“Don’t Ask, Don’t Get” - the memoirs of photojournalist Steve Grayson
Written by Steve Grayson on September 1st, 2008
Steve Grayson - ex-senior photojournalist for News of the World.
I have been thinking about writing my memoirs for some time now. The chance meeting with Jill Tipping from Kavanagh Tipping Publishing made me take the plunge and go for it. I had been approached a couple of times from other publishing companies, but they wanted me to unearth and expose the news stories I had been involved with over the years. That was not for me. It didn’t feel right. I wanted to record the real truth about what it is like being an investigative photojournalist and I wanted to be able to talk about my life in general and how my work has affected me, and my nearest and dearest!
Interestingly, an ex-colleague of mine, Mazher Mahmood, a.k.a, The Fake Sheikh, has also just written his autobiography. The strange thing is that neither of us knew the other was doing it and we haven’t been in contact for years, and yet we are publishing our books in the same month! How wierd is that? His book is very different to mine. It’s called Confessions of a Fake Sheik (The King of Sting). I haven’t read it yet but the write ups that I have read are suggesting that it is a story of exposés and not really like my book at all. Interesting!
My colleagues that I have spoken to in the press have suggested I should have put all the details of those I have ‘turned over’ and what happened. After all I suppose that would seem to be more dramatic. Bit like the movies really. But I just wanted to tell the truth. That’s all.
There are a lot of things I have done in my life that I am not proud of and many things have troubled me over the years. Writing my book has been quite theraputic. I often think to myself ‘who would want to read about me’ but I suppose any story about someone’s life can be interesting, and I have certainly been involved in a wide variety of activities over the past 60 years.
I have written my book with the help of Frances Kavanagh. It has taken us around 6 months to do with weekly meetings to get all the information out of my head. No mean feat I can tell you. She has a lot of patience!
