Happy 53rd anniversary, this unimprovable newspaper headline:
It appeared on this day in 1970 in the News of the World, and was the work of senior sub-editor Monty Levy (appearing above a story by Ron Mount, described by a former colleague as “one of the paper’s veteran foot-in-the-door men”.)
Obviously, the text is too blurry for you to read the story underneath, but thanks to this blog, you can find out that it concerns the head of welfare at a London borough who liked walking about in the nip, and whose wife was, indeed, a model (part-time) and, yes, did enjoy extra-marital shenanigans with a Chinese-English chap who worked in a Co-op bacon factory — who was an amateur hypnotist and therapist in his spare time.
Welfare man had encouraged his wife to see this hypnotist because his therapeutic skills were apparently helping her with their relationship difficulties. One day, though, presumably having some suspicions already, Welfare Man climbed into the loft and drilled a hole in the bedroom ceiling. What he saw did not appear to be hypnosis.
What the headline doesn’t tell you, though (although I felt it would be churlish to call it “almost unimprovable” at the top), is that Welfare Man managed to get himself into this viewing position despite having two artificial legs. Monty Levy tried to get ‘legless’ at the top of the headline, apparently, but couldn’t make it fit.
But it was bloody magnificent, and it was, inevitably, what he was remembered for:
