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  • Tomorrow’s leaders: Emily Prescott

    Christopher Jackson interviews a new star of journalism about life at The Mail on Sunday

     

    When you pick up the newspaper what do you turn to first? For me, it depends on the occasion. After a sound sleep, I can face the enormity of the day’s issues, and brave the front pages. Usually, selfish for the next thing, I prefer the culture pages. But sometimes, especially when tired after a day’s work, I’ll go to the diary section to be pepped up by the human delights of gossip.

    When I do so, it’s with appreciation that writing it is the hardest job in journalism; the gossip columnist specialises in the bite-sized indiscretion, the minor cock-up, the eye-popping peculiarity. What’s noteworthy is how little of this there is in today’s PR-burnished world: these stories are hard to find, and needing to be taut and punchy, hard to write.

    At 26, Emily Prescott is already one of the best in the business, with a small team already working under her at The Mail on Sunday. Is this a declining sector?  Every time I open The Evening Standard, the diary section – where Prescott used to work – seems smaller. Prescott bats this away: “If anything, gossip is booming. The Telegraph recently introduced the Peterborough column and The Times Diary was culled during the financial crisis but returned in 2013. Any shrinking pages are a sign of newspaper decline rather than a waning lack of love for gossip and whimsy I think.”

    Prescott’s is a fabulous story. By nature softly-spoken and kind (‘Always be polite, no matter what’), she has shown tenacity to get so far so young. So how did she do it? After a range of almost hilariously non-descript jobs in recruitment and communications (“the pointlessness of those roles weighed very heavily on me”) Prescott decided that only one career would do. “I just really wanted to be a journalist,” she tells me. “So a few years out of university, I messaged Katie Glass on Instagram, saying I liked her features. To my amazement, I emailed her, we met up for a coffee and then she suggested I go to Diary events. I didn’t go to private school; didn’t grow up in London; had zero connections.”

    Astonished, half-thinking the gig a joke, Prescott attended her first party. “Weirdly, I did really well; it was beginner’s luck,” she recalls. “It was a weird law event at one of the posh law firms, and Victoria Coren Mitchell had gone to speak. She said she’d been groped when she was a poker player and men would grope her under the table. It was a good news story – but a complete fluke!”

    From then on Prescott hit the party circuit (“I found it such a thrill, just collecting lines”), and soon did stints at The Sun (“really useful”), The Express (“really awful, so depressing and bleak and SEO-driven”) and The Sunday Times, as the Saturday reporter (“wonderful”).

    After that came a prolonged stint at The Evening Standard, a paper she obviously loves, and which connected her into the worlds of entertainment and politics. “It’s quite easy to get well-connected into Westminster. Now [at The Mail on Sunday], I do showbiz and it’s difficult to get access. But I could get any MP on the phone now, bar Rishi – and even there I could probably get his number.” Prescott isn’t bragging – or the type to brag – she just knows her craft and what it takes.

    She recalls getting to know Sir David Amess MP, who was tragically murdered at his constituency surgery in 2021. “He was doing a campaign to get a statue of Vera Lynn. We spoke during lockdown, so maybe it was the thrill of talking to a stranger which caused a bit of a bond to develop. During the pandemic, interviews would be hours long; people were desperate for new voices in their lives. David was kind and thought of me a few weeks later, and called and said: “I have a potential story for you”. I was struck by the fact that the story wasn’t self-motivated. He had just remembered.”

    Prescott explains the range of interviewees she’s experienced. “Sometimes – and this especially happens with very experienced interviewees – you feel like you’ve had a good interview and that they’ve told you something, but then you’ll listen back and there’s nothing there, except perhaps an anecdote which they wheel out every time.”

    And what about young interviewees? “That can be frustrating – sometimes they’re just nervous. People often don’t understand that I don’t need a massive scandal, I just need something mildly interesting. When they’re so earnest, that’s difficult for a diarist.”

    And what about the effect on Prescott as a person from having met so many well-known people? “I have to watch myself not to do too many celebrity mentions. A friend might say: ‘I saw so and so on the tube the other day’. I might reply: ‘Well, I went to their house the other day’.”

