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.
The Rogarians are coming!
Romania and Bulgaria packs up…
THE Rogarians are coming! The Rogarians are coming…to Spain.
“Ten of thousands of Romanians will flee their homeland tomorrow – but they won’t be coming here,” reports the Sunday Mirror.
This is some shock. Over the past few months some sections of the Press may have inadvertently created the impression that tens of thousands of toothless, mud-encrusted Rogarians travelling in caravans pulled by heavy-set women were massed at the border.
On January 1 2007, the signal would be given and the Rogarians would bare their fangs and with the lusty cry “Would you like fries with that?” descend on Blighty like so many Poles.
Alongside pictures of mobs of people dressed in manmade fibres, the paper sensed a “stampede for passports to a new life in Britain”.
The Sun’s front page warned: “EU’VE HAD IT.” “We’re leaving Borat’s village for a dream life in Britain,” came another headline. “600,000 heading to Britain,” said the Express earlier in the week. The Rogarians were coming and they knew our pin numbers.
But now the Sunday Mirror tells us that the movement from Romania to Britain will be a “trickle not a flood”. Seats on planes from Bucarest to Luton remain available on Budget airline Wizz-Air. The paper says tickets cost as little as £5.
Says Romanian travel agent Ionna Niculescu: “There are no lines of buses filled with Romanians waiting to cross the border at midnight.” And: “People who plan to leave Romania to work abroad usually head to the Mediterranean, to Spain and Italy.”
Have they read taken heed of the advertising campaign, those advertising billboards in Bucarest warning: "Don’t come to Britain without a work permit"?
Have they listened to the television advert in Bulgaria that shows a man arriving at Sofia airport for a flight to Britain? He dreams of life in this gilded land. And then he reads the sign that says: "Even after January 1 you will need a permit to work in the UK. There are strict rules about which skills you need to have and which industries you can work in. Do not travel to the UK in the hope of finding work if you do not meet these requirements. Make sure you have a work permit."
And, as the Mail reports, the Bulgarian Government’s Ministry of Labour has distributed leaflets telling migrants: "Bad employers in Britain will pay you very low wages, put you in poor or dangerous working environments and offer you work at anti-social hours. People who try to work illegally often enter a twilight world of exploitation and misery and can become targets and victims of criminal gangs."
Whether these gangs are Romanian or Bulgarian is not stated. But, of course, they are surely not British…
Ice & A Spice
“HAVE David and Victoria Beckham swapped clothes with their hired help for a day?”
The Sun asks the questions that matter. And looking at the lead pictures of Vicky and Day-vid on their way for a night out with Gordon and Tana Ramsay, we say a firm “No”.
In our experience – see former Beckham PA Rebecca Loos and beautician Danielle Heath – the Beckhams’ staff rarely if ever dress in frilly white French maid-style tops and tight black skirts; for the likes of Loos, clothing can be a sombre affair of black knickers, sensible black bra and business-like smile.
It is a wonder that the Sun is not more up to speed with matters Beckham and finds a need to ask such a question. The paper is an authority on the couple.
In this holiday season, Sun readers have seen Her Poshness sitting in the back seat of her chauffeur driven limo after a great time out (Dec 23), teetering atop a pair of oversized 11-inch high stilettos on her way to a fabulous night out (Dec 26) and wearing that Ann Summers haute couture on a sensational night out with the Ramsays.
But it is not all restaurants for Posh (oh, the irony). And when she is not wearing this and that to dine here and here with this one and that one, the Sun is looking at her taking to the ice.
Outside the Natural History Museum in London there is an ice rink. The Museum, for your information, hosts a fine collection of bones and skeletons. And Posh.
And she is not alone. As the Sun reports, Posh holds in her arms Geri Halliwell’s daughter bluebell Madonna Spice. Posh (wearing sunglasses) looks on as Geri Halliwell skids across the ice with Brooklyn and Romeo Beckham.
Says the Sun: “Geri Halliwell and Victoria Beckham turned the ice-skating park at the Natural History Museum into London’s trendiest rink.”
This is not something to dismiss lightly. London is a haven for people whose idea of a good time is a wet backside and having their fingers run over by a bacon slicer affixed to heavy boot. Budding Torvill & Deans can recapture the magic of Sarajevo 1984 (the finale to Bolero where the skaters are sprawled on the ice) on Hampstead Heath, outside Somerset House and in the grounds of the Tower of London.
But the Sun’s eyes are on the Natural History Museum’s rink where Vicky isn’t skating. But she might be saving herself for dinner…
Blair On A Gee String
Tony Blair, Matt Damon, Jennifer Lopez and the Bee Gees make jam like it’s 2007…
HOW long before we are hailing Lord Robin Gibb of Gee’s Bee?
