SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 429, 12 September 1947, Page 14

SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

WENTY years ago a Christchurch journalist, Ian Coster, set out to see England and Europe, expecting to be away not more than a year. But it was not until-a few days ago that he returned, on a sentimental journey, to see his mother in Hamilton By now he will be on his way back to England, to resume his weekly column in the Daily Mail. During 18 years in Fleet Street, Ian Coster has been on the staff of several big London newspapers, reporting events of international importance. He wrote . book, Friends in Aspic, in which he told intimate stories about people he had met. Now he plans to write another, also about people, which’ he will courageously call Jellied Heels. But when Coster calleu at The Listener office the other day, he ‘confessed

that he was more excited than he had ever been in his life. He had reported the launching of the liners Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, the wedding of the late Duke of Kent, fires, riots, and all the sensational incidents that are part of a London journalist’s life, but to revisit his home country and see old friends again was the most exciting thing of all. *Coster’s story, as he told it to us in an interview, is that of a man who has always refused to take life todo seriously. We asked him if he.could put his finger on any formula for success in Fleet Street. Journalistic Formula "Oh, .I should say that if a man has 10 per cent. industry and 90 per cent. luck, he’ll get there. But you must have the breaks. I was lucky. I made that remark once to a friend. The editor I was then working for heard of it and called me into his office. ‘Was that wis®@?’ he said. ‘We can get plenty of people who are ten per cent industrious. Still, as I see it, perseverance and a scintilla of talent will do the trick." For a few years Coster had been on the staff of a Christchurch paper. Then he left for Sydney, but was back again in Ngw Zealand in no time as advance agent for Pavlova’s tour in this country. On whet he earned, persuading editors that Pavlova’s was "the greatest show on earth," he went to England after a spell on a now defunct Auckland paper. A letter to a director of the Evening Standard got him a job on space rates, writing articles about London through New’ Zealand eyes. "I got my first break one evening soon after I arrived," he said. "I happened to be the only reporter left in the office when somebody rang to say the Tower of London was on fire. I hurried off, got across the drawbridge, and was turned away by a Beefeater, reinforced by the

police. A paragraph got into print." Then he did some work on the feature page of the Daily Herald, working with Percy Cudlip and Stella Gibbons. Bernard Shaw’s Socks Always looking out for something unusual, he picked up a legend that Bernard Shaw wore five-toed socks. To find out if it was true, he took a dip in a bathing pool frequented by Shaw and asked the great man about it. Shaw’s reply was: "Utterly’ ridiculous." But it led to a conversation, which turned into an interview, and Coster sold it to The Referee. After some free-lancing, he joined the staff of the Sunday Dispatch as a casual reporter. He had been recommended by another New Zealander, Angus Harrop, of New Zealand News. On his first day’s hunt for material, he saw a riot among people being evicted from their homes. His article about it was featured on the ffont page. "And then," he said, "people seemed to get the queer idea that I was a good reporter." He became assistant-editor on the old Nash’s Magazine for some months. "By this time, I had been fired from jobs twice, just to teach me what life is-all very amusing." Delving Into Religion He went back to the Sunday Dispatch as a special writer, doing a long series of articles about various religions, called What Shall Man Believe? "I had to study everything from the Bible to the Koran, Yoga to Shintoism, and it got me down. For 13 years after that I was with the Evening Standard and saw eight editors come and go. * Things happen quickly in London." For some years, Coster was the Standard’s film and play reviewer, and between times he and Howard Spring, now a well-known novelist, covered big (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) events. Spring was humorously known in Fleet Street as the pipe organ, and Coster as the tin whistle. Then he did a daily column for Beaverbrook, called The Voice of London Town, which ran for a year. When the air raids came, the New Zealander wrote a column, Darker London, ¢elling of grim incidents by night in the city. It meant long hours and uncomfortable experiences. "That made me inclined to think that there should be a new police charge-drunk in charge of a typewriter -which can be infinitely more dangerous than a car. In 1942 I joined the Marines and served in South East Asia, where I had the time of my life." When Coster started his column for the Daily Mail it appeared twice a week. .Now, with the size of the paper reduced to four pages a day, the column is published once weekly. While in New Zealand Coster has been sending articles by air mail. Won a Football Pool "Though I’ve had to cover various kinds of sport, I aever knew much about them, except tennis," Coster said. "But recently I won £140 in a football pool -the preceding week’s prize was £6000. I shall now take a keener interest in the British national game." Of all the work he has done in "the Street," he rates film-reviewing as the best of occupations. Caroline Lejeune, he says, is the best critic in London. "She writes very tough articles, but she is just, and so the film companies have no fault to find with her. If she says a film is a bad one, then they agree there must be something wrong with it. But what they don’t like is humorous condescension. After all, a film costs a lot of money to make, and the hundreds of people who make it surely have some _brains." Coster’s trip to England from Sydney, 20. years ago, took eight weeks; he returned by BOAC in 52 hours to Darwin. BOAC, he says, is the largest and fastest commercial air route in the world. It funs to Karachi, where Qantas takes over. When we said good-bye to Ian Coster, he was about fo fly to Christchurch to meet an old newspaper colleague. And after that he planned to see Rotorua for the first time in his life before returning to England.