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.
‘Migrants Are Biggest Threat To Carp Stocks’
MONDAY
“The woman of 108 told to wait 18 months for hearing aid” – That’s the spirit. Something to look forward to in life…
“THE TRUE COST OF FAKING IT. Britain’s trade in counterfeit goods is booming. But few bargain hunters realise the real price of their designer fakes is child slavery, gang warfare and even terrorism”
“Migrants are biggest threat to carp stocks” – HEADLINE OF THE WEEK
“MEGAFLOOD. Bodies floating down the street, half of London under water and life reduced to medieval squalor. As a new film will show, last week’s floods could just be a taste of a far worse fate facing Britain”
TUESDAY
“Fear of chaos and cancelled ops as 30,000 doctors start new jobs. DON’T BE ILL TOMORROW!”
“HERE COMES THE SUMMER! A mosquito which carries up to 23 infections including West Nile virus and dengue fever could soon be in Britain”
“Bowel cancer of just one glass on wine per day”
“I lay there watching as the surgeon stuck a needle into my eyeball
“The bug that targets middle-class children. The young victims all come from clean, safe homes. So what’s the infection making them erupt in lumps” – Atypical TB? Or an allergy to 4x4s?
WEDNESDAY
“The eight-year-olds who already smoke cannabis” – Bring back gin and fags
“Abortion for all. IVF at 60. Now ‘spare part’ babies. What a dangerous path we are treading” – Ruth Dudley Edwards writes…
“Junior doctor chaos could go on for moths” – But what of middle doctor chaos, senior doctor chaos, nurse chaos..?
“My wife had liposuction and she was dead just 48 hours later”
THURSDAY
“Speeding, dropping litter or even forgetting to wear a seatbelt could land you on DNA database…for life! NO ESCAPING BIG BROTHER” – Unless you’re an immigrant, asylum seeker, benefits cheat etc. in which case you never get caught
“How known criminals are allowed to work in the NHS” – More than 1,000 people on the “criminal database may be working” for NHS. More DNA tests!
“Halt school wi-fi until health risks are known” – Says Phil Parkin, General Secretary of the Professional Association of Teachers
“PUPPY LOVE. Devastated by the death of her husband, Judith was persuaded to buy a puppy by her young son. And despite countless scrapes (and £15,000 in vet’s bills) this wonderfully wilful spaniel has finally given them a reason to smile again” – My and my Cavalier King Charles spaniel
“Oh boy! Why do sons leave such a trail of mayhem?” – Osama Bin Laden’s mum speaks
FRIDAY
“Skating towards a police state” – maybe they’ll lock up Richard Littlejohn
“Superbug targets ‘will be missed’” – Article in The Lancet says Government targets to reduce infection of MRSA will not be met
“Parents alerted over the 94,000 toxic toys made in China” – Dora explores the emergency unit
“Two cancer patients die in hospital drug tragedy”
“Widow sacked by charity shop died ‘borken-hearted’”
Posted: 4th, August 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comments (3)
When Journalists Attack: In Britian’s Shark Alley
AS the Sun has reported all week, Britain is in the grip of shark madness. From the Island of Tewkesbury to Anthea Turner’s shark-print cushion covers and dish No. 54 on Mr Wang’s takeaway menu, the shark-crazed has taken bite.
The sharks are coming. Only the Highlands of Scotland are safe, and only then if you stay out of the rivers and deeper puddles.
We Britons cluster together for safety. What to do? We are fin-ished.
Thankfully, the Sun can help. In the front-page news story “We swim with Jaws…AND LIVE!” readers see a Great White shark menacing the Sun’s man in a wetsuit.
“I have reported from the blood-soaked streets of Somalia, tracked down the Taliban and survived a mortar attack in the Israel-Lebanon war,” says Oliver Harvey.
“But staring into the face of a Great White shark was the most terrifying moment of my life.”
But he’s writing the story, right? He’s not communicating from the other side or from deep within the belly of the beast. Harvey is on the scene, gamely dicing with death in the deep. Live from a pothole on Gloucester High Road.
But he’s not. Harvey is in South Africa. He is in “Shark Alley”. He is in a cage. A seal decoy is tossed into the sea. The Great White grips the inflatable in its maw. The decoy is the size and shape of a child.
Egads! Indeed, dear reader. Save us all. And spare the little children and blow-up seals. Harvey returns to the surface. He has survived. But what of the next flood and the meting icecaps?
“The mix of rotting pilchard, seasickness and terror-induced adrenalin was too much and I vomited again and again,” he writes.
And we too feel uneasy. And vow never to go into the water in anywhere called Shark Alley, or that cul-de-sac by grocer’s in Oxford. Not even if we are fleeing the Taliban…
Posted: 3rd, August 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comment (1)
Beckhams Bend Tom Crusie And Katie Holmes Into Shape
YESTERDAY, Anorak brought news that Tom Cruise and his wife Katie Holmes are contemplating nudity in a magazine setting.
A report informed us: “One suggestion they were keen on was a shot of them posing together in the shower, dripping wet and covered by nothing but steam.”
If they carry through their threat, Cruise and Holmes will become more like Victoria and Day-vid Beckham. News indeed to we who thought Cruise was adopting the Beckhams in order to convert them to Scientology.
This is the religion/cult that has the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre International.
And as widely reported:
Scientology has had a written program governing celebrity recruitment since at least 1955, when L. Ron Hubbard created “Project Celebrity”, offering rewards to Scientologists who recruited targeted celebrities.[1] A Scientology policy letter of 1976 states that “rehabilitation of celebrities who are just beyond or just approaching their prime” enables the “rapid dissemination” of Scientology.
But now we read of Cruise stripping off with his wife in order to show the world that they are so very much in love and lust.
And the Mail’s news: “Is the Cruises’ little girl seeing too much of Posh?”
