Tabloids Category
The news as told by the UK’s tabloid press – The Sun, Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Daily Star and News of the World.
Mark Ronson Lights Up The Brits
SOMETIMES you can see the Wizard. The Star is talking with Mark Ronson, music producer and friend to Amy Winehouse.
Ronson is up for gongs at this year’s Brits, presented by pixie-voiced own-brand ketchup champion Sharon Osbourne.
Says Ronson: “It feels like I should be able to run around naked with toilet roll spinning around the place”.
“Mark vows to strip at ceremony,” says the Star’s headline. “EXCLUSIVE”.
Says Ronson: “You’ve put the idea in my head and I’m sure Sharon will demand it.”
Idea placed. Headline answered…
Posted: 16th, January 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comment
Jamie Oliver On Eggs And Strangulation
JAMIE Oliver, or, rather, JAMIE! Oliver!!! is upset that his latest crusade has not been taken up by one and all.
Jamie is into free range, the farming practise in which chickens are allowed to see the outside world and glimpse through the wire a world of possibilities. They are then slaughtered. It is the humane way.
But in Jamie’s Fifteen Cornwall eatery, a diner is being affronted with an egg. The Sun says the customer “noticed an egg’s ID stamp was not free range and snapped it”.
Was this shell of egg secreted in a meal? Or are diners in Jamie’s restaurant’s presented with less a menu than a basket of raw ingredient from which they are invited to take as many as they like to from a dish? Eggs are simple enough, but what of the beef?
The story is that the usual supplier failed to produce the eggs on time so staff ordered 360 eggs from elsewhere.
This suggests something about the farming industry and why battery eggs are popular. But Jamie is unhappy. “We have cast-iron rules on what any chef can buy in Fifteen around the world,” says Jamie. “I’ve never been so disappointed in all my life. Heads will roll.”
How the heads swill roll is unsaid. But given Jamie’s hands-on look at farming, we suggest strangulation…
Posted: 16th, January 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comment
Paul Burrell: Diana And The ‘Pitiful Charade’
PAUL Burrell is at the Princess Diana inquest. He has in his possession a “last secret”.
What happens next leads to the “humiliation of Burrell” (Express) and a “FLOP SECRET” (Sun).
It was high time Burrell broke his silence. He owes it to Diana. And now he is ready.
The court waits. The room is alive with speculation. Would this be the moment Burrell reveals how the Queen Mother made a pass at him and when rebuffed threatened to reveal how Diana had asked for his hand in marriage and had worked incognito as a Lenny Henry lookalike for two years?…
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 16th, January 2008 | In: Royal Family, Tabloids | Comment
Slim Pickings On Coronation Street
THE camera cuts to a perplexed pub cook Betty Turpin eyeing with a suspicion often reserved for visiting Cockneys and edible knickers, Coronation Street’s polenta and cheese ready meal.
Betty had best get used to it. The Sun says Coronation Street “bosses” have ordered the cast to stop eating fatty foods and to slim down. Even today’s widescreen TVs are proving too small to contain the thespians.
“Big Stars like Jennie McAlpine, who plays Fizz Brown, will be under the microscope,” says the Sun. Or, rather, the telescope.
This is, of course, no more than reality entering the world of fictional soap.
Viewers should expect one of those health warnings to punctuate each instalment of The Street – “Characters are played by actors who eat five pieces of fruit a day, the cigarettes are asparagus tubes filled with organic talcum powder, and crisps are made of raw slices of potato, the ‘crunch’ sound produced by the sound affects team munching on carrots.”
Look out for cameo appearance from Jamie Oliver who enters the Rovers bar and cooks crisps from “raw”, before adding a natural chicken flavour by killing a hen live on air and with an artisan’s pestle and mortar grinding the meat to a fine powder…
Posted: 16th, January 2008 | In: Tabloids, TV & Radio | Comment
In The Night Garden: In The Changing Room
CHILDREN look away now. More news of the In The Night Garden industrial tribunal.
The Sun says “TV gay” Isaac Blake (a professional Tombliboo) was called a “faggot” after “he and another man were caught with their trousers down in the changing room”, allegedly.