It may be too early to speculate on that as we read in the Express that Tony Blair and the Blairios are holidaying in the Gibb’s Miami mansion.
The paper tells us that the toothsome one (Robin) is a multi-millionaire Labour Party supporter.
Why this should be relevant, we cannot say. And we only note that Hollywood star Matt Damon lives a few doors away. Says Damon: “I heard he was here. I disagree with his position on the war but I like a lot about him.”
Why let killing and mayhem get in the way of liking someone? Damon shows us the way of life in the US of A, where a man can be whatever he wants so long as he smiles.
With understandable enthusiasm, the Express notes that nearby properties are owned by grunting tennis babe Anna Kournikova and shiny-skinned wrestler Hulk Hogan.
What is more – yes, more! – the Blairs holiday retreat is two doors away from a mansion belonging to Gibb’s Bee Gee brother Barry. Until earlier this year, singer Jennifer Lopez owned the house in between.
Tony and the Blairios are mixing in rarified showbiz circles. And in “Playin’ Alive” the Mirror tells us that Tony and his backing family are “planning a holiday jam session with Bee Gee brothers Robin and Barry Gibb”.
For you readers not down with pop muso speak, a jam is not a jam-making session as one might imagine the Churchy Tony partaking in with the vicar’s baking group but a fruity musical melenge.
The Mirror spots Tony carrying a guitar case believed to contain his “much-loved” Fender Stratocaster guitar into Robin’s £5million home.
The thinking is that the one-time guitarist in Ugly Rumours plans to bring in the New Year with Robin and Barry. (If Bono can do politics then why not Tony the protest songs?)
Says Robin’s wife Dwina: “Tony is a great fan of the Bee Gees and loves to play guitar. Who knows whether there will be any jamming sessions going on? But it’s a place and a time of celebration. I’d say it’s pretty likely if Barry brings his guitars over.”
Of course this is not the first time Tony has dallied with rock deities and has stayed in Barbados courtesy of Sir Cliff Richard. For Tony, popstars are travel agents in sequins.
Now in Miami, Tony is ready to spray on some trousers, stick his teeth out and sing, sing sing!
Take it away Gibbs, Tony and the Blairos: “…’cause we’re living in a world of fools/ Breaking us down/ When they all should let us be…”
Simon Cowell & Jessica Simpson Holiday
SIMON Cowell spent his Christmas holiday giving his pasty mantits some tanning in Barbados, writes Dlisted.com.
He was joined by the hotness that is Michael Winner. Hmm…
DAMN! Scary Spice aka Mel B is that hard up to get Eddie Murphy back? According to sources she has sought the advice of a witch doctor to her get back Eddie Murphy. Eddie famously dumped Mel B during an interview with a Dutch reporter in which he denied that he was her baby daddy. She is paying a witch doctor named Tabitha to perform a series of spells to bring Eddie back to her loving arms.
A friend of Scary’s said, “She was heartbroken when they split and was prepared to try anything to win Eddie back. She’d heard about the powers witch doctors have and when everything else failed she knew it was her only hope.”
One of the spells called for Mel B to piss in an olive jar. Dirty slag! You know she drank it afterward. This story is probably fake, but I pray to the heavens above that it’s true. There’s nothing I love more than some crazy wack using vodoo to get her man back
JESSICA Simpson left a special holiday message to her fans on SweetKisses:
“happy holidays to all of my fans. i am spending much needed family time in the colorado rockies. i send y’all my genuine huge smile hoping it makes its way to brighten your christmas day…very dorky rhyme, but hey what can i say…i am a dork. daisy doesn’t enjoy the role of santa in this picture, but the idea was just too cute to resist. i love all of y’all with my whole heart and my hope is for each and every one of your christmas wishes to come true.
thank you for always inspiring me to be better in everything that i do.
xo jess”
Can’t capitalize much.
Britney’s Old Tat
BRITNEY Spears is busy, busy, busy.
When she is not drinking and being estranged from her husband, the rapping rodent Kevin Federline, she is getting a tattoo.
Never one to miss out on a celebrity happening, the Mirror zooms in on Britney as she waits to be inked.
The Mirror looks on as “she bites her nails”. It notes that the “body artist” is “burly”. The Devil Doll tattoo boutique in Los Angeles is abuzz with excitement and the sound of needles pushing ink into skin.
And this in not the first time Britney has been drawn on. As the Mirror notes, Britney has a “sexy” six-inch fairy tattoo on her bottom and a set of dice. All very tastefully done, of course.
