MEDIA STUDIES
Riddle of newspapers lost on way to Northants
STEPHEN GLOVER
I have no brief for Mr Merchant, who looks rather grisly, but this seemed to me cruel and underhand. So I was naturally interested by allegations that during Ms Rowe's editorship of the People, another MGN newspaper, there may have been some questionable behaviour. It is true that Ms Rowe is no longer with us, but she may be back, and meanwhile her old paper was last Sunday making suspect allegations (which have been vigorously denied) that the writer Arthur C. Clarke has had sex with under-age boys.
A lady called Ann Morgan, who used to be managing director of Readers Response, a now defunct promotions com- pany which was based in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, has shown me three invoices. I have them here. One, dated 15 July 1994, is for 50,024 copies of the People. Another dated 5 July 1994 is for the same number of copies. A third, dated 27 May 1994, is for 30,000 copies of the People. In each case the invoice is made out to Read- ers Response Ltd by MGN and the copies are charged at 10 pence each. 'Sampling exercise — to be sent out via database to non-People readers' was written on two of them.
The only problem is that, according to Ann Morgan, she never received a single copy of the People. 'We never took any delivery of any newspapers at this time or at any other time in our working relation- ship with Mirror Group Newspapers,' she writes in a letter in my possession. She adds: 'Apparently the figures in the weeks prior to the invoices were dropping.' Could the whole exercise have been a ruse to boost the circulation of the People when its sales were flagging? Might these have been phantom sales included in the People's cir- culation figures for May and July 1994? Most newspapers and magazines sell copies in bulk at a discount. This is a wholly accepted practice. But what is alleged to have taken place at the People would have been quite different.
The editor of the People at this time was Bridget Rowe. I telephoned Ms Rowe sev- eral weeks before her departure from MGN, At first Ann Morgan and Readers Response rang no bell with her. After con- sultation, she told me that she did remem- ber Ms Morgan, and believed that MGN had parted company with her on acrimo- nious terms. She was adamant that the copies of the People were sent to Readers Response as per invoice. Why else would the invoices have been issued? She believed that the copies of her newspaper had been distributed as requested, and she was advised that the invoices had been paid by Readers Response. She emphatically denied that there had been any gerryman- dering of sales figures.
I have spoken to Ann Morgan on numer- ous occasions, and she has put down her allegations on paper. Throughout all our conversations she has maintained that not a single copy of the People was ever received by her company. Why in any case, she asks, would she be paying MGN 10 pence per copy for distributing copies of the People on MGN's behalf? She admits that the three invoices were paid by her company but says the money was recouped from MGN via another account. She admitted that she had had a bust-up with MGN, but denied that this was anything to do with this case.
I have also spoken with her warehouse manager at the time, Michaele Freeman, who said that she operated the only fork- lift truck at Reader's Response and never set eyes on a copy of the People, or for that matter on any other newspaper, in her warehouse. I have a letter from Mrs Jean Brown, who was the company accountant of Readers Response from May 1993 until September 1996, which substantially cor- roborates everything that Ann Morgan and Michaele Freeman have said. Mrs Brown writes: 'These papers were never delivered to Readers Response. The company never carried out any work of this type on behalf of MGN.'
Finally I spoke with Wally Cowley, MGN's circulation director. To begin with, Mr Cowley, who had no personal knowl- edge of the matter and was not circulation director in 1994, was helpful. He told me that he would retrieve archival material which would establish whether the three deliveries of newspapers were ever sent to Readers Response. He said he would ring me back, but never did. Several calls from me elicited no response. Finally I got through to Mr Cowley who said that he had been instructed by the office of the chief executive at MGN, David Montgomery, not to speak to me. I have asked for a response to these allegations from the chief execu- tive's office but have received no reply.
I might not have raised the matter if Ms Rowe hadn't been so quick to criticise oth- ers for their lapses. It is of course possible that she was not acquainted with these transactions. Ann Morgan provides no evi- dence that Ms Rowe knew anything about the matter. Her dealings were with another MGN employee who has also left the com- pany.
I suppose it is possible that in May and July 1994 30,000 and then 100,048 copies of the People were despatched to Readers Response in Wellingborough, Northamp- tonshire and for some reason never arrived. Conceivably even now, in some lay-by on the Al, thousands of copies of the People lie mouldering and forgotten, presenting a fire hazard and a severe moral threat to innocent Northamptonshire children who might chance upon them. Perhaps as one of his first tasks at MGN, Kelvin MacKenzie should send out a search party to see whether he can find these inadvertently mislaid copies of Bridget Rowe's People.
Several readers have written pointing out a bloomer in my final item about Peter Mandelson last week. I referred to the Observer's story in which 'a second, ministe- rial source' was quoted as saying that Mr Blair was displeased with Gordon Brown. I wrote: 'Note the comma after "ministerial", which points up that the first source was not ministerial.' I should, of course, have written: 'Note the comma after second, which points up that the first source was not ministerial.' In other words, the Observ- er's first source (who had alleged that Mr Brown had 'psychological flaws') was not a minister and therefore cannot have been Mr Mandelson. The second, milder critic of Mr Brown was a minister, who my investi- gations suggest was almost certainly Mr Mandelson. I hope this is clear.
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