Fergus Cashin

Fergus Cashin - Former Sun showbiz reporter and Woking News and Mail chief sub
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Fergus Cashin - Former Sun showbiz reporter and Woking News and Mail chief sub
...
But there, in his coffin beneath the plaque, lay Fergus Cashin, the notorious Fleet Street maverick who had spent so much of his life savouring bar-room brawls and legal battles.

He was hooked on the adrenalin rush that comes with conflict.
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Fergus had given up liquid lunches but not the liquid dinners when I worked with him a decade after he had thrown his final punch in The Street.

My first day in journalism was at the Woking News and Mail in the summer of 1986 and at 11-ish the swing door was kicked open, and in walked Fergus.

With his white hair, craggy face and broken nose, he reminded me of the actor Richard Harris (a former Cashin drinking partner).

Fergus was the paper's chief sub and occupied a desk that faced a window.

He was the only member of the 12- strong staff who had his back to the newsroom, which suited him fine because during daylight hours he was too grouchy for office chit-chat.

Initially, he refused to acknowledge my presence, but that changed when he came to sub one of my stories.As he turned the folios, I could hear him sighing and cursing.It was as if he was examining a hefty tax bill.Then he held the pages above his head and screamed at the window in front of him: "Who wrote this crap?"It was a yell that halted the clickety-clack of the newsroom typewriters.

When he had calmed down, he taught me lesson number one: "Before handing in your copy, read it, re-read it and read it again."

That evening, he invited me for a jar at the office local, The Red House.

After that, journalism became fun.

Fergus became my local newspaper mentor , I called him The Master.

At our table in the pub, he would recount his Fleet Street anecdotes, seeing off the risk of a dry throat by downing pints of London Pride and then doubles of Bushmills.He liked to talk about his old mate Richard Burton and I remember him silencing the pub by announcing loudly: "Liz Taylor quite fancied me but she showed me her tits once and they were covered in pimples."

Regulars would hover around the table but they had to accept that sooner or later he would scowl and tell them: "Fer koff, why don't you?"

The Red House sessions were also valuable classes in journalism, however.

Fergus had a passion for the industry and together, through the pages of the News and Mail, we set about waking up the sleepy-eyed inhabitants of this dormitory town in Surrey.
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I would sneak my copy over to Fergus.When the paper came out, the splash would be a boring story along the lines of "Council says no to supermarket proposal", but turn the page and there would be cracking yarns: the Italian Mafia boss who had moved into the borough; schoolteachers who were upto no good; legally contentious stories about dodgy councillors.

Ferg tried to find ways of weaving a famous sexy woman into the story just so he could use an attractive picture.

And above the story he'd do one of his massive "shock-horror" headlines.