I’m Not One to Gossip, But…Wicked Whispers, William Hickey & Forty Years of Blarney

From an embarrassing encounter with the late Jim Callaghan (and his impressive member) in the gentlemen's toilet of the Savoy Hotel, and being fleeced in El Vino by a drunken Kingsley Amis, to being accused of killing actor Derek Nimmo, John's McEntee's enchanting autobiography is not just another Fleet Street memoir. John was the last 'William Hickey' gossip columnist on the Daily Express and was the author of the spikey 'Wicked Whispers' gossip column on the Daily Mail. As London Correspondent of the Irish Press he covered the IRA terror campaign while regularly enjoying illicit hooch distilled by the office wireman – a noble calling rendered extinct by technology. Along the way he had a front row seat witnessing the theatrical editorships of Eve Pollard and Rosie Boycott. John also vividly recalls a curious Irish childhood dominated by a delightfully eccentric mother, though this book is a far cry from Angela's Ashes! He also confesses to inadvertently shortening the life of the oldest man in Ireland but that's another story…