One night in November 2022, outside a members’ bar in London called the Century Club, a former tabloid journalist, Graham Johnson, was queuing to get inside a party crammed with famous people. Johnson, in his mid-50s, is pale and craggy—a sardonic Liverpudlian who tends to wear dark blue specs and big headphones which, when not in use, he keeps clasped around his throat like a necklace. Years ago, when Johnson was a keen reporter on the Sunday Mirror, and before that the News of the World, he might have appeared outside a celebrity-filled party such as this one without being invited. He might have come wearing hidden vid- eo equipment, his pockets stuffed with drug-testing surface swabs. Encouraged by a gossip-hungry editor, or egged on by newsroom colleagues, Johnson might have challenged himself to blag entry using clever backdoor means (dressing up as a caterer, say) before roaming the party looking for printable evidence of cocaine use. “Toilet cubicles first,” he once advised me.
This evening, though, Johnson’s name was on the guestlist. He checked his coat and plunged in. The Century Club had been hired out for the night by the actor Hugh Grant: open bar, posh canapés, a stand-up comedian making jokes that—same as the food and booze—came at Grant’s expense. This party had a dual purpose, serving as both a birthday celebration for the actor as well as a gesture of thanks to the dozens of people, Johnson included, who are involved in a movement to curtail the excesses of the British tabloid press.