AddThis SmartLayers

"Softly, softly" wins the story

As we reported last week, reporter Nicki Walker’s dogged persistence landed the Eastern Daily Press an exclusive interview with Norfolk farmer Tony Martin, released from jail after shooting dead a burglar.
West editor Chris Bishop recalls the afternoon when everything fell into place.


The phone trills on the King’s Lynn newsdesk of the EDP. Nicki Walker’s on the other end.

“Well, I’ve met up with Tony Martin,” she says. “He’s had to pop off somewhere for a bit but don’t worry, I know he’ll be back – he’s left me looking after Otto.”

How much more surreal can this story get, I ask myself, as I picture Nicki holding onto a bear-sized rottweiler big enough to eat her for breakfast.

If you believe the tabloids, the 10-year-old dog panting on the end of the lead has a contract on its life and a five-figure price on its head.

“Err, be careful,” I tell her, racking my brains for advice on how to spot a canine hitman hell-bent on revenge, with fido in his sights.

Martin returns from his errand, they sit under a tree and he opens his heart, just like the last time he spoke to us.

Back in Norwich assistant editor Paul Durrant likes the sound of one or two of the fresher lines. He’s cleared the front end of tomorrow’s paper.

We’re in pole position in EDP speak, the ducks are all in a row and we’re on course to be splashed across pages 1, 2 and 3.

The office is buzzing as Nicki starts filing. Reporters crowd round to read it over my shoulder. At times like this it hits me how much I love my job and the crazy bunch of people I do it with.

I’m sitting there lapping up the excitement, savouring the moment, thinking I can’t believe how easily this has all fallen into place again.

OK, so the Mirror have beaten us to the punch this time. But they paid him £100,000, reportedly – and we haven’t even bought him a bag of chips.

Of all the dozens of journalists who’ve been camped outside Tony Martin’s ramshackle farm for the last fortnight, he’s spoken to one of ours.

The whole story’s been a team effort for the King’s Lynn office. We’ve staked out the farm in relays, run up telephone number mileage claims patrolling the countryside and milked our contacts dry in the hope of finding Tony Martin first and getting a sit down chat.

Four days before we met him we scored the crucial breakthrough. We found out where he was.

We knew doorstepping him would be a bad move. He’d either disappear into the Fenland mists or we’d end up alerting other media and see our scoop slip through our fingers.

So we started a dialogue. First we spoke through an intermediary. Then we started talking to Tony Martin. Then he said: “OK, OK – meet me this afternoon.”

One or two of our competitors had smelled a rat. Why weren’t we at the farm any more…? Did we know something they didn’t..?

Nicki’s softly-softly approach had paid off big time. But we needed a cover story to explain her absence.

Then I remembered: She was supposed to be on holiday anyway. But she’d got so wrapped up in the story she wasn’t going to hand the rod over at the last minute and let someone else land the fish.