Other artworks include a daisy tattoo on her right toe, a butterfly on her left foot and a Chinese symbol on her belly.
And this new tattoo? A set of angel wings on her back? A likeness of Colonel Sanders, purveyor of fried chicken, on her lips? The legend “I used to be Britney Spears” writ in day-glo pink on her forehead?
No. This tattoo is a star the size of a money spider on the joint betwixt right thump and index finger.
But why? What does it mean? Is the star a symbol of her failed marriage? In which case, shouldn’t there be two of them? Or is this star a sign of how Britney’s own star has fallen?
Or is it just Britney finding something to do and hoping the world will watch her doing it..?.
Fat & Fast
“FATTEST children dodge scales in obesity survey.”
So says the Express.
It seems incredible that the larger elements of the younger generation are able to dodge anything other than salad. It is certain that they do not dodge food.
But when presented with a set to scales the large of frame move faster than their skinny peers.
The irony is that in fleeing from the scales the portly will lose weight and with it their desire to be weighed and measured by the government’s goons and eugenicists.
By running, the fat will soon fit with the norm. Go on, Roland Browning, Billy Bunter and Russell Grant, run why you can. You can’t run for ever, and certainly not on that diet of fast burning crisps and alcopops. If only you’d have had the porridge. Run for now for tomorrow you comply. You will be measured and placed on a graph. You will be a decent average.
The Government has a job to do. Children must be measured. As a Dr Colin Waine, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, tells the Express: “It is very disappointing that they have only managed to measure 48 per cent of children.”
This suggests that 52 per cent of children are scale dodgers.
But statistics never work so clearly, and certainly not at a governmental level. The skinny may also have slipped though the net.
Tam Fry, head of the Child Growth Foundation, says the report into childhood weight has “failed lamentably”. Says he: “We do not know how many children in this country are obese which is why it is so calamitous that this went wrong.”
Indeed. If we do not know how many children are fat, how can we round them up and use them as alternatives to fossil fuels?
Think less of yourselves, fat child, and more of how your fat can fry a dinner, power a small family saloon and light up a shopping precinct.
It is time to stop running. You are wasting valuable energy…
Suffolk Strangler Uncovered
“MY HELL AS WIFE OF RIPPER SUSPECT.”
The Mirror’s front page features Diane Cole, ex-wife of Steve Wright, Suspect No. 2 in the Suffolk Stranger murder hunt.
That headline threatens much. In an instant we see rages, hysterical fights and worse. It is Hell.
Diane says the marriage was a “total disaster”. She says that just two months in, Wright was cheating on her. Life together running the Ferry Boar Inn, Norwich, was “a nightmare”.
Incidentally, the Mirror says this pub was a “regular haunt” of two prostitutes whose murders remain unsolved. The Mirror tells us that Wright was not running the pub at the time of these killings. It doesn’t tell us what Wright was up to at the time of these killings nor when the killings occurred. The paper just delivers the facts. And then gets back to Diane, “who lost her legs”.
The fiend. Not her legs! Well, not to Wright – Diane lost her legs to meningitis, not thought to be a known associate of the suspect.
But it is a fact. And like the mention of those unsolved killings, it is facts that help to create a profile of this man.
And there are more killings to consider. The Mail talks of how Wright could be questioned over ten murders. As the Sun’s front page announces in a blend of rhyme and reason: “SUSPECT No2 KNEW SUZY LAMPLUGH.”
Lamplugh was the estate agent who went to a viewing and was never seen again. The Sun calls it an “amazing coincidence” that Lamplugh and Wright were once both employed on the QE2 ocean liner. A shipmate says Wright, one of 900 working men onboard, “sniffed around” Lamplugh, one of 100 working women.
What more of this “SECRET TRANNY”. Oh, yes, the Star says that when Wright is not working in a pub where murdered prostitutes once drank, and being the ex-husband to a woman with no legs, he is dressed up to the nines in wig, high heels and a shiny PVC mini-skirt.
There’s a picture of a man dressed in a black corset and black stockings on the paper’s front page. Is it Wright? If so, where’s the PVC skirt? We need to see it to know what we are up against.
The Star says there are more pictures inside. And we turn to these pages to see a picture of Wright dressed in a blue T-shirt and playing cards. We only see him from the waist up and, too true, his nether regions could be clad in a pink tutu and peek-a-boo panties. He looks so normal. You really just cannot tell.
“Cross-dresser held in hunt for Strangler,” says the Express’s front page. And recalling to mind the Lycra shorts said to have been worn by Suspect No. 1 Tom Stephens, we wonder if the two men know each other.
The police are investigating the same thing. “Police probe links between two suspects,” says the Express. Do they know each other? Did Stephens once see Wright in his outfit and proposition him?
