Doubting Tom

‘ANY idea what today’s big news story is? We only ask in the hope that if you have any idea – any idea at all – you will tell the papers.

Life is like a box of wafers

Surely, says you, there must be news of Omar Bakri, the Sun’s “mad mullah”, who on slow news days can be relied upon to say something priggish? But no. And neither is their any news of any of his shadowy band.

What about the Mail’s story on how radial Islam gives you cancer? Sadly not. There are stories about addictive headache pills, that drink-related deaths are up to 20 per cent in “bingeing Britain” and how women are addicted to tanning, a condition called “tanorexia”, but cancer is on holiday.

There must be some hope that the Express can pull out the stops and in the best traditions of fearless reporting tell us how the lack of rainfall is affecting house prices in Aylesbury.

But though we look to the Express for guidance in such matters, there’s no mention of it. Instead there’s a phone vote, which asks: “Should Japan compensate British victims for atrocities.”

Which leaves us to think that the war on terror must be over (hurrah!), that cancer has been cured (hurrah!) and that the value of a maisonette in Bournemouth is no longer considered big news (yippee!).

But we still need a story to inform our day. Anything will do. So here’s the Sun telling us that movie star Tom Hanks looks “rough”.

Spotted turning up at Lincoln Cathedral for the making of the film of the hit book The Da Vinci Code, Hanks was “putting the ‘old’ into Old Testament”.

While he doesn’t look his full three score years and ten, it’s undeniable that Hank’s lank hair and pale skin give him a less than fresh-faced look.

Although it’s not easy looking cool, calm and tanorexic when being confronted by a rookery of nuns.

Not everyone’s happy that the movie of a book which alludes to secrets of the Christian Church – Jesus married Mary Magdalene and fathered her child; Christianity is a sexist conspiracy to exclude women from positions of power; and that neither Tony Blair nor Cliff Richard is the Messiah – is being filmed in an actual place of worship.

Some, like Sister Mary Michael, take exception to author Dan Brown’s work of fiction being passed off as some kind of fact. She tells the Express that it is “against the very essence of what we believe”.

For reasons best known to herself, Sister Mary confronted Hanks not only with her words and righteous indignation but with a large metal crucifix in her hand and a picture of Jesus, of the type produced by the Turin Shroud.

Although given the length of Hank’s hair, his palour and aged countenance, the portrait might in fact not be a likeness of Jesus but a photo of the star which Sister Mary hopes he will sign…’

Posted: 16th, August 2005 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink