Ton Up

‘ANY asylum seeker worth his salt should know that to pass yourself off as British you need an insatiable appetite for talking about the weather.

One hundred degrees in the shade

By way of a crash course, the Sun removes all semblance of dossiers and dead scientists from its front page to announce ”101 – HOTTEST DAY IN HISTORY”.

The Mirror agrees with the score, putting the thermometer at 101, but qualifies it by saying Sunday was the ”hottest day ever recorded in Britain”.

And so we get onto the second most vital aspect of British life, namely the newspapers’ inability to universally agree on a simple fact like how hot it was yesterday.

For on the cover of the Mail the temperature has dropped to ”100F”. That is an entire degree colder than in the Sun and the Mirror.

And the Star agrees, also spotting the heat reach ”100”, although this time with an FF, given that the headline-making number shares the front page with pneumatic mod-el Jordan.

But it’s the pedantic Express which has the last word, agreeing that it was the ”hottest day in history” on its cover but that the temperature reached ”100.6”.

There is clearly much confusion.

And in the interests of truth we’ve had a word with a top Ministry of Defence scientist who says that the Sun’s 101 might have been ”hotted up” to sell more papers.

However, we refuse to confirm whether our source was called Michael Fish or not…

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Posted: 11th, August 2003 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink