Australian Dictionary of Biography

David McNicoll

Penelope Nelson

David Ramsay McNicoll (1914–2000), journalist, newspaper editor, and columnist, was born on 1 December 1914 at Geelong, Victoria, youngest of five sons of Victorian-born parents (Sir) Walter Ramsay McNicoll, teacher, and his wife Hildur Marschalck, née Wedel. After his father was appointed headmaster of Presbyterian Ladies’ College, Goulburn, New South Wales, David boarded at Scotch College, Melbourne (1927–32), where he excelled in English, was a leading light in drama and debating, and edited the school magazine. He was judged by his headmaster, William Still Littlejohn, to be ‘a young man of exceptional literary gifts’ with ‘a charming personality’ (McNicoll 1979, 19).

McNicoll landed his first job in journalism in 1933—a four-year cadetship at the Sydney Morning Herald—against stiff competition. After a solid training in all aspects of the trade, and possessing a literary bent, in mid-1939 he was assigned a daily gossip column under the pseudonym ‘Jack Meander.’ He also contributed verse, short stories, and light social commentary. On 28 May 1938, on a shared impulse, he married Jean Morison McCay (1914–1983), a journalist, at St Andrew’s Scots Presbyterian Church, Rose Bay. Micky (as she was commonly called) was the daughter of Delamore McCay and niece of Adam McCay, both prominent journalists and poets. Like McNicoll, she had been a cadet at the Herald from 1933. She became a reporter on the social pages and worked until her first pregnancy in 1943, before returning to journalism seven years later as the Daily Telegraph’s women’s editor. She left the regular workforce in 1959, and travelled as a special correspondent on Australian Women’s Weekly World Discovery Tours (1967–75).

On the outbreak of World War II, in September 1939 McNicoll enlisted in the Citizen Military Forces and served with the 2nd Armoured Regiment, then in July 1940 joined the newly formed 7th Division Cavalry Regiment, Australian Imperial Force. In December the regiment embarked aboard the Queen Mary for Palestine, thence to Egypt, and finally to Cyprus for four months. Commissioned in October 1941, and promoted to temporary captain in May 1942 (substantive 1944), he was probably not, as he later claimed, ‘a hopeless soldier’ (McNicoll 1979, 33), but he was certainly a lucky one, for his unit saw no direct enemy action. He published poems about his experiences, which were highly regarded by the prominent editor and poet Kenneth Slessor; in Australia one of them, ‘Air Mail Palestine,’ was among the most popular poems of the war. After garrisoning in Syria and Lebanon, the regiment was recalled to Australia at the end of 1943 for retraining. At a Melbourne cocktail party in early 1944, McNicoll met (Sir) Frank Packer who offered him, out of the blue, a job as war correspondent for Consolidated Press Ltd to cover the impending Allied invasion of Europe. He accepted the offer with alacrity, was transferred to the Reserve of Officers in April 1944, resigned from the Herald, and embarked for London.

McNicoll crossed to France aboard HMS Hilary, headquarters ship for the Third Canadian Army, on 6 June 1944. Standing offshore at an unsafe distance, he witnessed, and later followed, the D-Day landings at Normandy, describing them in spare and suspenseful prose for readers in Sydney, as well as the London Evening Standard, the Melbourne Argus, and the Brisbane Courier-Mail. Soon after returning to London he was reassigned to General George Patton’s United States Third Army to cover the pursuit of the retreating German forces after the fall of Caen. He associated with famous American correspondents, including Ernest Hemingway, and on at least one occasion narrowly avoided being killed when German troops approached the disused hotel where he was quartered. Soon after, he attached himself to General Leclerc’s French column and witnessed the liberation of Paris in August, reporting both the euphoria and the reprisals. In November 1944 he left Europe, destined for a stint in the Consolidated Press’s New York office. He travelled to Buenos Aires, where, in May 1945, he secured a rare and widely syndicated interview with the war minister Colonel Juan Perón, who became president of Argentina the following year.

When McNicoll returned to Sydney at the end of 1945, Packer and Daily Telegraph editor Brian Penton wanted him to write a ‘column of news—part gossip, part political, part exposures, part insertion of the scimitar’ (McNicoll 1979, 115), a composite of the American columnists Walter Winchell (society and cultural gossip) and Drew Pearson (political muckraker), both of whom he consulted in person in the United States of America. ‘Town Talk’ was the first regular front page column in an Australian newspaper, appearing in the Daily Telegraph from 4 February 1946, and preceding Jim Macdougall’s Sydney Sun column, ‘Contact,’ by a fortnight. Knowing, forthright, cryptic, cheerful, raffish, and occasionally grumpy, McNicoll’s column lasted for over five years and—aided by Les Tanner’s scowling, jowly, and mustachioed caricature—established him as the self-assured and well-informed observer and member of Sydney’s political and social elites. The archetypal man about town, he was at his ease in all the best circles, unashamedly right wing in his politics and social values, brusque but charming, with a streak of vulgarity and a fund of sometimes scandalous anecdotes from a wide range of informants. He wrote his last Town Talk column on 14 June 1952, before serving a year and a half as chief sub-editor.

