EmailToday's obituaries of Jocelyn Stevens, in the Daily Telegraph and the Times, rightly reflect his reputation as a ferocious newspaper manager.
In his time at Express Newspapers in the 1970s he revelled in his image as a posh bully, living up, or down, to Private Eye's nickname for him: "Piranha Teeth."
Several of his flamboyant exploits are recounted, such as throwing a fashion writer's typewriter through a window, terminating an employee's phone call by cutting the cable and firing a secretary in public over the intercom.
But some my favourite anecdotes about Stevens, who has died aged 82, don't get a mention. On train journeys between London and the Express offices in Manchester and Glasgow, he strode up and down the carriages tearing up abandoned copies of his own company's newspapers to prevent people reading them without paying.
He lifted the Daily Star's editor, Peter Grimsditch, off the ground more than once during arguments. And he fooled Sir Hugh Fraser into paying over the odds for the Glasgow Evening Citizen by concealing that he was about the close the printing works.
Stevens masterminded the retreat from Scotland of Express Newspapers in 1974, making 1,800 workers redundant, and boasting that his "bloodstained" closure had been "executed enormously efficiently."
That statement was, unsurprisingly, regarded as unduly callous and prompted 500 of the sacked printers and journalists to create a workers' cooperative to produce a paper called the Scottish Daily News.
It didn't last long, but there was considerable sympathy for the Express staff and the paper's sales north of the border declined swiftly.
Not that Stevens was worried. He had cut the publisher's costs at a stroke and ensured that the company remained profitable.
The obituaries also overlook the irony of Stevens having been handed his senior position at Express Newspapers. He was the grandson of the newspaper and magazine magnate Sir Edward Hulton who, during his dying days in 1923, had been tricked by the Express Newspapers' owner, Lord Beaverbrook.
Hulton had previously refused to sell his chain of newspapers to another press titan, Lord Rothermere. So Beaverbrook, supposedly Hulton's friend, persuaded the ailing man to sell them to him instead.
In fact, Beaverbrook was secretly acting as Rothermere's front man and once he had secured the deal he passed the titles on to Rothermere. Out of gratitude, Rothermere let Beaverbrook keep the London Evening Standard, which Hulton regarded as his favourite paper.
Four years after Beaverbrook's death, his son, Sir Max Aitken, hired Stevens in 1968 and put him in charge of his ancestor's best-loved paper, the Standard, with a single injunction: "Save it!"
Stevens did play a part in turning around the Standard's fortunes, although he took the credit for the diligent work of three other people - former managing director Owen Rowley, advertising director Brian Nicholson and editor Charles Wintour.
But Aitken believed it was all due to Stevens and promoted him to be managing director of the Daily Express, which was entering what has proved to be a long period of decline. His Scottish closure helped to put the company on a sounder footing but Aitken, who was anything but interested in his papers, decided in 1976 to sell them off.
Stevens talked to Lord Rothermere (Vere Harmsworth) about a merger with the Associated Newspapers, which was opposed by several figures within Express Newspapers. Other buyers also emerged, prompting Stevens to plan his own takeover. Rich as he was, he couldn't raise the funds.
So the group fell into the hands of a property and shipping conglomerate, Trafalgar House, and ended up being controlled by Lord (Victor) Matthews. He retained Stevens as his deputy chairman.
In 1979, with spare capacity on the printing presses and a wish to placate the unions, they conceived the idea of a left-wing red-top, the Daily Star.
But Matthews grew disenchanted with the paper's politics and with the patrician Stevens, who told his working class boss once too often what he thought of him. Stevens opposed a plan by Matthews in 1981 to float the company and they parted company.
In his 13 years in Fleet Street, Stevens left an indelible mark on its culture and history. No senior newspaper manager now could get away with having a notice on their office door, as Stevens did, saying: "The floggings will continue until morale improves".
To read more of his life you'll need to read the obits.
*Daily Telegraph & The Times See also Daily Express
