By Brian Bass
Could it be that the years of non-drinking have started to wipe clean the memory banks of winking Anne Robinson?
She appeared on Piers Morgan’s BBC 1 chat show on Tuesday claiming she had been sacked from the Mirror - after dire representations from the Palace - because she dared to break the story, on the one night she was editing the paper, of Princess Di’s bulimia.
We old hacks who were there at the time, and have not let non-drinking befuddle our brains, remember no such event.
We do remember, however, the Sunday when Annie was editing (she was never, as she claimed on TV, ‘number 3’ at the Mirror – Richard Stott and Terry Lancaster were both higher in the pecking order), and against all back bench advice she insisted on splashing on a story about how Persil wrecked your washing machine. Persil were not amused and proved the story to have been blown out of all context.
Nor did she then disappear to television as the programme insisted, but continued for some years to write her weekly Mirror column. She later decamped briefly for The Sun and even later The Daily Telegraph before becoming the world-wide star of TV that we all now love.
Considering the whole basis of the programme was bollocks, it doesn’t say a great deal for the investigative talents of Piers, either.
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