It was never this way with Mr Benn. One step into the changing room and he was altered in a jiffy. Although the shopkeeper did have a strange look about him and an extensive CCTV video collection…
Posted: 16th, January 2008 | In: Tabloids, TV & Radio | Comment
Britney Spears’ Hits A Suicide Note
BRITNEY’ Spears. And a “WORLD EXCLUSIVE” on the cover of the Sun. The story: “IT WOULD BE BETTER IF I WAS DEAD.”
But Spears is not dead. She has six months to live. As the National Enquirer has told us, Spears will not reach her allotted three scores years and ten but perish on July 21 2008.
Sadly for showbiz reporters with diaries to keep, this is as precsie as it gets. But, as Sigmund Freud, told us “When we attempt to imagine death, we perceive ourselves as spectators”, and there is every chance that if the hacks remain vigilant they will capture the final moments.
Perhaps in readiness for this, Britney Spears has, as reported, penned a note. The Sun says it is a “suicide note”. It goes: “Perhaps it would be better if I was dead.”
It’s not quite “My Way”, but Spears has never been the best lyricist. Indeed, the “friend” who found the note and told the tabloids all about it discovered no more words. Perhaps with some instrumentals the refrain could be repeated over and over and over and faded out?
But “CRY FOR HELP” is a work in progress. “Tormented, terrified and mentally ill,” writes the Sun. “SUICIDAL STAR ON BRINK.” She’s the new Diana.
The paper mentions “fits of terror”, “mentally ill”, “tormented”, “manic depression” and what could be the celebrity illness of 2008, “possible multiple personality disorder”.
The Sun does not dare take its eyes from Spears. It cares enough to watch her at all times, to look on in case she does something stupid, again. Such is the paper’s care for her…
Posted: 16th, January 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comment
Princess Diana’s Is The Media’s Whore
NO easy thing to breathe new life into the Princess Diana legend.
But her mother Frances Shand Kydd has made good fist at it by calling her daughter a “WHORE”.
Kydd, who looks like Michael Caine in drag, gives rise to the front-page headlines: “YOU WHORE DIANA” (Sun), “DIANA YOU ARE A WHORE” (Express), “THE DAY DIANA’S MOTHER CALLED HER A WHORE (Mail) and “DIANA WAS A WHORE” (Star).
The shock may have affected the papers’ ability to pun and make light of news. But it can be hoped that this development has opened up new and exciting avenues for Diana and her official merchandisers.
Look out for the Diana’ Telephone Kiosk Calling Card (embossed and bearing the legend “By Royal Appointment”), the Diana Doll (with realistic tilting head) and the Diana: No Hire Love, a 500-page study on Diana’s knicker drawer by Paul Burrell…
Posted: 15th, January 2008 | In: Royal Family, Tabloids | Comments (4)
Danielle Lloyd’s A Liver Bird
“DANI – I’ll show you my arts,” says Danielle Lloyd on the Star’s cover page.
Danielle hails from Liverpool, which just happens to be Europe’s Capital of Culture (one year only!).
“I’m so proud of my home city – it’s the best in the world,” says Danielle, who spends most of her life in Essex and London.
As for Danielle’ arts, they are manifest in a painting, a vision of orange and orangey-browns daubed onto what passes for her own body in what some reviewers are calling “a paean to Titian” and others “a post modern indictment of the ready-cooked chicken industry”…
Posted: 15th, January 2008 | In: Back pages, Celebrities, Tabloids | Comments (2)
Sarkozy And Bruni Pay Queen’s Bed And Board
PRESIDENT Nicolas Sarkozy of France is to visit Her Majesty the Queen on his first State Visit to the United Kingdom since becoming President of the French Republic.
The State Visit will begin on 26 March 2008 at Windsor Castle and will last until 28 March 2008.
And the Sun’s Fergus Shanahan reports that “snooty courtiers” (are there any other kind?) want separate rooms for Sarkozy and his leggy lover Carla Bruni. This, we are told, is because they are unmarried.
Perhaps a compromise can be reached and two single beds be divided by a bedside table, or a member of the household cavalry?
But, hold on, five pages earlier, the same paper reports: “Sarkozy has wed his Carla.” Surely now the President and his wife can share a double bed and not have to meet in secret by the big tree…?
Posted: 15th, January 2008 | In: Politicians, Royal Family, Tabloids | Comment (1)
An Industrial Tribunal In the Night Garden
IN The Night Garden we hear the sound of an industrial tribunal convening.The Anorak suggests that the case of one Isaac Blake – sacked from his role as a professional Tombliboo – should be adjudged by Mr Benn with the aid of the always fair Uncle Bulgaria and Timmy Mallett.
