After my piece on Michael Foot's death Paddy Smith, a connoisseur of newspaper headlines, reminded me of the famous Michael Foot headline which appeared in the Times - Foot heads arms body.
By coincidence Simon Hoggart in yesterday's Guardian mentioned the headline quoting the sub-editor responsible who had to handle a story about Michael Foot being put in charge of a committee to look at nuclear disarmament.
I certainly wasn't going to get 'nuclear' or 'disarmament' or 'committee' to fit, so after a struggle I decided on 'Foot chairs arms body', then thought 'Foot heads arms body' would at least give a laugh to the revise sub. To my astonishment, the headline was printed, and a legend was born…
Michael, Michael Foot did visit Trim as part of the Swift conference organsied in Celbridge in the 1990s and i was priviledged to give him a tour of the town. Noel French
ReplyDeleteThanks Noel. Tommy Murray has a mention of Michael Foot's visits to Trim and a photo on the Meath Writers Circle website: http://community.meath.ie/meathwriters/
ReplyDeleteThat's a great insight behind the headline :)
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