- Dress to impress - 23rd July 2025
- A moving joke… - 22nd July 2025
- Torode to nowhere part two - 21st July 2025
During 41 years in journalism (when he was trained to use simple language, avoiding jargon) our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry (who spent 23 years with the BBC), would often be confronted by a manner of dress which went against the behaviour of the person, so crooks might be well turned out but people in dirty jeans could be straight as a die, and now, oddly, this is highlighted by a new film about a super-hero!
Don’t judge a book by its cover.
This hoary old phrase has as much relevance today in my journalism, as when it first appeared in print in 1860.
We saw it originally in George Eliot’s “The Mill on the Floss”, when the character of Mr Tulliver uses it while discussing “The History of the Devil” by Daniel Defoe.
Over the years its truth has become more and more evident to me – ever more so with our work on The Eye.
Crooked officials or business people can be extremely well dressed (fraudsters particularly so), and bent police officers might look very impressive.
On the other hand those looking a bit down at heel, wearing old or dirty clothes may give you an absolutely accurate account of disturbing practices.
You never can tell.
All of this, bizarrely, has been put centre stage for me by the new Superman film ‘The Man of Steel” released on July 11.
For onlookers it could be hard to take a man in blue tights and red briefs seriously, but he turns out to be doing extremely good things.
In it David Corenswet snaps on the Spandex for the first time, and stops one country from invading another.
Of course there are doubters, and people who apparently DO judge a book by its cover.
Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan, who brings a welcome spikiness to the role) is sceptical of action like this: does Superman stop to think about the consequences of getting involved in other countries’ conflicts, she wonders?
Can a man in tights really do this?
Rick Bowers, author of a book about Superman, described him as the “quintessential American”.
Talking of not getting taken in by (literally) the cover, the public first met Superman in June 1938, holding a car aloft on the front of “Action Comics 1”.
On the first page, Superman realises “he must turn his titanic strength into channels that would benefit mankind”, and ever since he has exuded square-jawed goodness and noblesse oblige.
It just goes to show – don’t judge a book by its cover. (as Superman might have said).
So I say to all those crooks I’ve exposed over the years – it doesn’t matter what you wear!
The memories of Phil’s astonishing, decades long award-winning career in journalism (when he was never taken in by what people wore) as he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A Good Story’. Order it now.
Tomorrow – how news that the first Post Office (PO) ‘Capture’ conviction is to be sent to the Court of Appeal (CA), has once again thrown the spotlight on the central role of Wales in the later Horizon scandal.