The hunt for truth continues…
Turn Away The Other Cheeky
“LEMBIT acted with total propriety. He did what any MP would do.”
So says the Liberal Democrat’s spokesman in the Express. And we move on.
Lembit Opik, LibDem MP, has done nothing untoward. Not for him those salacious tales of dallying with a rent boy (LibDem MP Mark Oaten) and struggling with alcoholism (LibDem MP Charles Kennedy). Only, something nags.
And look at that picture. Lembit Opik is standing alongside Romanian Gabriela ‘Cheeky Girl’ Irmia. Clad in his grey hair, spectacles and double-breasted tuxedo, Lembit resembles a wishy-washy James Bond. Gabriela, wearing a year’s supply of make-up, her hand on her hip and a dress that suggests a coat and a good time, is at his side.
Do this couple fit? Is there something more than just instant love in this relationship?
The Mail sums up the suspicion in its headline: “Opik lobbied the Home Office to save Cheeky Girl from deportation.”
The paper says that Gabriela and her Cheeky Girl sister Monica were told in the summer that they could be sent home to Romania.
But never fear because Opik her to help. Here he is passing on details of their case to Michael Foster, MP for Hastings and Rye, where the Girls live.
The LibDem spokesman says that later Opik also mentioned this pressing matter to Liam Byrne “in a corridor”. Byrne is the Immigration Minster.
And so we have a situation in which a caring, middle-aged MP is using his power and influence to help a Cheeky Girl in her hour of need.
Has he acted wrongly? The LibDems say not. As does The Cheeky Girls’ mother, Cheeky Woman Margit. Says she: “I saw this story and just started laughing. The tears were rolling down my cheeks.”
Cheeks wet with tears of joy… It sounds like a night in with Opik and Gabriela…
Spirits Move Him
“WERE you drunk?”
The Bishop of Southwark is in conversation with BBC Radio 4 presenter John Humphreys.
And by drunk, Mr Humphreys means intoxicated not by the love of Jesus Christ or the Holy Ghost but hooch. Had he been overdoing the wine?
The Bishop thinks. And verily he begins to reply. But before he does, the Sun remembers the moment the Bishop emerged from a drinks do at the Irish embassy in London.
As reported on Anorak, the Bishop, the Right Reverend Tom Butler, staggered into the back of a Mercedes car and began chucking toys from it. It is then “claimed” he left the car – a vehicle belonging to persons unknown to him – and fell to the pavement.
So was he drunk? And did that nasty bruise on his head result from a fall related to the spirits moving within him? Was he bished? Or was he, as he suggested, mugged?
As the Mail asks: “SO WHAT DID HAPPEN AFTER DRINKS AT THE EMBASSY, BISHOP?”
And so to the answer, as transcribed by the Mirror.
Bishop: “Look, I’ve been going to receptions for 20 years as a Bishop. It would be entirely out of character if I was drunk. The police tracked my movements home using my Oyster card records. I got the Tube to London Bridge and then with head wounds I caught the Northern Line to Tooting Bec. I got on a bus and got off at home in Streatham. I defy anyone who has had too much to drink to make that journey.”
That is a challenge many will surely grasp this season of good cheer. Some may fall by the wayside, some will fall asleep, but perhaps one may make it. And that is the important thing.
The conversation continues:
JH: But you did tell your congregation that you’d apparently been mugged?
BoS: Yes. I was instituting a vicar and I told him I didn’t think this happens all the time and that we’d soon find the vicar who did it. [Eh?]
JH: People assume you were making that story up to cover the fact that you were drunk.
BoS: The injuries were compatible with being mugged and we thought that’s what happened.
JH: But we have no reason to disbelieve the witnesses who saw you getting into that car.
BoS: Well that again is a very strange story.
JH: Are you suggesting it might have been made up?
BoS: How could I have broken into a locked car and set off the alarm?
JH: What about the mugging?
BoS: My mobile phone hasn’t turned up, my injuries were compatible with being mugged.
JH: What does your doctor think about the medical tests?
BoS: We’re worried that a week later I can’t remember two or three hours of the evening.
So what did occur? Was the Bishop drunk. Was he mugged? Was he kidnapped by aliens?
And does the answer lie in the bottom of a glass of whiskey…
Posted: 20th, December 2006 | In: Tabloids | Comment (1)
If The Shoe Fits
“ALL I want is a proper cup of coffee made in a proper copper coffee pot, I may be off my dot but I want a cup of coffee in a proper coffee pot…”
Adam Ricketts has been lined up as the Tory party’s parliamentary candidate for Chester, reports the Express.
Unkind voices will say that if successful in his quest, 28-year-old Ricketts, the former star of the soap opera Coronation Street, will be just another actor in Westminster.
But before the show Ricketts needs to outline his manifesto. And to hear him speak, the Mail nips up to the Theatre Royal, Norwich, where Rickets is wearing a ruffled shirt, buckled shoes and a velvet frock coat.
It is less Ricketts at his club than it is Prince Charming, the man who will surely sweep one lucky woman away from her life of drudgery and treat her like a princess.
“I don’t want to be some playboy politician where I just take a seat purely to get into Westminster,” says he. Perish the thought. Politics is not some vanity show for plain men and women who crave love, fame and power. It’s for buffed and photogenic Ricketts, too.
And while Ricketts maps out his future, and demands a decent cup of coffee for Cinderella (perhaps she can make it for him), another of the Tory faithful is in pantomime.
The Sun spots Jim Davidson. True blue comedian Jim is in Dick Whittington at the Orchard Theatre, Dartford, Kent.
Here comes Jim now. Wothca kids. “Do you know who I am?” “Yes,” replies a cub scout in the cheap seats, “you’re a f***ing w****r.”
It might just be that pantomime is an ideal training ground for frontline politics.
Take it way Adam… “Pink coffee pots, blue coffee pots, they’re no good to me. If I can’t have a proper cup of coffee in a proper copper coffee pot I’ll have a cup of tea…”
Family Affairs
“WHY I’ll never forgive my father Chris Tarrant for his affair.”
The Mail’s front page has that legend and a picture of Christ Tarrant, wife cheater and all round bad lad.
There is also a picture of a woman. She is young. She is blonde-ish. Is she one of his conquests?
Inside the paper, and the truth is revealed in headline form: “Was it worth it dad?”
This girl is 18-year-old Sammy, fulltime daughter to Tarrant and his cuckolded wife Ingrid.
Forget the spurned spouse seeking revenge on the celebrity in print, this is the child. Is it a first? Can anyone recall such a thing before?
While we search through the annals of high-profile divorce for evidence of a child exposing their wayward parent in the media, Sammy says: “I will never fully forgive him.”
These are tough words. What of the children coming round? What of Sammy scoring an overpaid, under-worked job on TV and things being made right?
She calls Tarrant “pathetic”. Part of her “feels sorry for him”. She says her family has been “ruined”.
For his part Chris now lives away from the family home in a flat. And he recently told us: “I think it is very sad Ingrid, and now Sammy, have said these thing publicly.”
As we say, there is something a little unusual in speaking of your parents’ divorce so publicly. But then Sammy is the child of a celebrity parent who teaches by example.
Last weekend, Tarrant told the world: “Hopefully, the kids will pop over at some point on Christmas Day”. He said his children have a “totally open invitation”. The children “can depend on me in every way”.
This is how things are among the celebrity elite. Daughter tells dad what she thinks of him in print. And dad invites daughter over to watch telly via the national press.
Don’t these people have telephones?
Blind Dates
COME on down “Ripper suspect” Number Two. What’s your name and where do you come from.
Before the suspect can mumble something about preferring to be called the “Suffolk Strangler”, as the Sun labels him, the Mirror announces that the man in the hottest of hot seats is Steve Wright.
Steve is a truck driver. He is 48-years-old. He drives a Ford Mondeo. And he is said to be a regular user of prostitutes.
A prostitute going under the name Lou says she has had sex with Wright. “He didn’t strike me as weird and never gave me any reason to believe I was in danger,” says she. And the sex? Tell us about the sex… “It was always straight sex – nothing out of the ordinary.”
It was much the same with Tom Stephens, Suffolk Stranger suspect Number One. Although witnesses have spoken of seeing Stephens wearing a pair of Lycra shorts in his garden and riding a bicycle in public.
Can the same be said of Wright? What else do we know of him? The Express’s front page says that Wright is a loner. So too Stephens.
And there is more. Wright is not just any truck driver, but a “fork lift truck driver”, a kink on the norm. He is a former merchant seaman. (We know.) And the Mondeo the paper sees policemen removing from his driveway for forensic tests? It is blue.
Should Wright not be the man responsible for killing five women, readers should know that he is, as the aforesaid Lou tells the Express, “an ordinary-looking guy with a chubby build and is more than 6ft tall, with silver-grey hair and a biggish nose.”
Do you know him? You may recall him, perhaps, from his time as a chef on the QE2. Or you may be his partner of five years, Pamela Goodman. She tells the Mail: “I can provide alibis for him when he is supposed to have killed those women.”