Says Blake in the Sun, recalling one episode of being asked to jump on a chair: “I didn’t feel safe but they just told me to get on with it.”
Mr Blake fell and suffered bruising.
In the Express, Isaac says his pink and brown suit was faulty. He says he suffered homosexual abuse, being called “bitch” and “faggot” by someone called Alicia, who has probably been spending too much time with Makka Pakka…
Freddie Starr Gooses Samantha Fox On Wife Swap
FOR some years, Anorak has been wondering as to the whereabouts of Freddie Starr.
Fears abounded that Mr Starr was languishing in an Austrian jail, charged and found guilty of mentioning the war and glorifying in Hitler as he toured with the act that made him a stalwart of ITV’s Who Do You Do? through so much of the 1970s.
One of Starr’s escapades was goose-stepping up and down London’s Oxford Street dressed as Hitler, hailing taxis and demanding to be taken to Poland. Did he try to rescale the comedy heights in Vienna?
Happily, it can be revealed that Freddie is at large and soon to appear on the TV show Wife Swap. Freddie will swap ‘wives’ with Sam Fox, the 1980s topless model, who lives with Myra Stratton.
Freddie’s wife is one Donna, who is 27 years his junior. Freddie is 64, making Donna a sprightly 37, a mere nipper when Freddie was doing Hitler.
Anyone keen to discover if Donna actually thinks Starr is Hitler should tune into the show…
Posted: 15th, January 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids, TV & Radio | Comments (25)
Paul Burrell Rocks Up
VACUUM the carpet and dust off your Man At Diana dress, Paul Burrell is arrived in town.
There’s Burrell on the covers of the Mail and Express. He’s appearing at the Princess Diana Inquest.
“Diana’s ‘rock’ faces a grilling…will he drop a bombshell?” asks the paper. Or will he save it for his next book?
A world waits…
Posted: 14th, January 2008 | In: Royal Family, Tabloids | Comment (1)
Two Million Immigrants Are Heading Home
“BRITAIN TO BUILD 2 MILLION HOMES FOR MIGRANTS,” says the Express. “Influx puts massive pressure on services.”
Meanwhile, over in the Express’s thrusting sister paper, the Star, the headline reads: “1M ILLEGALS SET TO INVADE BRITAIN.”
We would seem to be making ready for them.
Laurence Hart, of Migration Watch, tells the Star: “He said numbers setting sail from Libya are so great that half the military budget of Malta 220 miles away is spent trying to deal with migrants sailing north.”
Indeed. We wonder how much that amounts to, and if the other half us sued to polish the “Big Sword”.
And if the Maltese would be better off using their money to build houses for the new arrivals…
Posted: 14th, January 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comments (2)
LILY Allen Quote Of the Day: In Bed With Lily
TODAY’S Lily Allen quote is channelled via her brother Alfie.
He tells the Mirror: “She’s at home in bed and everyone is running around after her.”
Lily Allen Fact (Daily Star): “A Lily Allen-style fringe is the most dangerous type of haircut for women behind the wheel of a car.”
Although, it remains No. 1 when it comes to driving HGVs.
Posted: 14th, January 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comments (2)
Gordon Brown’s Shares Scandal
THE plan so far: Gordon Brown wants to take your organs.
For now, the talk is of waiting for you to first die, although do you really need two kidneys, two eyes (Gordon has made it to the top with just one) and two arms?
Indeed, now with hands free phones, Polish gardeners and Filipino maids, middle class women might need no limbs at all, and can surrender them to people who really need them, like our Olympic hopefuls, pensioners and builders.
Make body part sales tax deductible and the trade may yet take off and aid the UK’s balance of trade.
To the present, and Brown is in the Sun stood beside the headline: “I saw pal nearly die waiting for heart. Donor let him live.”
“British peoples are a giving lot,” says Gordon, noting the Blue Peter bottle tops appeal and donations made to good causes via the National Lottery.
“A friend from school was within a few hours of dying because there was no donor available,” says Gordon, whose heart aches. “People were doubting the operation could happen. Then an organ was found hundreds of miles away. A life that could have been lost now flourishes.”
The moral of the story is clear: the exiting system works just fine.