The Mail has a picture of Suri Cruise dressed in head-to-toe Burberry. And another shot of her Poshness wearing the chav’s must-have Burberry pattern in the form of a headscarf.
Is Suri being indoctrinated in the Tao of Posh? Another picture shows Suri with her mother and father. She is not smiling.
What hope Scientology in the face of the Beckhams’ machine and the shadowy Simon Fuller?
Pic: 14
Posted: 3rd, August 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comments (2)
Flogging The Dead Donkey: Sue Turton’s Malaysian Whipping Boys
WHO’D be Denis Norden?
When does a TV outtake stop being funny and enter in the area of abuse?
We speak, of course, of Chanel 4 news presenter Sue Turton and the incident involving her backside.
Rufus Burdett, married and aged 37, has been charged with causing a public order offence. It is said that Mr Burdett did approach Turton from the rear and goose her.
Ms Turton’s reaction can be read here. She argues that the goosing demeans the victims of the floods. It is beyond parody.
Says Mr Burdett: “I don’t go around pinching girls’ bums all the time but I thought it was a way of throwing a spanner in the work’s for a few minutes.
“I thought it would brighten up the situation.”
A straw poll of the Anorak typing pool suggests a divided nation. One half senses the spirit of the Blitz and how Burdett is keeping hope afloat in dire times. The other half wants Burdett flogged to within an inch of his life and then keel-hauled through the drowned streets of Oxford.
For a sample of what Burdett might expect the Mail looks at life for goosers and drug dealers in Malaysia.
Readers are treated to the sight of man secured to the whipping tree. Mail readers may thrill to such a scene but it is not meant to be recreational. This is punishment.
The dispenser of justice arrives brandishing a rotan stick – a bamboo-like cane. He delivers 20 blows to the prisoner’s bare buttocks. The Mail records the images. They are raw and bloody.
The Malaysian authorities have posted the video on the internet. The Mail tells readers where the video can be located.
Anorak took up the offer. It is not safe for viewing at work and may necessitate going into darkened cellar or dungeon area.
M Burdett should worry. Flogging is not too good for the likes of him…
Posted: 2nd, August 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comments (5)
Tony Blair And The Blarios Are Having A Whaler Of A Time
“WHERE’S Tony Blair?” goes the popular cry. (Pic: Beau Bo D’Or)
No sooner has Tony left his post than his weather machine goes haywire and there are sharks swimming up Tewkesbury highroad. There are bombs in London. Glasgow is missing a departure gate.
We would have Tony back if only we could find him. And the good news is that Tony has been tracked down to Barbados.
The Express spots Tony and the Blairios on holiday. It sees “wide smiles”, which seems an unkind comment in light of Cherie’s daring work with a black swimming suit.
The Blairs are holidaying at Sir Cliff Richard’s estate. It is the fifth year running that Tony and his band have stayed at Devil Woman Towers. (“The idea was to do a good deed for someone doing a terrible job,” says Sir Cliff.)
Tony is aboard the Sea Dog, a 20ft Boston whaler owner by his friend Russell Chambers.
He looks relaxed in what the Express calls a “snazzy new pair of purple-patterned swimming shorts teamed with a favourite old blue polo shirt”.
He’s on the boat and headed for… Who knows? He may just stay on the boat. New Labour: Noah Labour. Tony knows…
Live Stock: Channel 4’s Sue Turton Makes News
THE news is all set-ups, telegraphed wit and scripts. What the TV news needs is spontaneity.
What it needs is a man happening upon Channel 4’s Sue Turton and injecting some passion. (Pic: Beau Bo D’Or)
Sue is talking to viewers live from Osney Island, Oxford. The area has been hit by floods and it is vital Turton appears live on the scene to show viewers the brown water and what sandbags look like.
Turton is, of course, arrived after the flood. The big news story of the bursting river banks and torrential downpour has passed. She has missed the scoop.
But not the pinch. As the Mail says on its front page: “Newsgirl who was ‘goosed’ live on air.” The Mirror says “Here is the goose”, and the Sun delivers “Live telly ’gooser’ is facing bum rap”.
The Sun says police are set to “pinch” the man who approached Turton from the rear and adapting finger and thumb into a beak-like design nipped Turton’s trousered backside.
The Mail says police have mounted an investigation. They want to trace the phantom tweaker and push an £80 fine for breaching public order into his perverted grip.
Members of Turton’s news crew gave chase but the gooser evaded them. And now Turton is making the news she once only reported on. She is very much in tune with her craft.
Says she: “I’ve no desire to punish this man through the courts. But I did wonder if I accepted such behaviour without complaint what hope do women who are groped in public have in this way have of any recourse. I personally found the matter quite humiliating and somewhat disrespectful to the plight of those I was reporting about.”
It should not go unsaid that Miss Turton is a serious journalist and not creating a spoof report, a parody of actual news. She really does say these things.
She continues: “Some may say I’m being prudish. It’s true I’ve been in much more threatening situations throughout my reporting career, but they were in far-flung places where personal space isn’t a priority”.
Says Turton, standing on one of the drier pavements in Oxford with a film crew. Live! More after the ad breaks…
Posted: 1st, August 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comments (6)
Kate Moss: Pete Doherty’s Smack-‘n’-Tell, Day 2
DAY Two of the Pete Doherty smack-‘n’-tell of his romance with Kate Moss and Pete is taking up the threads of his tale. (Pic: Beau Bo D’Or)
And here’s Pete on the Sun’s front page. The paper is in a state of trenchant moral indignation. And here’s Pete rolling a crack pipe from a miniature spirit bottle (for more information on this go to www.sun-smackdown.com).
Yesterday Pete was talking to the Mirror. It was Kate’s favourite paper and he was reaching out to her across the newsagent’s counter.
Now he’s in the Sun, which might be Kate’s second favourite paper or the one she buys on Wednesdays.
“Dating Kate was like the Vietnam war,” says Pete in the Sun. (Dontcha just love the small of a crack pipe in the morning, readers?)
“I was always dodging bullets,” says Pete, oddly afraid of being shot up. “The last six weeks of our relationship were bad,” he confides. Vietnam Vets nod in agreement. “We had one massive bust-up and carried it on from there.” More nodding.
But Pete wants her back. Yesterday he was telling the Mirror that she had dumped him and that he loves her to bits.
But that was in the Mirror, Kate’s tabloid of choice. In the Sun Pete says it was he who dumped her. “Why would I want her back?” he asks.
At a guess, we’d say to seek her advice as to how he can pay his debts of £180,000, remain famous and get blood stains out of his one good hat.
But it is because Pete knows the pain of heartbreak. Pete does not speak to his mother Jacqueline after she “betrayed” him by writing a book on his life.
Says Pete: “Me and mum are not on speaking terms after she wrote a book about me. It kills me. I love her but things are strained and difficult just now.
“I felt a bit betrayed, to be honest, about what she did,” says Pete in the Mirror and in the Sun…
Posted: 1st, August 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comments (2)
Jaws Me Dead: Sharks In The UK’s Flooded Soup
“SHARK mania grips Britain,” says the Sun’s front-page headline. It’s right, of course. Sharks are big news.
The BBC’s Celebrity Shark Watch premiers tonight – join Lenny Henry in an interactive webchat from the Bournemouth Oceanarium.
A shark creates mayhem in the EastEnders canal and Anthea Turner live decorates a boy’s bedroom in a shark motif.
“DER-DUM DER-DUM,” says the Sun’s headline. Then: “dum-dum, dum-dum, dum-dum, dum-dum, dum-dum, dum-dum”.
But not so dumb to stay out of the water. The paper has a picture of two girl swimmers frozen with dread as they see a shark yards away.
This is not Tewkesbury or any other of the UK’s underwater towns. All are in the sea off the coast of Devon.
“GET OUT OF THE WATER,” says the Sun’s headline inside the paper. If only Gloucester residents could. But in Devon the girls have a beach. And Joe Miller.
With “Jaws panic engulfing Britain” Joe Miller is “frantic”. He sees the girls in the sea. He sees the fin. He dashes into the water.
Hannah Miller and her sister Freya are removed from harm’s way. Joe is “scrambling” out of the sea. “It will make me think twice about going in the water again,” says Freya.
She and her sister are hugging. The Sun has the picture. Disappointingly, both are not wearing their swimming costumes and thereby offering valuable insight into the scene.
But that is surely to come.
Posted: 1st, August 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comment (1)
P K Nuts: Pete Doherty Holds Up A Mirror To Kate Moss
“COME BACK TO ME KATE,” says Pete Doherty on the Mirror’s cover page. (Pic: Beau Bo D’Or)
Like so much in his life, Doherty can’t give up Kate Moss. He’s very possibly addicted to her.
Rehab might help. So too a “searing interview” with the Mirror in which Doherty asks the paper to deliver a “plea” to his estranged lover.
“I can’t get hold of her any other way,” says Doherty. “I need Kate to know that I still love her. She has broken my heart.”
Before we go on, let it not be said that Doherty is just cashing in on his allegiance with a more famous partner. This is no tawdry kiss-‘n’-tell. Doherty does the Mirror because the Mirror does care. This was the paper that first broadcast those shots of Moss chopping up lines in a “coke binge”, reproduced today. Where would Moss be today without those pictures and that story? High? Modelling car parts? And where Doherty? The Mirror says it is Moss’s “favourite paper”.
Thanks to the Mirror, Doherty is famous beyond his music. And now “besotted” Doherty opens his heart to the Mirror. He calls Moss a “nasty old rag” who “kicked him in the head”.
Says he: “I love her with all my heart. I like the way she walks and talks. I love her bones. I love her brains.”
He goes on: “I need her to know that she’s out of her f***ing mind. Kate, if you love me then realise I don’t want another girl…I’m here to tell her that I love her.”
And then he speaks of Moss’s love for the Mirror: “F***ing hell man, why does she read the Daily Mirror, anyway? She moans all the time about the f***ing paparazzi then first thing in the morning she’s got to buy your paper.”
This insight into Moss’s life comes as a blow to we who envisaged morning ‘wake and bakes’, naked dwarves carrying trays of breakfast caviar on their heads and romps across the mink-fur lined bedroom.
“It was love at first sight,” says Doherty of Moss, not the Mirror. “When I met her she said she’d get a P tattoo, and I’d get a K.” PK. It was nuts.
But Doherty sees all. Perhaps he sees the future. The Mirror says on the day Moss dumped him he met a Parisian artist named Christine. He has asked her to marry him. He is set to marry her in November.
But Moss can stop the wedding. Say the word Kate and Pet will drop his new lover like a good habit.
And he’ll tell the papers all about it…
Posted: 31st, July 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comments (3)
Heather Mills’ Cows Come Home
HEATHER Mills, baby oil enthusiast and pogo-ing pro-celebrity ballroom dancer, is on the Mail’s front page.
Heather is not smiling. She is offering the world a bald-eyed stare with a hint of sneer. “Cows?” asks the headline. “Not in MY rural backyard, insists heather the veggie.”
Mills wants to buy fields adjoining her new £3million home in the Home Counties. The Mail is no more specific, doubtless concerned that Mills will be swamped by fans.
But there are clues to the location of this homestead. It borders land owned by John and Barbara Smith. They share their home with a number of Devon-born heifers. Mrs Smith tells us: “We were told that initially she didn’t like looking at the cows on our land because she is a vegetarian.”
