THE Liverpool Echo’s longest-serving journalist Joe Riley faces the sack thanks to the £114million Culture Company.
Its £90,000-a-year (with performance-related pay, eds) Director of Communications, Paul Newman, aka The Invisible Man, made an official complaint about Riley to Echo Editor Alistair McRae.
Newman, who lives in Hertfordshire and commutes to Liverpool during the week, branded Riley “a disgrace to journalism and a disgrace to Liverpool”.
(We shall return to this amazing accusation from this invisible man whose name we keep forgetting, eds).
So what caused the astonishing outburst from 'snitch' Newman which has led to Riley’s suspension and has journalists agog at (the unholy) Trinity Mirror?
Quite simply, Joe Riley fell asleep during the premiere of Jimmy McGovern’s extremely disappointing play, King Cotton at the Liverpool Empire.While other bored members of the audience were walking out of the Empire half-way through to do something infinitely more interesting like catch a bus, or count the pigeons, Joe had forty winks.
He had been on duty, apparently, since 7am that morning when he had also been at the launch of some obscure Culture Company event.
However, Mr McGovern,
(who we had previously admired, eds) was sitting a few seats away from the Echo scribe and took umbrage at him dozing off.
Precise accounts vary but there then followed an unseemly and noisy confro
ntation at half-time in the bar at the Empire with McGovern tearing into Riley with a four-letter tirade.
For some obscure reason, which has still not been satisfactorily explained to us, self-styled PR photographer Carolyn Hughes phoned the Echo editor from the foyer of the Empire.
(Jesus, what the **** did it have to do with her? Are these people all in the pay of the Liverpool Stasi? eds)
Anyroadup, unsuspecting Mr Riley wanders into the Echo the next day and all hell is let loose.
We should point out at this stage, that we would have no sympathy for Mr Riley if he had gone on to pen a review of King Cotton after snatching forty winks during the first half.
But he didn’t.
Like the old trouper he is, Riley admitted he had fallen asleep and suggested that fellow Echo scribe Katherine Jones, who was also at the premiere, should do the review instead.
Fair enough, you might think.
But oh no…
McGovern appeared on the Roger Phillips programme later that morning and was allowed to whitter on about Riley like a true luvvie for the best part of 20 minutes.
(Gosh, this is better than Corrie, isn’t it? eds)
Riley’s only offence, of course, had been to find McGovern’s play so interminably dull that he had dropped off.
(A view which we also share, eds)
Meanwhile the snitch Newman, self-appointed guardian of journalistic ethics and moral arbiter for Liverpool, had fired off his ‘Riley’s a disgrace’ missive to McRae in a clear effort to get him sacked after 38 years unblemished service to the Echo
(surely cause for a proper disciplinary investigation? eds)
Riley was duly suspended and appeared last week at a disciplinary hearing, the outcome of which we await with bated breath.
However…
(This is the good bit now, eds) 
We have some things to say about Mr Newman, (right) whose career in Liverpool has been distinguished by consistent incompetence, failure and invisibility.
(Oh goodie, eds)
The first is this: be very careful about making complaints about the personal behaviour of other people in a work-related situation. People in glass houses...
We are reasonably sure that your wife and family would not be at all happy if a complaint was made about your own personal behaviour in a work-related situation. Know what we mean?
(ermmm, we think so, eds)
Secondly, if you paid more attention to doing your job which the people of Liverpool are paying for through the nose, then you wouldn’t have time to fire off self-righteous, poisonous little missives to editors.
Thirdly, we are sure it has not been lost on our readers, that Mr Riley, for all his faults, has been one of the few local journalists to give your bosses at the £114million Culture Company and the city council, a difficult time.
You saw your chance to try and do Riley in and thus remove a thorn in your side, didn’t you rat-face?
Well, we hope you are thwarted and that Mr Riley returns from a hopefully relaxing suspension to his desk, unbowed and undeterred.
And we hope Newman’s disgraceful role in this nasty little episode is not quickly forgotten by journalists on Merseyside and elsewhere.
(another cracker, we love it when he gets all angry, eds)
Self-styled scouse celebrities fight like cat and dog to get a nomination. 
So please send us your nominations for The Tony's this year.
Self-styled scouse celebrities fight like cat and dog to get a nomination. 
So please send us your nominations for The Tony's this year.
Hi,