Thanks Gordon.
Thanks for sharing with us…
Posted: 14th, January 2008 | In: Politicians, Tabloids | Comment
Hollyoaks Actress Floats
A PICTURE in the Mirror of an actress from the Hollyoaks soap opera .
She is, as is the norm, wearing swimming gear. And actress Louise Summers is immersed totally beneath the waters.
Will she drown? Not a chance. There she goes, rising to the surface like a piece of, well, wood…
Posted: 14th, January 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comment
Omar Barki Come Home
OMAR Bakri, the UK’s favourite mad mullah is back.
As Anorak readers know, every since Bakri left the country, and left behind his green Ford Galaxy, we have been looking for a man to be our Islamic Nutter In Residence.
He had the massive bins, the wiry beard and the ability to shout at men, women, children and pigeons with equal gusto. When it came to being a nutter, Bakri had the lot.
And now he is back. Well, sort of. Bakri returns only in word.
The Mirror reports that the Tottenham Taliban, now touring Lebanon, has “boasted on Iranian TV that his organisation is recruiting British students.
How fortunate those Iranians are have someone like Bakri to enliven a news bulletin with his wit. Iran is a land chock full with loons. And we asks: can we have one?
Bakri come home…
Posted: 14th, January 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comments (4)
Britney Spears Has A Blast
“BRITNEY IN A BURKA,” announces the Star’s front-page headline.
We will have to take the paper’s word for it. The picture shows the top part of a face. The eyes – mad, staring, pained etc. – are Britney’s, but with little else on view the rest could belong to someone else.
But this is not now. This is the Star’s computer wizardry department imagining what would occur if Britney married her Muslim lover Adnan Ghalib.
Says a “pal”: “It would be a mark of respect to Adnan and his family, and it would give her the anonymity she is craving.”
Indeed, not a day passes without a source telling the world how Britney wants to be alone. Anonymity is her paradise.
But how we stare. There’s Britney on the Mirror’s front-page, dressed in a burka with a plunging neckline. Says the news: “BRITNEY – I’ll commit suicide if they lock me up again.”
This is not good news. Might it be that Britney, a new convert to Islam, will go out with a bang, taking with her half of Fleet Street, gossip sites and paparazzi who all rely on her for their income?
Or can we prevent disaster by throwing a veil over Britney and her career?
Posted: 14th, January 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comment
Britney Spears’ Flying Circus, Kentwood
THE Mirror’s Britney Spears correspondent is in Kentwood, Louisiana.
She is investigating. The question is “what if Britney had never found fame and simply slipped back into obscurity after child stardom on the Mickey Mouse club? Would a very ordinary Britney today be a Kentwood housewife, content with nights out at Nyla’s Burger Basket, inviting friends to a crawfish boil on Sunday nights and limiting herself to £60 a month in a local Gap store?”
Mirror readers in their ready-meal starter homes may well fizz at news of the exotic.
But Julie McCaffrey is not looking for answers. So she speaks with “mum-of-two” Sarah Schilling, who “like Britney, is 26 and is from Kentwood.” Although: “She’s never seen her name up in lights, never been photographed without her knickers and never shaved off her long hair..”
Indeed, being in the Daily Mirror may be the closest she has got to fame.
Says Sarah: “I used to think of Britney as the girl who had it all – a megastar with fame, fortune and a fabulous lifestyle. But now I wouldn’t swap places with her for anything in the world.”
Ms McCaffrey fails to offer her £65m, Britney’s estimated fortune, her home in New York, another in Malibu and a boyfriend from Birmingham. But, in any case, the point has been made.
Says Sarah: “Money doesn’t buy you happiness – everyone knows that. And you don’t need flashy celebrity friends or fancy bars to have a good time… Britney needs to turn her back on Hollywood and come back home.”
Reading this is like looking at the Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen sketch in reverse.
BRITNEY SPEARS: “Because we were rich. My old pa used to say to me, “Money doesn’t buy you happiness, son”
FIRST LOUISIANAN: “Aye, ‘e was right”
BRITNEY SPEARS: “I was happier then and I had everthin’. We used to live in this massive new house with great big chandeliers in the roof”
SECOND LOUISIANAN: “House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one mansion, all three of us, loads of furniture, more floor space than South Carolina…”
THIRD LOUISIANAN: “Eh, you were lucky to have a mansion! We used to have to live in a palace!”