So she will buy the land and the cows will be sold off for slaughter. Or Heather could adopt the beasts and train them to guard the land. The paper says Mills has concerns over privacy and security. Hell, forget the cows. Heather should lace her land with anti-personnel devices retrieved from some of the world’s war zones.
But where is she? Says the local butcher: “She’s not a favourite of mine – I much prefer Paul.” Meat servers and vegetarians make uneasy bedfellows. Especially a butcher who hums No More Lonely Lights as he tenderises the vicar’s sweetbreads.
And there is a female local who tells us: “I do not want her here… She’ll change the village for the worse. She’s trying make herself into too much of a Diana.”
So look out for Heather building an ornament lake with a small island at its centre. No tricky thing if this new property is in the UK’s Noah Zone.
“We will get no peace,” says “villager” Miro Bokan. “Everyone is against it.”
The clues are mounting up. And if anyone knows where Heather is moving to, do let us know.
And warn the cows…
Posted: 31st, July 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comments (2)
The Floods: England On Shark Alert
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.
And there is “panic”. “Everyone said it was a harmless basking shark so I just carried on filming,” says Mrs Price. Adding: “It sends shivers down my spine thinking about it now. It’s not what you expect to see off the Cornwall coast.”
But have no fear. The “world’s greatest shark hunter” is going to slay the beast. Zyg Gregorek, “who represents England in shark-catching contests”, says: “It’s only a matter of time before I catch this fish. It is man against beast – and I will win.”
Also on the look out for terror with teeth is Page 3 stunna Danni. Wearing a red bikini and sporting a proud pair of binoculars, Danni tells us: “It’s scary to think the shark could be amongst people paddling – luckily I’ve not seen any-fin suspicious.”
This might be because Danni is stood in a Marbella swimming pool. Or that this fish is not a shark.
And in any case, thanks to the floods and the rain, everyone in the UK has already got out of the water…
Posted: 30th, July 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comments (5)
Parish Groups: Churchgoers Gives It The Full Nelson
JANET’S sexy dressing. That’s the advert. And here’s Janet Nelson dressed in a windcheater over black tights and rubber boots. She is stood in a muddy field.
To the untutored eye, Janet could be a resident of the Island of Tewkesbury, forced to flee her home with only what she could lay hands on.
But this is Janet’s fetish wear. The Mail says Janet and her husband Nick host an X-rated fetish website with 7,500 members. They also sit on the parochial council, organising fundraising events and have been photographed for the Church Times, a notorious publication not for impressionable minds.
Now see the Church jumble sale, the shoppers dressed in hearing-aid beige getting off on the homespun knits.
“This is a gentle site, no hardcore porn,” says Janet and Nick’s website. “All graphics, photographs and content are the property of Janet and Nick. If you don’t like seeing ladies in sexy poses with almost nothing on please leave now.”
Look again at the rain hat pulled seductively over dandelion hair-dos. See the draw strings on the anorak tied and tied in a double bow.
And feel the full wind of scandal as an unnamed parishioner happens upon this site and tells the vicar at St Mars’s Church in Ross-on-Wye Herefordshire.
He hears the news. He fingers his dog collar. He plays with the hem of his cassock. And the Rev John Hunnisett calls in the couple to explain their “double life”.
What they wear for this meeting is unrecorded. It’s for the best. Although we do learn that they are expelled from the parish groups. Their website is removed. They are cast into the darkness, possibly dressed in purple robes with a huge phallus-shaped mitre atop their heads.
But the Nelsons are welcome to worship at the church. Indeed, it is positively encouraged they do so. “If we only catered for saints our churches would be empty,” says a spokesman for Hereford Diocese.
“Fortunately, we also look after sinners, and are thus reasonably full during services… They are consenting adults and what they do in private is up to them.”
So why then have they been removed from these parish groups? Because the Church is no place for adults?
Or because Parish Groups is not like Yahoo Groups and makes no space for other forms of worship…
Posted: 30th, July 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comments (2)
Richard Reid: At Home With Al Qaeda’s Rosa Klebb
“WORLD PICTURE EXCLUSIVE.”
So says the Mirror, which has shots of “THE SHOE BOMBER IN HIS CELL”.
Al Qaeda’s Rosa Klebb is Richard Reid, currently serving 110 years in a US jail for trying to blow almost 200 air passengers to smithereens.
The Mirror says Reid “never once expresses remorse or regret for his vile crime”. Having read Reid’s history – mentally negligible and suggestible – there are reasons to believe he does not understand what his crime involved.
Reid can contain one idea at a time. Wake up. Get on plane. Put on shoes. Left. Right. Bomb. Socks? Bugger!
And sat in a prison cell, the 33-year-old Britain can only think of better things to come. What else can he do?
Writes Reid: “I had a couple of good dreams about my situation changing for the better in the not so distant future, so this is a blessing from Allah.”
He continues: “I place my trust in Allah that he will bring that into fruition and ask him to give me patience until the time when that occurs.”
Patience. 110 years. Patience…
Reid addresses his father Robin, a recovering drug addict living in a hostel: “I’ve without a doubt come over as a bit harsh to you – although I’m like that with pretty much everyone.”
Including those he tries to blow up…
Posted: 30th, July 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comment (1)
Gordon Brown’s Bounce, NHS Cuts, BBC Entrapment And Perez Hilton’s Web 2.0
DIZZY takes a glance at the Sundays (Pic: Poldraw)
THERE are it seems some rather concerning and amusing stories in this morning’s Sundays. According to the Sunday Telegraph, Gordon Brown has decided to cut £50 million from drug treatment programmes in the forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review.
Now some will say that it is Darling that is Chancellor, but the cynic amongst many of us will know that really means Brown. Meanwhile the Independent on Sunday has a whistleblower story about the NHS, with one of Britain’s most senior surgeons saying there is a bed crisis for trauma patients.