To sharpen this profile of Wright, the Mail investigates more fully and reveals him to the son of an RAF policeman. Moreover, he is a keen golfer.
He is “THE REAL PRIME SUSPCT” of the Star’s front page. He “enjoyed” £40 “romps” with “Ipswich hookers”, says the paper, failing to say how it is able to gauge Wright’s emotional state at the time of his paid-for sex.
The case is building. And then the Sun delivers its exhibit. There on the paper’s front page is a picture of Wight with his hand around a blonde’s neck. The woman is Wright’s second wife Diane Cassell.
Wright and she are both looking at the camera. She smiles. He grimaces a little. His hands are about her throat. He is gripping her neck like he would his nine iron on one of his rounds of golf.
“DO YOU KNOW THIS MAN?” asks the Sun, assuming that people have survived the experience. If you do you can call the paper and tell all.
We need to know. Is it him? Is Wright the guilty party? Or is it Stephens? (Remember those Lycra shorts?) Or what about another man?
Is it you..?
Bashing The Bishop
THE hunt for the “Suffolk Strangler” goes on.
At least that’s what the police are saying, not daring to fully believe the man in their custody is the lunatic responsible for the death of five women in the Ipswich area.
But he is all they’ve got, or are at least willing to share with the public.
So who is he? Well, he’s called Tom Stephens. The Mail says he began using prostitutes after this marriage broke down 18 months ago. Home is a new-build starter flat in the village of Trimley St Martin, near Felixstowe. His car is a less-than-inconspicuous purple Renault Clio.
Is he the murderer? Look again at the car. Consider his five years spent as a Special Constable in Norfolk, pounding the beat out of choice, a uniformed part of the trained volunteers who work with and support their local police force. The Home Office website says Special Constables are “teachers, taxi drivers, accountants and secretaries”. Are they also workers in a Tesco supermarket, like Stephens? Can a “WEB WEIRDO” be a Special?
The Star has done away with its River Ripper and leads with The Suffolk Strangler. And it says that this suspect has a website on which he refers to himself as The Bishop, a character in the X-Men comic book.
The front page promises the “full story” on pages 4,5,6 & 7. But the facts are not yet all in. How can his be the full story?
But facts are stacking up. This is Stephens, the “oddball loner”. This is Stephens who once spent three nights putting up a garden shed. Neighbours saw him washing his car in the rain and digging holes in his garden. He wore Lycra shorts, or “hotpants” as the Star knowingly calls them. Locals Lesley Anne Barber and husband Mike say Stephens was “often seen on his bicycle”.
The facts start to look full. And damning. But what if it is all an act? Might it be that, as the Mail notes, Stephens is “fantasist”?
As the Star investigates Stephens, amid it sadverts for TV porn and “OLDER LADIES – OVER 40s TALK DIRTY LIVE”, the Sun considers some other facts.
Facts: Stephens visited the murder sites. He knew all the victims. And he also knew one Jacci Stephens, a former prostitute, who says: “He was nice and sweet with no nasty bone in his body. He has not got it in him to hurt anyone.”
And the Mirror hears how the suspected “Ipswich Ripper” was “begging” a “vice girl” for sex just hours before his arrest. A former school classmate describes him as a “nerd” known for wearing “extremely tight trousers”.
And Stephens has spoken out. Said he of the murders before his arrest: “I don’t have alibis for some of the times. Actually, I’m not entirely sure I have alibis for any of the times.” He admits that “from the police profiling it does look like me”.
These are the facts, such as they are. More to follow…
Spears Takes It On The Chin
“BRITNEY WEARS KNICKERS.”
Such a headline as this commands our attention. And so it is that we return to the Mirror and look on as Britney Spears pulls on a pair of knickers. Big ones. White ones.
But look again. Consider the volume of these knickers and their dimensions. Estimate the force of the elastic. This is not really Britney. Knickers… Pah! As if. It is a look-alike, a stunt double.
But what of that other Britney, the one with the chins? Sadly, this is the real thing. And the Mirror headlines the shocking view “Spear chins”.
In truth, there is only one Britney chin, not for her quivering stacks of jelly-like flesh, her head piled atop the lot like a macabre serving suggestion.
Even with a huge white arrow, the chin does not multiply. But, it is hard not see a thickening of the Spears jaw line. The one chin is growing in confidence.
It is a similar thing over in the Mail. There readers who have recently looked at Madonna’s claw-like hands and Victoria Beckham’s apparently thinning hair now investigate Britney’s chin.
And not just her chin, but her cheeks, head and arms in a piece called “The bloating of Britney”.
The verdict is that after a month of partying, the effect of late nights and full-fat drinks and fuller-fat meals have taken their toll on the star.
