Pilot Mike Roberts: The Making And Unmaking Of A Tabloid Hero
MIKE Roberts is the Sun’s “HERO”. He’s the “CRASH PILOT” who “used his last moments to STEER his stricken jet away from flats and AVOID 20 youngsters playing in a park”.
But five die as the Cessana Citation aircraft crashed into Romery Close, Oprington, Kent. Mr Roberts is among the dead.
Grim news. But it’s not enough for the Sun which needs a hero. The accident investigation team have yet to ascertain what occurred, but the Sun knows.
“HOW DID WE NOT DIE?” asks the Mirror’s front-page headline. The Sun knows.
The Mirror hears the crew’s last transmission as a voice says: “We’re going in. We’re going in.” The aircraft is screaming like a “fighter jet”, the Mail hears it said. The Mirror hears the sound of a hurricane.
Patricia Harman has just returned home from a trip to Madeira. She looks at her home. “Oh my God,” she says. “A plane into the house.”
“It was either amazing flying or a pure miracle no one else was hurt,” says one eyewitness.
The Sun knows which.
With a hero it has a face to talk about tomorrow. Back in January, the pilot who crash-landed a British Airways Boeing 777 at Heathrow Airport was the hero.
By the weekend, captain Peter Burkill was pictured more than decade earlier cavorting with stewardesses.
Ex-air steward Gary May, who was at a party on a US stopover, told the News of the World: “It was a total sex-fest. Birds were always all over him. He was so good looking they called him Perfect Peter.
Readers were told: “After licking the chocolate off and soaping him down they also played an airline game with him, putting liquorice up his bottom.”
Mr Roberts might have died a hero – although dying in an accident is always a waste of human life – but he will he live on in the Sun…
Posted: 31st, March 2008 | In: Tabloids Comments (14) | TrackBack | Permalink