    Some people are less than delightful to interview, Prescott says. “David Attenborough wasn’t incredibly charming,” she recalls. “When I say I’ve spoken to him, he’s so many people’s hero, but I’m not part of the fan club. He’s had an immensely privileged life, but he’s quite curt, and I have spoken to other people who have said the same. He is in his 90s though, so I forgive him a bit.”

    And has she ever had any pleasant surprises? Prescott pauses. “Often the extreme right-wing people can surprise you. Like Nigel Farage – I won’t say he’s lovely but he’s funny and has good manners. I think there is a tendency for Right wing people to have better manners. I’m not quite sure why? Edmund Burke (sometimes hailed as the founder of conservatism) spoke about manners being more important than laws!”

    The move to The Mail on Sunday has led to an increase in her visibility. She recalls doing the media law module on the NCTJ course (which she completed alongside her early jobs), but then tells me what it’s really like to wage war each day on the battlefields of UK defamation law. “I’m very protected now,” she explains. “I can message the lawyers and ask the question – and you do get a feel for whether something might be defamatory. But actually, more important than that is having the confidence to say: ‘This is not illegal; this is not a problem’. I’m always getting legal letters telling me to back off – even Prince Harry’s psychic has sent legal letters!”

    It’s in the nature of gossip to rile people: “That’s because it’s not PR,” says Prescott, smiling. But now, after Twitter run-ins with Jeremy Clarkson and Gary Lineker, she’s more likely to brush off any furore. Nevertheless, those fandangos – silly and needless as they are – tell you a lot about the job of being a high-profile journalist. Prescott managed to elicit in Clarkson that most 21st century of psychological states – the Twitter ‘meltdown’. This occurred when Prescott wrote a funny – and not especially mean –  story about Clarkson’s daughter, who had complained on Instagram about the effect of the Russia-Ukraine war on influencers (‘the great casualty of the Russia-Ukraine war!’ Prescott laughs). But upon publication of her story, Prescott woke – on a hangover as it happened – to a thousand messages, from the dreaded Twitter ‘mob’; specifically, Clarkson’s Twitter mob. The former Top Gear presenter had twice tweeted her (‘he failed to ‘at’ me properly the first time, so did it twice’), lampooning her journalism.

    The sainted Lineker meanwhile piled in on her after coverage Prescott had given his two sons – one story about George Lineker’s business, and a second about Tobias Lineker, who had secured a job DJ-ing at Raffles. Having read these pieces, I’d certainly say that worst things happen at sea, and that Lineker, handsomely paid by the BBC – that is, by the taxpayer – would do well to marry his gift for volubility with a balancing tendency towards reticence from time to time.

    Prescott recalls: “Lineker tweeted me calling me ‘unnecessarily nasty’, then George Lineker piled in, and wrote that I was ‘useless’. They lack an understanding of the Diary. Does Tobias Lineker want me to say he’s innately gifted and self-made? I appreciate people have to defend their sons, but Gary Lineker can use Twitter in that way knowing it’s not bad for his sons’ businesses, and also knowing that no-one criticises anybody for calling out The Mail. A friend of mine asked me how I felt after that, and initially I couldn’t remember what it had been about so I’ve definitely hardened.”

    Nowadays Prescott’s week is constructed around the demands of delivering her copy on time for the Sunday editions. The best time to catch her is undoubtedly a Monday, and her tough days are Thursday and Friday, on which days all right-thinking people shouldn’t contact anyone toiling to produce our Sunday papers.

    Prescott’s success is considerable but there is far more to come. A recent feature for The Spectator about Americans buying up stately homes shows how easily she can do long form journalism too. I should add that she can also draw and write superb poetry.

    Recently, Prescott was interviewing Michael Gove. When she began introducing herself, Gove interrupted her: “I know who you are, Emily.” Gove – for once, some might say – is ahead of the curve. Soon, everybody else will know her too.