The BBC finds itself hit twice in the Mail on Sunday which alleged that the BBC entrapped someone by offering them £40,000 for some children in a human smuggling scandal in Bulgaria. At the same time it is expressing outrage that the bleeding obvious fake caravan fire in Top Gear was… errr… faked.
Michael Portillo in the Sunday Times has an interesting piece, which, if you can get past his constant slagging of the Tories, suggests Brown should scrap ID Cards and it would be a sign of his strength. Also in the same paper, Bryan Appleyard has a brilliant piece about the “Web 2.0” world and the creation fo notorious nobodies (also known as web celebrities).
My one criticism as ever is this belief that Web 2.0 is actually different to Web 1.0, it isn’t, apart from the fact that a technically illiterate person can now easily publish online. There were many web celebrities before the easy publishing systems – Jay Stile springs to mind even if his sites are, shall we say, decidedly adult.
Finally, on a purely political point, David Davis, has weighed in with support for David Cameron, telling the Sunday Telegraph that “David has passed his first test. Now the party must pass its first test, and that is a test of discipline.”
He’s absolutely right too. Whilst there have been some tactical errors in the past few weeks, and the “Brown Bounce” is suddenly surprising people who were openly acknowledging it would happen before it did, it’s not a time to start blinking and talking about patricide.
Posted: 29th, July 2007 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comment
After The Floods The Sharks
GET out of the water! With Britain experiencing weather, the Sun leads with the headline: “GREAT WHITE SHARK OFF UK.” (Pic: Beau Bo D’Or)
Holidaymakers are on “JAWS ALERT” as a “suspected” Great White shark is spotted 200 yards off St Ives, Cornwall.
Had the skin-burning sun not been blocked out – and thank heaven it has – the shark would be eyeing lobster red legs and mistaking Britain’s obese bathers for seals and hippos.
“Lifeguards have been ordered to clear beaches if a Great White is near,” says expert Richard Piece, who can doubtless confirm that the Sun’s picture is indeed of a Great white shark, its filthy maw open and armed.
Happily, the weather is such that Britons have relocated to Spain, Portugal and anywhere with sun.
But the Sun strikes it lucky and though it fails to spot the beast it does track down a British tourist taking in the summertime cloud formations. “This has got to be every swimmer’s worst nightmare,” says the tourist.
Another tourist, “stunned dad” Nick Fletcher, videoed the creature. His tape has been viewed by experts. “It’s definitely predatory and definitely big,” says Oliver Crimmen, “fish curator” of the Natural History Museum. “I can’t rule out it being a Great White.”
Such is the way with this museum, Crimmen may only know the fish’s species should it be caught, gutted and pickled behind a display case.
The Sun is rightly concerned. And wants to know if any readers have seen a Great White shark of the British coast – or making its way down the main shopping drag in Tewkesbury…
Posted: 28th, July 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comments (2)
Killer Moths, Deadly Bugs, Sex Guides, Oscar And Out
MONDAY
“An epidural cost me five years of my motherhood”- Start the week with Lisa Mann and her daughter Jessica
“Middle-class children ‘are more likely to be overweight’” – Says International Journal of Obesity, and a Filipino maid called Monica
“MOTH MENACE! A plague of insects is laying waste to English oaks. Now the fightback has begun…using hairspray and flamethrowers” – Death to the Italian oak processionary moth
TUESDAY
“Taps run dry, power is cut…and there’s worse to come” – curse that EU weather machine
“One can of pop a day ‘raises heart risk’” – University of Boston looks at fizzy drinks
The Numbers:
“30 – The percentage of heart attack victims who die before reaching hospital” – the lucky ones who don’t have to catch a hospital superbug
“20 – The percentage of men over the age of 50 who will suffer form osteoporosis”
“Hidden scar that blights my son’s life. Max looks like any boisterous 11-year-old – but a head injury six years ago, which left no visible damage, has had devastating consequences that grow crueller by the day”
WEDNESDAY
“1,000 SUPERBUG VICTIMS A WEEK” – Stomach bug Clostridium difficile on the march. It’s the “deadly hygiene failure”
“Today’s Guides want a badge in safe sex”- Sewing. Cooking. Home-making. Ging-gang-gooly – A survey of 1,000 Guides finds they want to learn how to mange debt, assemble flat-pack furniture and not fall pregnant on the annual jamboree
“AS EU CONSTITUTION REARS ITS UGLY HEAD AGAIN…It’s back and more dangerous that ever” – Run! Don’t walk. From peaceful post-war Europe
“Bill Oddie’s daughter reveals how metal illness nearly destroyed her father”
THURSDAY
“UK TEENS WORST BEHAVED IN EUROPE”
“McCanns victim of web hate campaign” – People ask questions on websites
“The diesel fumes that can be deadly”- Don’t inhale trucks
FRIDAY
“How a single smoke raises danger of mental illness by 40 per cent – CANNABIS: RISK IN ONE JOINT” – Jacqui Smith… The paper is talking to you, Jacqui Smith…
“Diabetes drugs ‘double heart risk’” – study looks at Avandia and Actos drugs
“Danger of losing too much weight after giving birth” – Researchers from Coombe Women’s Hospital, Dublin, say new mother should eat
“OSCAR. THE CAT OF DEATH”
“I’ve just turned 40 and yes, it’s the root canal of birthdays! (Painful. No one wants to face it…but it won’t kill you)” – Cherie Blair’s half-sister Lauren Booth talks about her teeth
Posted: 28th, July 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comments (2)
Weekly World News: How To Be A National Enquirer Expert By Dr. Franklin Ruehl
TABLOID Baby looks at the business of American tabolids and Dr.Franklin Ruehl:
Dr. Franklin Ruehl, cable television legend, Tabloid Baby friend and contributor, and the current hardest-working man in the television business with credits ranging from Sunset Tan to Without Prejudice, is also one of the most diligent contributors to tabloid newspapers,writing not about celebrity but about the anomalies and bizarritudes of life on Earth and beyond.
