Possible Clues:

• Can do without former partner, as writer and director up to the job
• Writing item in Echo & Times, tinker half-heartedly -- it's throwaway
• Non-essential
• Former writer and director up to the job producing Throwaway
• Old writer, expert the French regarded as not worth keeping on
• Able to be sacrificed
• Easily sacrificed
• Easily abandoned
• Not required to use up first victim we hear
• Without power, conclude one's clever but not important