According to Cristina Odone, writing for "The Observer", Dacre has a reputation towards underlings of "verbal abuse" and "a drill sergeant's delight in public humiliation". Nick Davies, in his book "Flat Earth News", writes that Dacre's staff call his morning editorial meetings the "Vagina Monologues" because of his habit of calling everybody a "cunt". In his "Desert Island Discs" appearance in 2004, host Sue Lawley quizzed him on his methods, to which Dacre responded: "Shouting creates energy, energy creates great headlines." Conrad Black, a convicted fraudster and ex-proprietor of the Telegraph papers, considers him "a saturnine and capricious manipulator". Peter Wilby, in a January 2014 profile for the "New Statesman", quoted an anonymous source, who said of Dacre: "He's no longer the expletive volcano he once was; his barbs these days tend to concern the brainpower of his target and their supposed laziness."