Here, he adds his eulogy to the closing of the Weekly World News:
My Unusual Association with the Weekly World News
I owe a debt of gratitude to the Weekly World News, the controversial tabloid that is folding. I had been publishing articles in various UFO publications, such as the Canadian UFO Report (CUFOR) which was a serious chronicle devoted to this intriguing subject.
Whenever I did get an article published,I would send off copies to various members of the media trying to generate publicity for myself for my lecture and TV program that I was endeavoring to launch. I always sent a copy to an editor at the National Enquirer (I simply picked a name at random from the masthead).
To my surprise, I received a call from a reporter at the Enquirer who wanted to interview me on my latest article in the Canadian UFO Report on the scientific evidence for life existing in the Venusian atmosphere. But he worked for a different editor than the one I sent the article to. It turned out that CUFOR editor John Magor,without telling me, had sent a copy to another editor who was interested.
But when I received word that my interview had been published, i was surprised to learn that it was not in the Enquirer, but rather in the 6th issue (September 27,1979) of the Weekly World News, a publication I had not even heard of!
I learned that the the publication had been launched only a few weeks earlier as a result of the Enquirer, which had been black-and-white, switching over to color presses. But, since they still owned their own black-and-white presses, they decided to put them to use by launching the WWN, filling it with stories which did not make the cut for the Enquirer.
However, this small bit of success opened the door to me at the Enquirer, where I began to be regularly interviewed on space and other scientific matters. And, I rapidly made the transition from interviewee to interviewer, submitting story leads and transmogrifying them into articles that were being published, all on a free-lance basis. I branched out, covering medical, pop psychological, historical, and human interest stories as well as those from the realms of ufology, parapsychology, and cryptozoology.
So there will most assuredly be a vacant spot in my heart when I no longer see the WWN on newsstands announcing the latest alien contact!
May the Power of the Cosmos be with You!
Dr. Franklin Ruehl, Ph.D.
Posted: 27th, July 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comments (2)
Bowsers Of War: Flooded Gloucester Blitzed By Yobs
SO much for the Blitz spirit the media has been cheered by – unless we were looking at drowned Gloucester from the angle of a German bomber.
“POND LFE,” says the Sun’s front-page headline. “Mindless yobs” have poisoned emergency water supplies by “URINATING” into bowsers and tipping in “BLEACH”.
These thugs, described as “laughing” also “DRAINED” another mobile water tank in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
Says one “angry” local: Everyone keeps banging on about the community spirit in the country – but there isn’t any here.”
So the police have been called in to the guard the water. The situation is critical. Although, not that critical as we learn that the police are community support officers. Says one: “You don’t want anything from this one – some youngsters have pissed in it.”
The Mail listens. It senses the “echo of the war years as Red Cross sends in food.” Aviation Sans Frontieres is to fly in 80,000 litres of bottled water to a British airport. The water is to be despatched to the Island of Tewkesbury.
But what of the planes’ carbon footprint, you cry. Isn’t this disaster all down to global warming? And – irony of ironies – in saving the victims of the floods, aren’t the helpers worsening the problem?
Better, perhaps, to sacrifice the parched of Gloucester for the good of the planet. And when the waters subside, we should plant trees and name each after one of the fallen.
It will be a fitting tribute to British victims of weather to come…
Posted: 27th, July 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comments (5)
Who Would Be The Man To Kill Bob Geldof?
WHO would be the man to kill Bob Geldof, patron saint of stadium rock and dug-deep pockets?
We ask not in a morbid fashion, nor indeed in the pursuit of volunteers. We ask in light of the Sun’s front-page news: “MY TERROR IN GELDOF SMASH.”
Who does not feel for Andrew Quinn, 39, as his motorbike comes into contact with the Geldof car?
Quinn, as the Sun reports, is “catapulted” to the ground. “I didn’t stand a chance,” he tells the world. “
He wants us to understand. And if the apology doesn’t work then Quinn makes a limping play for our sympathies: “I’m now facing surgery and injuries that may be with me the rest of my life.”
Readers see Quinn sat in a wheelchair on the pavement. His right leg is covered in a thick plaster. It is not raining.
But let us not judge Quinn harshly as the man who would kill Saint Bob Geldof before we have heard his tale.
The Sun takes up the action as Quinn is piloting his bike home along London’s King’s Road. “I was riding carefully doing about 25mph,” he says. Nothing was coming the other way.”
And? “Suddenly this car appeared in front of me doing a U-turn. I guess he’d been parked and was let out by some one in the queue. I didn’t see who was driving.”
Oh no! “I hit the brakes, but there was no way I could stop. I hit the front diver’s side just behind the bonnet. I flew through the air thinking ‘This is going to hurt’ and landed directly on my knee.”
Them are he facts, yer honour. And now Quinn is lying on the ground. He looks up. A vision. “I was only aware of a mop of hair staring down. He started speaking, but I couldn’t hear as my helmet was still on.”
“This is my first accident but it was f***ing awful,” says the voice. “I hope he’s well cared for and out soon.”
And then a flash of light. And the Sun…
Posted: 27th, July 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comment (1)
UK Teens Are Not Compliant
IN “UK TEENS WORST BEHAVED IN EUROPE,” the Mail reports on its front page of a study that means “youngsters follow the example set by their friends rather than guidance from their parents.” (Buy the T-shirt here)
This, the Mail says, is the “damning verdict”.
The fallout from Britain’s youth culture is not just great music, innovative fashion and 35-a-side football matches on a Faliraki beach but an increased likelihood among teens to “binge drink, take drugs and have sex at a young age”.