Note: Everyone who live in Louisiana is like Sarah Schilling apart from Britney Spears and those fancy dan Kentuckians…
Posted: 12th, January 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comment (1)
Britney Spears And The Birmingham Players
BRITNEY Spears has fled.
Anorak readers know that Brit-nay Speerz is in Birmingham.
But others are still guessing. Today’s front-pages:
DAILY MIRROR: “BRITNEY GOES ON THE RUN – She leaves US to dodge clinic”
DAILY MAIL: “Has Britney Gone Too Far This Time?”
To the Bull Ring is never far enough…
Photo: Britney Spears auditions for the Birmingham Players’ Vicar Of Dibley Nite
Posted: 12th, January 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comments (4)
Introducing Amy Winehouse
AMY Winehouse’s decision to surrender her beehive to airport security attracts the attention of the world’s press.
Winehouse is returned to the UK with her hair newly blonded and held to her head by a scarf tied in knots.
It is a look once favoured by Hilda Ogden, the Coronation Street character given flesh and ‘murials’ by Jean Alexander.
Says she: “I’m not familiar with Amy Winehouse and I really don’t know any pop stars these days”.
Helpfully, the Sun produces a large picture of Winehouse in blonde mode, which should help 81-year-old Jean’s understanding, and comply with the Government’s drive for life long learning…
Posted: 11th, January 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comments (4)
UK Police Import Kerry Katona’s German Heil Hounds
WITH Kerry Katona learning German to best communicate with her heil hund, the Mirror says the police are following her lead.
A shortage of Alsatian dogs in the UK means British police are importing the beats from Germany.
To the commands “Sitz”, “Hol” and “Penalty!” the German dogs obey with unerring dedication to order.
Says dog trainer PC David Heaps: “For breeders in the UK it is all about looks. But the dogs do not have the same abilities for bite, let go and obedience as those bred in Germany.”
Happy days, indeed. And we, like you, look forward to our new black-uniformed officers barking our commands in German as they uphold law and order.
Guten Arbende Leute. Papers!
Posted: 11th, January 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comment
Tony Blair’s J P Morgan Wage Is Good For Britain
“TONY Blair will earn around £2 million a year in his part-time role as adviser to the Wall Street bank JP Morgan without ever having to go into the office,” says the Telegraph.
“BLAIR’S £1m-A-Year PAYBACK FOR IRAQ,” thunders the Mail’s front-page headline.
Says Reg Keys, whose son was killed in Iraq: “If he had a conscience or any sensitivity he would not have taken this job.”
Chimes Conservative defence spokesman Gerald Howarth: “It will be viewed with some contempt by the armed forces that he picks up this large cheque when he was happy to send British troops into battle ill-equipped and in insufficient numbers.”
“It’s almost like blood money,” comes the headline inside the paper.
But surely if Tony is earning money and domiciled in the UK, he is paying UK taxes. His wages will go into the big pot and be used to pay for things like better guns, improved armour and more soldiers.
Like him or not, Blair has the right to earn money…
Posted: 11th, January 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Money, Politicians, Tabloids | Comments (2)
Who’s Not Watching Big Brother
“CELEBRITY Big Brother has been “AXED”, announces the Star’s front-page news, the paper choosing to lead with a story about a show no-one knows is on.
“Plug pulled on ratings flop.”
Look out for tomorrow’s news “EXCLUSIVE”: “SAVE Big Brother”; “Big Brother Who Cares?”; and “Big Brother In Sex Roasting Shame!”
Posted: 11th, January 2008 | In: Tabloids, TV & Radio | Comment (1)
Britney Spears Takes Life By The Bull Ring
“BRIT TAKES IT UP THE BRUM!” announces the Daily Sport.
The paper’s crime correspondent comes up with a headline that includes all the elements that makes the paper what it is:
Blonde starlet + football chant + sex = news
As such, it is an early contender for Tabloid Headline of the Year.
(The Sport is the paper where interviewees are invited to respond to the poser: Bum fun?”)
The story, such as it is, is that Britney Spears is considering moving to the UK to live with Birmingham-born snapper Adnan Ghalib. She will swap Hollywood for a temperate marine climate, canals, trips to the Bull Ring and bisons…
Posted: 11th, January 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comments (10)