     

     

  • Waterfly on Liz Truss, Jeremy Clarkson and Boris Johnson

    Our round-up of the latest gossip in the education and work sectors

     

    Emily in Kensington

    Finito World’s own Emily Prescott has had an exciting few months, moving from her role at The Evening Standard, to become diary editor for The Mail on Sunday. At just 25 this is an impressive achievement. But this isn’t all. We also hear that she’s working on a book on the history of gossip. When she recently interviewed Michael Gove about diary journalism – Gove, who used to work as Diary editor at The Times – told Prescott that it was ‘a nice little apprenticeship.’

    But it can be much more than that. Indeed, for Prescott it’s been something of a baptism of fire. When Prescott published a piece about Jeremy Clarkson’s daughter Emily, and reported verbatim her quotes on Instagram about her ignorance of the Russia-Ukraine war, Prescott woke to find her Twitter had blown up after a fiery – and in Waterfly’s opinion, unnecessary – tweet by Clarkson himself calling her both a ‘shit journalist’ and ‘an idiot’. But Prescott’s good nature ensured that she didn’t reply, or even take it too hardly. “He’s just being protective of his daughter – as I’d be in his situation,” she says. Prescott adds with a smile: “I don’t think I’m either of those things, but at least I’ve never punched any of my colleagues.” Clarkson has 7.6 million followers on Twitter; Prescott, around 500. So from punching colleagues to punching down – there’s consistency there. 

    Spectating on Boris

    Talking of punching down, one person who doesn’t do that, according to The Spectator art critic Martin Gayford, is the Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Gayford witnessed Boris up close in his journalism days: “Boris was famous for going up to and over deadline, and certainly did make people quite cross although he probably knew by that stage that he was commanding enough readers to make people put up with it. Charles Moore certainly spiked one or two of his columns and said: ‘If he’s late, use something else’.”

    Gayford explains that he didn’t always have much directly to do with Boris when he was editor – except in one respect. “One thing I’d say about Boris is that he was unusually good at sending messages to lowly people such as those toiling on the factory floor of the arts pages when he was editor. You would get messages saying, “Boris liked that piece” and that sort of thing.” So does Gayford ever see something in Downing Street and think that’s a bit like what used to happen at The Spectator? “I’m not sure if you can compare running a country to running a little magazine in a three-storey building in Doughty Street,’ he says, chuckling. Yes, perhaps not.  

    King Richard

    Sometimes the hurly burly nature of British politics can be glimpsed in a single phone call. When Waterfly called Richard Harrington last year to ask to talk to him, he declined an interview: “You don’t want to talk to me – I’m just not interesting enough,” he said. “The person you really want to talk to is John Bercow.” Since that time, Harrington has become Minister for Refugees and Bercow has not only joined the Labour Party but been the subject of a report into alleged bullying when he was Speaker of the House of Commons. Who’s interesting now?

    An Ignob-el Mistake

    When we spoke with Gayford, we also asked him of his regrets as a journalist. He was decisive in his reply: “The worst thing is when you’re talking to someone interesting, or of historical importance, and you feel you need to contribute something to the conversation – and so you come in with your ten cents. Then you listen to the tape and wish you hadn’t interrupted. You’ve got to keep your mouth shut.”

    Waterfly would add you’ve got to be careful which day you call. Waterfly recalls phoning the Astronomer-Royal Lord Martin Rees last autumn, and found the kindly scientist in an uncharacteristically jittery mood. “I’m so sorry I just have to get off the line,” he said. When Waterfly did so, we went onto the BBC news website, and saw that that morning the Nobel Prize for Physics was being handed out. Rees had wanted us off the line, perhaps having thought we were Stockholm when we phoned. Oops.

    Goldsmiths aggrieved

    Waterfly has been in and out of the House of Lords these past few months, and in addition to receiving different appraisals of the food – Baroness Anne Jenkin holds a higher opinion of the canteen than does Baroness France d’Souza – Waterfly began to get a feel for the place. On one occasion, D’Souza passed Zac Goldsmith smoking a roll-up in the courtyard. “Ooh, I like your cigarette,” she said. “You must be the only one,” he replied, humorously but a little gloomily.

    Waterfly recalled catching up with Ben Goldsmith, who told us: “There are many professions which pay significantly more than an MP earns. I think it is a bit much for the public to expect people working in those professions to take a drastic pay cut in order to enter politics. Some may do it, many more  would not – and why should they?” And you can’t even smoke.