The Mail stops just short of saying the youth of today play their music too loud, mangle the national idiom and have no respect for the older generation. And that they are fat. But such things defy even the Mail’s to-hell-in-a-handcart reporting.
The statistics produced by the Institute for Public Policy Research show that 44 per cent of British youngsters were “involved” in a physical fight last year – compared to 28 per cent in Germany, 36 per cent in France and 38 per cent in Italy.
It’s a shocking statistic, and one that begs the questions what “involved” means and who the teenagers are fighting?
And coincidence indeed that this news should come before the Government announces an intention to spend almost £1.4billion on out-of-hours home work, art and drama clubs at secondary schools.
This is the “extended schools” initiative. Adults will remember it under its old umbrella term: detention. It will enable latchkey kids to remain at school while their parents and guardians are in work.
School Secretary Ed Balls wants schools to remain open from 8am to 6pm. The Mail says Mr Balls is “understood to want a good youth centre in every neighbourhood”. (Paid for by some £150m taken from defunct bank accounts.)
These venues that will, in turn, create good youth. The good will hang out with other youths who will learn from them. Bad youths will be eradicated. A good youth club will be more than a shabby room with a pool table where 15-year-olds can smoke, score weed and pull.
These youth clubs will be disciplined operations run by adults. The adult population will then regain the confidence to engage with the uniformly good youth – the IPPR report says adult Britons are less likely than Europeans to confront teenagers about anti-social behaviour.
And that’s good. But, as ever, the fear is far worse than the reality. The kids are alright. They just need to be treated like individuals. They need to be raised in a society they are listened and made to feel that what they do is worthwhile and not just about being compliant and passing an exam…
Posted: 26th, July 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comments (2)
The Page 3 Girls Go In Two By Two
NOT content with commenting on news, the Sun’s Page 3 girls are making news. (Pic: Beau Bo D’Or)
The floods are upon us. But there’s not a wet T-shirt in sight as Nikkala and Mel hand out oversized bottles of water to Gloucester’s thirsty residents.
“What’s happened to folk here is heartbreaking,” says Nikkala. “It was important to lend a hand.”
And the locals are joyful. “Please God the worst of the flooding is over,” says one voice. “You boys and girls haven’t come a minute too soon. We need your help,” say another. “Get ‘em out,” yells a third parched throat. “Show us yer taps!” cheers a fourth.
“The Army is distributing 3 million litres of water to 14,000 homes,” says the Mirror in “THIRST AID”.
With hope restored, and rain and sweat threatening to turn Nikkala and Mel’s top clingy and see through, the Mail pours cold water on the scene.
“Stranded mother loses her twins,” says the headline. Twins born prematurely in a house cut off by rising water have died. A middle-aged man is drowned. A teenager is missing.
But if that doesn’t get you, the headline “PETS LEFT TO DIE” will. The paper says kennels have been told “to kick out pets in their care”. Kennels in Gloucester are “overwhelmed” with rescued and abandoned pets.
But Severn Tent Water will no supply the kennels with water. “We are not set up to deal with animal welfare,” says a spokesman for Severn Trent.
And we hear the wheels of a campaign begin to churn it the mud. No water is one thing. Missing people another. But our pets – our British pets – need our British help.
Noah knew what to do. Save the animals and you save yourself. Although we could always just take one pet of each breed and a cloning laboratory.
And two Page 3 Girls…
Posted: 25th, July 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comment (1)
Media Studies: Penelope Cruise, BBC Truthers And GMTV
WHO dares say media studies is a waste of a life? Not we who have seen students and graduates expose no end of lies and untruths on the magic box.
“Big Brother is edited, don’tyerknow,” say the media studies graduates. GMTV quizzes are a con and cheat their viewers of millions of pounds. The Mirror reports that Paul Corley, managing director of GMTV since 2001, has:
a) Resigned
b) Walked to the moon
c) Captured Osama bin Laden?
• Calls to 0800PROZAC cost £5.00 a minute and can run for three days
And there’s the Mail’s news that BBC “bosses” have been teaching their staff not to lie. The corporation’s 16,500 drones are off on an “integrity course”.
And it’s not just the shows. It’s the adverts, too. So truthful is the BBC that the broadcaster’s breakfast show features a piece on Penelope Cruz’s eyes. The BBC is now the champion of justice. It is poacher turned gamekeeper.
The story is taken up in the Mirror. In “PENELOPE LASHED”, readers see the Hollywood star eulogising about L’Oreal’s Telescopic make up.
One wipe of the magic brush and Penelope’s eyelashes look up to 60 per cent longer. “So separated. So long. Imagine, lashes that could reach for the stars,” says the actress.
You can always trust an actress. Or so we thought. And we are horrified to learn that Penelope has not merely dabbed her eye hair in cutting-edge product but stuck on false lashes.
“What else about the Hollywood star may also be fake?” asks the Mirror. And media students knowingly rub their chins. They recall the once buck-toothed Penny Scroggins before she took up smoking and dyed her hair from its natural ginger.
Look out for a BBC expose on that on its whiter-than-white news service…
Posted: 25th, July 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comments (5)
Lohan And Spears Are OK! In Britain’s Own National Enquirer
MORE signs of the Sun turning into the National Enquirer as the front-page headline oozes: “WHEN GIRLS GO BAD…BRITNEY In shocking shoot breakdown; LINDSAY On new drink drive and cocaine rap.”
Britney is Britney Spears. Lindsay is Lindsay Lohan. Both are American. And Sun readers should wonder what these young Americans have done to nudge Britain’s native rehab-dwelling, drug-taking celebrity coterie from the news pages.
Can it be that we have run out of celebrities, that the torrent of reality-made and Stage school-honed wannabes has run dryer than an Arizona clinic?
Or is it just that with the Beckhams in Los Angeles, the Sun, the couple’s No. 1 cheerleader, is keen to justify the expense of watching David Beckham play a few minutes’ pub football and Victoria wearing her hair in a bun?