But surely the Mail is wrong. Britney has never been a super beauty. Her role is to be positioned just above the norm, an attainable look for millions of American girls, and boys, with big hair, regimented teeth, spots and hips. Britney is the plain Jane who scrubs up well.
The Mail’s photo is not anything out of the ordinary. Indeed, were Britney slim as a rake, skeletal even, she would not be herself. She would not be a typical American girl. She’d be something to really stare at…
Sloping Off
“WILLS AND KATE ELOPE TO SLOPES.”
On the face of it this is no small thing. Prince William and Kate Middleton, the gel-friend, are making ready to elope, jetting off to be married.
What man can blame Wills for escaping the pomp and pageantry of the State occasion? What woman can not feel for Kate, deprived of her dream fairytale wedding?
And so we read on. We learn that Wills and Kate have not yet gone anywhere. But they plan to go skiing. No, not to the Scottish Highlands, honeymooning after the romantic Gretna Green wedding. They are heading to the Swiss Alps.
Can you get married in the Swiss Alps? Do the famously careful Swiss allow such things? What of the insurance? Are the witnesses to this great occasion going to be two pretty cows, a ski instructor called Wolfgang and members of Psycho Steve’s Stag Do On Tour?
We know not. And we implore the lovely couple to think again. Take time out. Get away from it all. Have a holiday.
And look out for snowboarders…
Could It Be Tragic?
JORDAN looks like Barbie?
Not Barbie Streisand, Barbie Bush or Barbie Cartland but Barbie, the plastic figurine who girls dress up and boys put in compromising positions with other Barbies and Action Man.
Jordan is no longer a woman but a toy, a play thing. Pull the wire on her back and hear her say: "Some people may be famous for creating a pencil sharpener. I’m famous for my tits." Use a cotton wool bud soaked in alcohol to clean her. Jordan – available in every colour as long as it’s an orangey brown.
But while the Star finds a reason to mention Jordan – she’s rated as the top celebrity body in a world of celebrity bodies – the Sun brings more news of the woman who is a miracle of engineering and stuffing.
In “Hooter and the hooters”, the Sun says that Jordan wants to sing a song with Barry Manilow.
For all we know, Jordan may also like to look like Barry Mainlow, have breasts the size of Barry Manilow, be Barry Manilow. In her many passionate embraces with her husband, pop acorn Peter Andre, Jordan may even dream of being in a clinch with Barry Manilow, of having Barry Manilow’s children, of creating Barry Manilow magic.
Jordan may also want to speak fluent Latin, become the first female Pope and lead the Roundheads in a re-enactment of the Battle of Naseby.
For now though, Jordan wants to sing with Manilow. “He’s not agreed yet but I’m hopeful,” says she. “Everyone gives into Pricey eventually.”
Even Ken…
Toxic Cows
EVERY day of every week the Mail thinks up imaginative ways to remind you that life is cruel and you are going to experience pain and die. And if it can’t think any up, it looks at the latest scientific research.
Here is a selection of things that will kill you and yours from last week’s paper of doom…
MONDAY
“Bank to warn of meltdown over giant home loans” – Over £15,000 mortgages worry the Bank of England
“Cows ‘do more harm than cars’” – Report by United Nations (“Livestock’s Long Shadow’) finds cows produce more methane and carbon dioxide than car. But do taste better…
“Fat on the inside – Scan shows how even skinnies can be storing up health problems”
“Mothers who had epidurals ‘struggle to breastfeed’” – Says study at University of Sydney
TUESDAY
“The Christmas toys that are as loud as a road drill” – The Nintendo Road Drill is here
“The high-fliers too busy for sex” – Successful business types not getting any; at least not at home
“Can avoiding peanuts make children allergic?” – Can you risk it?
“Arctic summer ice cap will ‘disappear by 2040’” – So says National Center for Atmospheric Research in the energy efficient USA
The Numbers:
250,000 – The number of people who get shingles in Britain each year
23 – The percentage of people claming to be too stressed to look forward to Christmas
14,000 – The number thought to be unknowingly infected with CJD
“BLUNDER THAT KILLED MY WIFE. Every time you go into hospital, your risk of dying through medical error is as high as one in 300”
“Useless. Dangerous. Even crooked. The brutal verdict on our most popular complementary medicine cures – by Britain’s foremost expert” – Professor Edzard Ernst, Britain’s first professor of complementary medicine, has a book out
“WATCH YOUR STEP. From infertility to osteoarthritis, wearing the wrong footwear this winter could play havoc with your health” – Look out for the ice!
WEDNESDAY
“FOR SALE BRITAIN PLC. Our biggest names are being sold off to foreign predators at an alarming rate. How long can this go on?” – Predators or investors?