    An Artful Innovation

    Emily Prescott isn’t the only person in the Finito fraternity going places. Our business mentor Angelina Giovani has made an impressive step creating an innovation in the world of art provenance. “There are a lot of odd and funny requests one gets when working as an art researcher, that can be a dead giveaway as to whether someone is familiar with your line of work or not,” Giovani tells Waterfly.

    Two weeks into the first lockdown in London, an art collector rang Giovani to ask whether she could research his client’s 150 artwork collection, which he intended to sell. She tells Waterfly: “We certainly can, I responded: “What’s the time frame? “We’d like for it to be done this week.” I told him that this was like requesting the Pyramids be built in an afternoon.’

    But it was out of this exchange that the Collections Provenance Rating was born. The first of its kind – known as the CPR for short – assesses the state of documentation of a collection and offers recommendations based on the result.

    Giovani explains: “This allows collectors planning to sell, insure, appraise or use the collection as collateral and borrow money against its value, to speed up the process and have a new insight into possible problematic pieces. This does not eliminate the need for proper due diligence: on the contrary, it helps streamline and make the research process more time and cost-effective.” And that’s how they built the Pyramids.

    In Liz We Truss

    To the United and Cecil Club Dinner, an occasion which helps raise funding for marginal Conservative seats. The Guest of Honour was none other than the Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who, after being barraged with questions about Putin, recalled her time as Secretary of State for International Trade. Once famous for her remarks about cheese, her attention has now turned to another dairy product. In that role, she found that she disapproved of the way in which yoghurt is always made in France, but not always packaged to let you know that. “What we need is for the English to manufacture yoghurt,” she said. “By the way,” she added, “I don’t like yoghurt.” In politics, as in life, it’s always important to cover your blind spots.

  • Review: Vaxxers: The Inside Story of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Vaccine and the Race Against the Virus

    Emily Prescott

    Dr Catherine Green was queueing for pizza during her holiday in Snowdonia  when she overheard a woman saying the people behind the COVID jabs couldn’t be trusted. Dr Green couldn’t let this slide so she introduced herself to  the skeptic: “My name is Cath Green and I might not look like it in my bare feet and this dress – I might not sound like it either, believe me I know – but I am “them”. You couldn’t have known this, but I’m the best person in the world to tell you what’s in the vaccine. I work with the people who invented it. It’s me and my team, in my lab, who physically made it.” 

    Overhearing this vaccine scepticism was the catalyst for the book. Professor Sarah Gilbert and Dr Catherine Green felt it was their duty to come out of their labs and put the truth into print.  “I would like people to know how we really got here and what happens next,” Green writes. 

    This is the most extraordinary story which focuses on the often surprisingly ordinary lives of the women behind the Oxford AstraZenecavaccine. Although it was ghost written,  the chapters alternate between being authored  between Professor Sarah Gilbert and Dr Catherine Green. 

    It’s hard to work out how these women found the time for this book. Not only are they working parents – Professor Gilbert is a mum of triplets.- they are having to deal with issues such as not being able to buy toilet roll, worrying about vulnerable family members, they are also busy  saving the future of humanity. At one point Green seems to lean into the working mum stereotype as she employs a baking analogy to explain how the vaccine works.  She says making a vaccine for a new disease is a bit like making a specialist birthday cake. You can get everything ready and then when the order arrives you just add the icing with the message or indeed, the spike protein. 

    Green in particular talks about the pressure of getting the messaging and explanations right and making sure the public understands what is going on. “I woke up feeling really nervous. Not because it was the day we were going to put the first shot of our vaccine into the arm of our first volunteer in our first trial: I had every confidence that would go smoothly. But because I was due to do a radio interview with LBC’s James O’Brien… I didn’t want to let anyone down by saying anything wrong.”  

    At the beginning of the book is a quote from an anonymous source: “Better to light a candle than curse the darkness”. This epitomises their message, this book is their solution to the anti-vaxxer movement. So forget your comic books, if you’re looking for superheroes you’ll find them standing among us, perhaps even in the queue of a takeaway.