Or is it that, as we suggest, Lohan and Spears are fascinating?
Everyone’s A Critic
We join Britney on a visit to the toilet at her Hollywood mansion. She is recording an interview for OK! magazine.
“She was babbling incoherently, talking in baby talk,” says an eyewitness. And: “Britney seemed to be out of her mind. She went to the toilet and when she came back she couldn’t continue with the interview.”
Oh: “She ate some food and vomited over her Gucci dress.”
We who are versed on OK!’s interview style have sympathy for Spears. Who has not felt the rising critique as OK! pours syrup on syrup and coats the lot in Swarovski crystal and a recording of Lady In Red?
And we can read about Spears’ “meltdown” in OK! magazine, which will publish the “truth”. “This week, the truth will be told,” says editor-ion-chief Sarah Ivens. Very noble. But surely the truth is the mainstay of OK!’s editorial policy and needs to no special introduction?
We will look out for the interview, and enjoy reading that Spears’ diaphanous vomit contained traces of a mint and truffle jus and her Chartreuse pallor belied a caring heart.
Lohan Be Held
For now we turn to Lohan. She has been arrested. Read about that her, and her “kooky” mum Dina here.
Lohan is said to be over the alcohol limit as she drives her car in pursuit of the “terrified” mum of her personal assistant.
Police catch up with Lohan as she is yelling at the mother in a car park in Santa Monica. Lindsay is wearing a spotty complexion, no shoes and an alcohol monitoring ankle bracelet.
She is not wearing David Beckham’s new LA Galaxy shirt, which is both an oversight and a shock…
Pic: 14
Posted: 25th, July 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comments (3)
War With The Weather
“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.
Voices of Gaia tell it’s his sort that got us into this mess? And now he’s buying up all the water.
This is no time for selfishness. We are all in this together. The Express talks of “siege conditions”. This is language of war. Yesterday we read of the spirit of the Blitz. Today it’s “Dunkirk spirit” in the Express.
“MAN THE PUMPS”, says the Sun. Rescuers are pumping water away from the flooded Castlemeads power station onto fields across the road. “Now the battle to keep the lights on,” says the Mail.
And it’s not just war with the weather – this is class war. “First up North, now down here,” says a resident of the Isle of Tewkesbury. “Too hot one minute, too wet the next. Global warming, I suppose.” The paper sees him smile. That’s the way. Chin up. Look on the bright side. “Mind you, London’s on flood alert now,” he says. “That’ll worry the bigwigs.”
The suspicion things only become serious when they hit the capital will ring true with some.
But London is expected to escape, says the Sun. Flooding is due to stop west of the capital at Shepperton.
London will stand alone. But is it ready? Is the UK equipped for climate change? The Express hears Gordon Brown put that question to “experts”.
We could butt in and say that this flooding might not be evidence climate change but just the climate. Britain is a wet country. There have been floods before. There will floods again. The trick might be not to build properties on flood plains and to travel by helicopter, like Gordon Brown (“A flying visit is as close as Brown gets to misery faced by thousands,” says the Times). But we digress.
And we read that there is to be a “comprehensive study of the national infrastructure”. Brown says climate chance means we have to presume more extreme weather”. Says he: “The investment is moving up and will continue to move up.” (Such is the way with inflation.)
“We will have to invest in coastal defences, flood defences and of course drainage and infrastructure in the years to come,” says he.
But these things have always been done. What’s the difference now? Does climate change mean we can blame the vagaries of the weather on mankind? Before the new religion of climate change, wet British summers were just the way of things. Now they are to be combated and taken in hand. It’s war.
But not yet. Not until we’ve taken stock and worked out what to do. Meanwhile, the weather carries on regardless…
Posted: 24th, July 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comments (16)
David Cameron And Tories Adrift
DRIP! Drip! Drip! It’s Conservative leader David Cameron. (Pic: The Spine)
“1m VICTIMS OF THE DELUGE,!” says the Mail. “So where’s the Rt Hon member for washed-out Witney?”
This is the Mail, the paper that claims to know and shape what Middle England thinks. With the battle for centre ground, it will be the Mail and not the Sun wot wins the next election.
And while the Tory-supporting paper’s editor Paul Dacre is having drinks with Gordon Brown, the Mail is pouring cold water on Tory leader David Cameron’s ambitions.
Cameron is not in Oxfordshire in a hybrid pedalo, armed with a bucket and a pair of wading boots.
Cameron is in Rwanda. His constituents in Witney, Oxfordshire, they who vote for him, are swimming to the kitchen or under threat of flooding.
“It’s all right for David Cameron,” says one resident, “he goes off on a jolly to Rwanda – but we are suffering.” Given Rwanda’s recent history, the word “jolly” seems odd. Cameron is, naturally, finding facts, just as he did last week when he did visit his constituency’s wet room.
He was in the locale on Sunday. The residents were unimpressed, at least those the Mail speaks to.
“We are the people who vote for him and he is patronising us,” says shop manger Gary Kirk. “He is more concerned with how he looks and the publicity than our suffering.”
But Cameron is in Rwanda on their behalf.
“There are some people in Britain who told me not to come,” Cameron will say in a speech later today. “They said I should stay at home and worry about domestic issues. Well let me tell them – and let me tell you – that in the 21st century, a century of global trade, global migration, and yes, global terrorism, there is no ‘domestic’ and ‘foreign’ any more. This world today, we are all in it together.”
Cameron might highlight the global, and educate empathetic Rwandans on the state of Mr Kirk’s shop, but until we are told otherwise, only Britons can vote in a general election.
And while Cameron is away, the Mail says one million of his countrymen are suffering. And plans for a Tory Government are adrift…
Posted: 24th, July 2007 | In: Tabloids | Comments (5)
