Former Guardian journalist and co-author of a savagely funny book about the Sun newspaper, Stick It Up Your Punter!Pugnacious and anarchic, the former Guardian journalist Peter Chippindale, who has died aged 69 of kidney failure, assured his reputation with one savagely funny book Stick It Up Your Punter! This was a history of Rupert Murdoch's Sun newspaper, co-written with Chris Horrie. Peter rose exuberantly to the challenge of pinning down the leering, jeering, bully-boy editor Kelvin MacKenzie. The book's title came from "Stick it up your Junta!", one of MacKenzie's notorious "anti-Argie" headlines during the Falklands war. The other was "Gotcha!", when the cruiser Belgrano was torpedoed. Stick It Up Your Punter!, published in 1990, was a classic exposure of the paper's prurience and noisy cynicism. The book deservedly remains high on media studies reading lists.Peter and I first worked together on the Guardian in 1979 on the Jeremy Thorpe case. In an atmosphere of black farce, the then Liberal party leader was accused of ineptly conspiring to murder his former male lover, but succeeding only in having his dog, a Great Dane called Rinka, shot. Some Guardian bosses were uneasy at what they feared was an anti-gay, anti-Liberal witch-hunt. But Chip's truculence proved its journalistic worth. After Thorpe's eventual acquittal, a juror revealed to us that the jury had crucially objected to the chief prosecution witness being offered £50,000 for his story by the Telegraph... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2014-08-13 00:00:00 UTC ]