There's a theory that a murderer will always return to the scene of a crime so we shouldn't be too surprised to hear that Rupert Murdoch was back on Fleet Street yesterday. The fact that he was there to preside over a ceremony mourning the loss of London's famous journalistic home though is not just adding insult to injury, it's not even rubbing salt in the wound... it's a little like Harold Shipman turning up at your grandmother's funeral wearing her jewellery. And her head as a hat.
Although the press have had a home there since the 1700's we tend to remember the busy newspaper offices best as featured in The Day the Earth Caught Fire which features a hack hero from the Daily Express if memory serves. Cracking London film that...
Old black and white sci fi is about the only place you'll get to see that version of Fleet Street anymore as Murdoch began the exodus from there to Wapping back in 1986 in order to break those pesky unions. By the beginning of the next decade all the other papers had followed his lead.
Yesterday saw Reuters finally make the move too.
There is one British icon still flying the flag in Fleet Street although that flag probably features a catapult: The Beano is about the only publication of note still being printed there and is of course much more dependable then any of the crap published in the Murdoch rags.
