Alan Watkins’ own expenses scandal

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/sep/01/alan-watkins-own-expenses-scandal

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As someone who worked with the late political columnist Alan Watkins while comment editor of the Independent on Sunday, I greatly enjoyed Peter Oborne’s account of him (An education from the master columnist of Fleet Street, 1 September). I was amused to read that Watkins’ editor at the Sunday Express, John Junor, was a careful monitor of expenses. Perhaps that is why Watkins became such a craftsman in that area as well as writing.

At a dinner held in 2003 to mark Alan’s 70th birthday, Donald Trelford, his editor of 17 years at the Observer, recalled that he had submitted expenses for a lunch at the Garrick Club which appeared to be for one. Trelford’s memo to Watkins pointed out that expenses were for entertaining contacts, not subsidising journalists’ living costs. He got a one-line response from Alan: “I ate; he drank.” Catherine PepinsterEditor, The Tablet