2007: Paris Hilton, Shilpa Shetty, Britney Spears, Bob Woolmer, Celebrity Perfumes And Tony Blair
ANORAK looks at 2007…Paris Hilton, Shilpa Shetty, Britney Spears, Bob Woolmer, Celebrity Perfumes And Tony Blair
JANUARY
SHILPA ‘fucking’ Poppadom, Jade ‘Hoody’ Goody, Danielle ‘Footballer Fan’ Lloyd and Jo ‘SS Club 7’ O’Meara contestants on celebrity Big Brother gave us an international race row.
Refereed by Ian ‘Preparation H’ Watkins, the spot of bigotry and bullying scored 45,000 complaints to Channel 4 and it as the TV hit of the year.
FEBRUARY
BRITNEY Spears has done for bald men what Victoria Beckham has done for thin women: she has made people question their motives.
Reasons why Britney took up the clippers and shaved off her hair were many. While Anorak looked for lice and a Nazi boyfriend, a customer at Ester’s Hair Studio in Sherman Oaks, where Britney Spears became Britney Shears, said: “She basically just said she was tired of having things plugged into her.”
MARCH
IF the plan was to make more people notice the sport, then this Cricket World Cup has achieved its objective by some distance.
For the few actually watching the show on Sky Sports, the biggest story was always going to be how fit the cricket into the holiday brochure.
With the commentary team bathed in sun and ensconced in a five-star beachside resort, viewers were treated to England’s Paul Nixon running into the surf topless with an equally underdressed Tim Abrahams, Sky’s cricket news man.
We live in enlightened times, and were encouraged to wonder how many of the travelling production crew were on a busman’s holiday, working the cricket around a civil partnership honeymoon.
But now that has been overtaken by news of Bob Woolmer, who began the tournament as Pakistan’s coach, and England’s coach-in-waiting, and ended it a murder victim.
As the Sun says: “IT WAS MURDER – Bob strangled in hotel room.” Or was it. Er, well, no. He died of natural causes…
APRIL
FRESH from an audience with President Ahmadinejad of Iran, Faye Turney looks out at Sun readers. Pictured with an Ahmadinejad own brand headscarf in her hand, Turney strikes a defiant blow for Western fashion and British military might.
“I feared being raped by Iranians,” says one teaser. “Stripped to knickers in dingy cell.” And: “The truth behind our TV smiles.”
Sun readers have every right to be appalled. Granted, Turney was not raped and at no time molested in a sexual manner. And being stripped to her knickers would, perhaps, be more shocking if Turney had been stripped to her Y-fronts, but the point is made..
NO little shock as Able Seaman Arthur Batchelor, friend to Faye Turney’s mother figure, is pictured not wearing in his Man At Ahmadinejad suit.
It was believed that having been captured and then set free by Iran’s fashion conscious leader, 5ft 2in tall Batchelor would wear his suit every day without fail thereby cementing his celebrity as the Iranian hostage who survived to sell his story. Never mind the length, admire the quality.
But here he is in the Mirror clad in a canary yellow shirt. Around his eyes is held a green and white tea towel. A gun (reportedly fake) is held across his throat.
Being kidnapped once is unlucky, twice suggests carelessness, a fetish for such role playing or a ploy to maintain his fame.
The Mail has a similar picture. And, as ever, it shows that Batchelor is grinning from ear to ear. This is the grin of defiance readers last saw when Batchelor was displaying his ping-pong skills to his Iranian captors.
Reading on we learn that Batchelor has been captured in a Plymouth nightclub. By our estimations this is well outside Iranian national waters. But while we await confirmation of that, Batchelor appears dressed in a nightie.
MAY
Madeleine McCann vanishes – read the story here
JUNE
“FLOOD PANIC,” screams the Express. There are one million “VICTIMS OF THE DELUGE”, chimes the Mail.
But we will not panic. The Express shows families queuing for water at a branch of Tesco’s in Gloucester. There are umbrellas and order.
“Panic buying hits Bournemouth,” says the caption above a front-page picture of a man loading bottles of water into the boot of a 4×4.
But there is no flooding in Bournemouth. The picture is only an illustration as to how one man shops. He stocks up. He drinks bottled water. He drives a 4×4. This is not a life-saving choice but one of lifestyle.
And here comes John Smeaton – hero and fighter of the The Killer NHS medics
CHERIE Blair says “Goodbye, goodbye, it’s time to go now…” She takesTony Blair with her
FARFUR the mouse is beaten to death
THE video tapes of Paris Hilton’s conjugal visits have yet to seep onto the Internet.
Paris Hilton’s list of jail demands, including an information sheet for guards on how she likes to be stripped searched, have yet to reach auction sites.
And Paris is already free. After just three days in her Hilton junior suite at the Century Regional Detention Facility, LA, Paris is back at home.
BERNARD Manning – a man who once made me weep with laughter – is dead. “RACIST IN PEACE,” says the Sun’s front page. “Scourge of PC brigade dead at 76.”
“I’m not racist,” says Manning from beyond the grave. “I slag everyone off.”
JULY
NO smoking. Anywhere.
WATER, water, everywhere – and sharks.
TEWKESBURY is on shark alert. “JAWS,” says the Sun. It’s the lead story, following on from the weekend’s “JAWS”.
“Second sighting of Great White circling off cost of Cornwall,” says the paper. The picture is from a video taken by Catherine Price, 48.
