The Telegraph is ‘an incontinent old lady’

The late Lord Deedes, former editor of and stalwart contributor to the Daily Telegraph until his death a year ago, described the new management as a "stinking mob". The stench emanating from the newspaper seems to be worsening according to at least one disgruntled employee who has now joined more than 200 journalists who have been sacked or made redundant or just have quit in disgust since the secretive Barclay twins, Sirs David and Frederick, took over from Conrad Black. Private Eye reports that Will Lewis (pictured), the newspaper's editor, was recently confronted with yet another resignation letter but one of remarkable frankness from Ben Rooney, who set up the paper's website and then worked on the foreign desk. "Enough is enough," he declared. "You have presided over the catastrophic devastation of the paper, reducing it to an embarrassingly empty husk. There it is, a once fine lady, now doubly-incontinent, seeing out her days in a dirty nursing home.

"You have overseen a Year Zero purge of everyone who made the Daily Telegraph a great newspaper, and not the vacuous receptacle for second-hand Daily Mail executives with their second-rate ideas, second-class judgement and shameful reliance on barely re-worked agency copy disguised as 'Daily Telegraph Reporter' or 'By Our Foreign Staff'...

"I know I can look back on what I did for the paper with huge pride. Will you be able to say the same? Or will you, like some Mini Me Mugabe, look back at the devastation you wreaked and claim that you were its saviour?" (Continued below)

The beleaguered Lewis - confronted by falling circulation and advertising revenue as well as standards and morale - is said to have read the letter to the end before issuing an edict banning Rooney from the Telegraph building for life. Mugabe would have indeed approved.