“I really loved working in Glasgow because the paper had a small staff and I didn’t have to fight too hard to get out on big stories. It was a brilliant experience, even if they did chuck me in the deep end.”
She says that she always knew she wanted to work for a tabloid and her father, Paul Callan, was a big inspiration.
“My dad was a journalist for the Daily Mirror so I grew up with it in my front room. I fell in love with the whole culture of journalism and it just seemed like the most exciting job in the world. My dad was a gossip columnist in the days when papers had the money to send him jetting off to LA and Australia on a regular basis and I thought it was amazing that they would pay him to be out having a good time. Things are a bit different now and he actually tried to put me off tabloids because they aren’t what they used to be but I’ve never wanted to do anything else.”
It’s clear that she has journalism in her blood – her mother works for NBC in London – and she sold her first story to a tabloid when she was at school.
“I knew that the tabloids loved stories about posh kids behaving badly,” she laughs. “So when two of my classmates were expelled after they were found in bed together I called up my dad and he passed it on to the Sun.”
She says that only one person in her year knew about the betrayal until her book, Wicked Whispers, came out last year. Subtitled ‘Confessions of a Gossip Queen’, it’s fantastic reading for anyone who wants to know about the scandalous world of tabloid newspapers. It’s also filled with fantastic titbits about big stars like Elton John and George Clooney as well as soap stars, pop stars and other tabloid favourites.
Callan left the Mirror scheme after one year to take up a job on the gossip column of the Daily Telegraph and it was whilst she was there that she was discovered by Richard Wallace.
After six months of crashing parties and spilling secrets, the girls began to get recognised regularly. They were far from pleased with their newfound fame as it made it much harder to spy on celebs.
“People were actually frightened of us,” she says. “It worked against us because one of the main ways we got stories was by eavesdropping on conversations and then all of a sudden we just couldn’t. People noticed us listening in on them, especially in the ladies loos where all the gossip happens. We couldn’t spend half an hour reapplying our lipstick while we were listening to other conversations because people could see what we were doing.”
Getting recognised was also a double-edged sword when it came to sneaking past bouncers:
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“The more we went to parties the more we realised that it’s the same security guards who do pretty much all of the premieres in London. They get to know you as well which isn’t so great at first because they know you’re a journalist but after a while you learn how to get round them. There’s two ways to do that; either by bribing them, or some of them just get a kick out of helping you because they’re bored of just standing on the door stopping people. Some were obviously horrible but others would help you in and turn a blind eye and you’d send them a cheque when you get back to the office.”
Life on 3am was busy and, along with Eva and Polly, Jessica would often be out at parties five nights a week – it was definitely a full time job. I ask how the three girls fitted in to the macho environment of the Mirror offices in Canary Wharf.
“It was great because Piers psyched everyone up all the time,” she replies. “There was a massive sense of fun when Piers was there because he was so mischievous. He was really fair and girls weren’t left out – there was less of an old boys’ culture than there was at other papers. We always had big office parties and there’d be dancing and fancy dress.
By Lucy Smith