“You could see the fins just like Jaws as it swam through the water, it was absolutely huge,” she tells us and readers of Practical Fishkeeping, the UK’s bestselling aquarium magazine.
Readers look. It might be a shark. It might be Great White. It might be a Leviathan – weather chaos, climate change and global warming made flesh and tooth. It’s God’s vengeance on man. It might be an uprooted Gloucester apple tree, a shopping trolley or the Tirley mobile library.
DO we forget because we spend so long remembering? Good news indeed that Alan Johnson has been freed. “After 114 terrifying days in captivity, Alan Johnston’s ordeal – in his own words,” says the Mail’s front page.
What does he want to do know he is free? “Just the simplest things,” says Johnson. “Walking through any door, going down the street, seeing friends and family, people you love, you want to do it all at one go. You want to read books again, you want to sit in the sun and eat and speak.”
BECKHAM: It was the untapped market waiting to be prized open. But now David Beckham promises to conquer it. Laydees’n’gentalmen, we give you’re the Beckham shoelace. No, not Victoria Beckham. This is String‘Ems.
The Mail looks on as Beckham takes to the pitch for his LA Galaxy debut. Resplendent in box-fresh white shirt, shorts and socks, all with canary yellow trim and lacy blue piping, Beckham makes ready to unveil his new trick.
It is 78 minutes into the game. Beckham is on the pitch for 12 minutes. He touches the ball ten times. He makes one tackle, says the Times. The Mail spots 16 minutes and 19 seconds of play and 12 touches.
The Mail looks on as Beckham bends over. Using a trademarked combination of right and left hand, Becks ties his shoelaces.
The Mail hears a “wild cheer of relief”. Longoria, Schwarzenegger, Winstone, Holmes and Cruise are wowed. Brooklyn grins at Suri. And the crowd go home with joy in their hearts and an urge to buy the String’Em – works with boots and shoes. Use it as a hair band. Also available in red for Kabbalah enthusiasts.
Go Beckham! Get them while he’s still hot…
A DOUBLE DD. A double FF. A double AA. A double II. Glamour model Jordan and pop star Peter Andre have named their baby daughter Princess Tiaamii.
PETE Dohery and Kat Moss break…in two…
AUGUST
HOW did you celebrate 100 years of Scouting? By rolling your tie into a woggle, sitting on the knee of an old man wearing shorts and blistering your skin in the making of stinging nettle tea?
Perhaps you were one of the thousands of uniformed youth from 162 nations who arrived at Hylands Park in Chelmsford, Essex, for the mother of all jamborees?
You might even be one of the nine Bangladesh and Ugandan Scouts who set about earning what the Mail calls an “illegal immigrant badge”? Five male Bangladeshis – one is 12, two are 15, one is 16 and one 24 – two girls and a boy from Uganda aged 16 and 17, a 17-year-old Sri Lankan boy and a 15-year-old Nigerian have gone orienteering in London’s West End. Have they ever been found?
SEPTEMBER
PANIC at Northern Rock
You have to be 18 to legally buy cigarettes in a British shop. And judging by those pictures of Northern Rock customers waiting in line, you have to be 70 years and over to open an account at the building society
OCTOBER
CHANELLE Hayes is preparing to tell Star readers about her fight with “SMELLY Victoria Beckham.
The Big Brother star emeritus is getting ready. We see her dressed only in her knickers and bra (matching) and pulling up a pair of fishnet stockings.
Inside, spread over the Star’s centre-crease, Chanelle is “Chanelle No.1”. She is launching her own perfume. Called Simply Chanelle, the scent features top notes of used hankie, fresh tissue and bottom notes of out-the-box PVC. “I’m really pleased with it,” says 
Chanelle. “I chose the name and chose loads and loads of different samples.”
And, of course, Chanelle hopes she will beat smelly’ Posh’s own signature odour. The two women look a little alike, and it is hoped that the addition of branded scents will help one and all differentiate between the two. And stop David Beckham from making a terrible mistake…
Other perfumes by Katie Prince, Kelly Brook, Calum Best, Alex Curran. Ah, the smell of it…
NOVEMBER
GILLIAN Gibbons falls foul of the Teddy Bear Taliban
JUDGE Robert Restaino “snapped”. Hours spent in the wainscoted walls of a fuggy American courtroom have finally got to him. He experienced “two hours of inexplicable madness”.
Mr Restaino (not Restraino – if only) is ready to mete out justice when he hears the urgent trill of a mobile phone.
In Anorak’s list Of Ten Items To Enrage the mobile phone ring is at Number 2, only pipped to the top spot by the occasional appearances of Anthea Turner on our television screens. If anyone should, of course, happen to own a mobile with an Anthea Turner ringtone (“Poor Della!” it trills) we would elevate it to the top spot and the mobile would be relegated to No. 3. But until that momentous and devilish day…
Back in the courtroom, Mr Restaino wants answers. Whose phone is it? Own up! No-one will admit to it. Says Mr Restaino: “Everyone is going to jail. Every single person is gong to jail in this courtroom unless I get that instrument now. If anybody believes I’m kidding, ask some of the folks that have been here for a while. You are all going.”
No-one moves. We expect some giggle. And off to jail they go. All 46 of them.
DECEMBER
AMY Winehouse. And more Amy Winehouse. Oh, and the Darwins…
Posted: 23rd, December 2007 | In: Reviews Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