In November 1953 Packer appointed McNicoll editor-in-chief of Consolidated Press, a controversial promotion, seen by some as personal favouritism. The parting advice of his retiring predecessor, E. W. MacAlpine—‘Don’t let him kill you, Dave!’—was justified by a three-page memo listing his duties, summed up as responsibility for ‘the entire editorial administration of all our publications excluding the Women’s Weekly … and for the editorial content of the paper, editorials and features’ (McNicoll 1979, 130). The quid pro quo was a generous overseas travel allowance, of which he made extensive professional and personal use, mostly on his own. Many of the leaders appearing on the front page of the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs were his own work, promoting a right-of-centre view which he and Packer, for the most part, shared. He was also expected to handle the fallout when Packer’s reactionary impulses exceeded acceptable bounds; in an editorial on race riots in the United States in July 1967, Packer dictated almost an exhortation to the police to shoot five hundred rioters. Afterwards, Packer directed McNicoll, who had been returning from overseas at the time, to write a toned-down ‘explanation.’

Packer valued McNicoll’s effectiveness as a ‘hatchet man’ (McNicoll 1979, 137), especially during times of industrial conflict in the 1950s and corporate belt-tightening in the early 1960s. In the sphere of national politics, he unwaveringly supported the Liberal Party of Australia (though he liked and admired some Australian Labor Party leaders), and became a trusted go-between in Packer’s efforts to support (Sir) William McMahon’s leadership aspirations after the death of Harold Holt in late 1967, and again following (Sir) John Gorton’s near defeat at the 1969 Federal election.

McNicoll served as a director of Australian Consolidated Press Ltd from 1960, but above all, became the organisation’s suave and genial public face, a role he performed on television as moderator of the program Meet the Press on TCN-9 Sydney for several years from 1956. Internally, he strengthened the ACP’s complement of journalists with a string of new recruits (Alan Reid, Ken Slessor, Eric Baume, Jim Macdougall, Ross Campbell), and broadened its popular appeal with a suite of fresh comic strips (including Peanuts). His term as editor-in-chief came to an end when, in June 1972, Packer sold the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs to Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited. After a few months of freelancing as ‘Benelong’ for the Sunday Telegraph, McNicoll accepted Packer’s offer of a regular weekly column and an editorial consultancy at the Bulletin, roles he retained for the rest of his career. For a quarter of a century, his column entertained and provoked readers with its combination of political analysis and social views which were often satirical, and usually conservative. Its range of subjects was vast: reminiscences of old Sydney and its denizens, travel experiences in Australia and abroad, conversations with royals and celebrities, horse-racing and casino gambling (both lifelong enthusiasms), ballooning, wine tasting, and cricket.

On 13 April 1983, Micky died of emphysema at Bellevue Hill, Sydney. Despite ‘Dapper Dave’s’ (Brearley 2000, 5) frequent philandering, the couple had shared a deep collegial partnership. She had stayed in the marriage, their daughter reported her saying, because he never bored her. Witty, hard-working and gregarious, Micky was family-minded in a way her husband was not, but she was also a pioneer for women in senior roles in Australia’s mainstream press.

The McNicoll style was convivial, colloquial, and occasionally acerbic. He regarded interviewing as ‘one of the most interesting parts of the journalistic profession’ (McNicoll 1995, 91), and he had the intellectual skills and social grace to do it well. Some of his most memorable interviewees would include Sir Robert Menzies, Princess Margaret, (Baroness) Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Robert Mugabe, Truman Capote, and—the one he valued most—Nelson Mandela in 1973, then imprisoned on Robben Island, South Africa. He was widely popular, but certainly not to everyone’s taste, and anathema to the left. For Patrick White he was ‘one of the worst Australian reactionaries and philistines’ (White 1994, 436). He was nonetheless deeply respected, not just for his journalism but for his work, over many years, for the International Press Institute, and the Australian Press Council, of which he was a founding member in 1976, and ACP nominee (1987–99). The council awarded him its inaugural medal in 2000. He had been appointed CBE in 1969, and in 1996 was created chevalier of the Légion d’honneur by the French government. In April 1999 he suffered a stroke, and resigned from the Bulletin. He died on 3 November 2000 at Bellevue Hill, his home since 1953, and was cremated. His children, Penelope and David, who also became prominent writers, survived him.