for the Mirror. Wally showed two Africans standing in the bush as Maxwell's huge frame emerged at the top of the aircraft steps. One was saying to the other: "I wish I could eat him". Not politically correct, I decided, to portray Africans as cannibals.

When Trog moved to the Sunday Telegraph after I left The Observer, I wasn't sure that his liberal-leftish attitudes would transfer to a rightist context. But it worked - chiefly, I believe, because he was generally lampooning a Labour government.

THE OBITUARIES of Kenneth Harris, the Observer writer who died recently aged 85, made much of the fact that he saved the paper from Rupert Murdoch's clutches in 1976 by introducing the American oil company, Atlantic Richfield. What wasn't brought out was the fact that he was also responsible for the paper being sold on to Lonrho five years later.

By this time he had become so close to the Atlantic Richfield chairman, Robert O Anderson, that he wanted Harris to chair the paper's board meetings while he was away in Los Angeles. This idea horrified the other directors, who included the formidable Lord Goodman. When Harris asked Goodman for his support, the great man (in every sense, since he was over 20 stone in weight), replied: "We are as others see us. Their perception of us derives from the way we have lived our lives. I know, for example, that I would make a splendid prima ballerina, but the world will never see me in that light. In the same way, Kenneth, the world will not accept you as chairman of The Observer."

When the board formally vetoed the proposal, Anderson sold the paper the same day, over lunch at Claridge's, to Tiny Rowland (Lord Rothermere having failed to return his first call).

ONE SIDE EFFECT of 7/7 was that the Press Ball had to be cancelled. This was a bad blow for the London Press Club, who had revived it after many years' absence, for the Newspaper Press Fund, the chief beneficiaries, and for Philippa Kennedy, in particular, who had worked tirelessly to make it a success.

The good news is that the ball has now been rescheduled for 28 September at the Natural History Museum. (Enquiries about tickets, tables or sponsorship to Entire Affair on 020-8429 7530 or lpc@entireaffair.com).

JUDGING BY a lunch I had in Paris the other day with the publisher of the International Herald Tribune, competition is hotting up in the European market. In fact, it is becoming a battle between the New York Times, which now owns the Tribune, and its former Trib partner, the Washington Post, which has formed an alliance with its deadly rival, the Wall Street Journal Europe. The WSJ is going tabloid in the autumn, while the Trib is planning to introduce a weekend magazine.

Stephen Glover is away