THURSDAY
“The glamorising of drugs and why this pair should hang their heads in shame over the Suffolk Murders” – A.N. Wilson illustrates his headline with a picture of Kate Moss and Pete Doherty. Have they been to Ipswich? We need to know
“OPERATION ARMAGEDDON. Utterly secret, it’s Britain’s biggest building site – giving the lie to Mr Blair’s pledge that there will be an open debate on nuclear weapons” – Armageddon out of here!
“Could British Airways be snapped up by foreigners” – Christians or Muslims?
FRIDAY
“Expect deja view on TV this Christmas” – Only Fools & Horses work…la-la-la-la…
“Gridlock Christmas. Holiday chaos at airports and on the roads will start this weekend” – Good job Santa’s got a flying sleigh
“Veggies grow brighter. They have higher IQs, are healthier and get better jobs, say researchers” – What about the methane gas?
OJ Simpson – Another Victim
RUPERT Murdoch has fired Judith Regan.
Word came tonight, meant to be buried as a weekend begins, just as Rupert’s NewsCorp Christmas party was getting into swing, with Bill O’Reilly whispering in the ears of grudging production assistants about loofahs, and Sean Hannity telling yet another associate producer that he really does know Charlie Daniels.
The brilliant, toxic editrix, who made writers out of Hannity and Howard Stern alike, went too far with her scheme to create and promote the OJ Simpson If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened book and informercials.
We told you the firing was in the cards: She embarrassed the boss.
On Nov 18, we asked What came first? OJ Simpson or the manuscript? And brought up the possibility that the “ghostwriter” for the Simpson book – Regan’s former lover and murder trial witness, Pablo Fenjves – had concocted the book, then sold it to Simpson.
Had she played it right, had she been more respectful of the public’s intelligence, had she not come up with that unhinged and obviously cynical explanation of her motivations, and had she not so lied so blatantly in claiming that she didn’t pay Simpson, Judith Regan might be clinking glasses with Mike Darnell in Century City tonight.
But she’ll be back…
www.tabloidbaby.com
Cheek To Cheeky
JUST what does 41-year-old Lembit Opik, the LibDem MP see in 24-year-old Romanian-born Cheeky Girl Gabriel Irmimia.
The Mirror shows the moment the MP for Montgomeryshire, Wales, met the young woman notable for her use of satin hotpants in a professional capacity and who, along with identical twin sister Monica, urged us to get down to the Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum). Lyrics: "Come and smile don’t be shy Touch my bum this is life."
So here is Opik talking to Gabriela at a party in London thrown by a TV programme called the All Star Talent Show. And this is Opik who had been engaged to one Sian Lloyd, celebrity BBC TV weathergirl. They were so in love. They appeared in Hello! magazine together.
Now it is ended. And we get to hear Gabriela say: "I couldn’t resist him and we slept together. Lembit is a very experienced lover, much more than me. We make love to music."
Good on Lembit to put his years with Sian to good use as he bops along to the Cheeky Girls greatest hits.
How Sian must love to read this. And hear Gabriela tell the Mail between love classes: "Their relationship was dying before I came on the scene. Probably I gave him strength to end it. I feel sorry for her. I don’t want to be rude but she’s twice my age, she’s maybe scared and doesn’t want to be alone."
It seems that learning is no one-way street, and as Opik teaches Gabriela how a middle-aged man touches her bum, Gabriela shows a rare and mature understanding of the older woman.
As Gabriela’s mum Margrit says of her daughter: "She is a wise wowan who knows exactly what she wants."
And what she wants is for Opik to teach her. To give her the benefit of his experience. She wants him to touch her bum…
Robbie Williams- (Take) That’s All Folks
ROBBIE Williams looks wide eyed.
He also looks: "Depressed, loveless and without ambition." His is a "tortured soul". So says the Express.
Before we go on to peer inside the Williams head, to analyse this and that, we note that this interview with the singer first appeared in the Big Issue, the magazine that enables "homeless people to earn a legal income through opportunities to help themselves".
Good that the Express should quote its sources. And so very, very good that its source should be the magazine that gives hope to the homeless, especially at this time for seasonal giving.
You can read Robbie’s interiew in full in the Big Issue – buy it on a good street corner near you – or buy the cheaper Express instead. Your choice. (Or just give to charity the money you saved by reading it here for free.)
And what you learn in this Williams case study is that Robbie can see his career heading "downhill". Says he: "I feel that I’ve overstayed my welcome a little bit. I’ve enjoyed tremendous success for more than 10 years now… And now it’s the time for Robbie Williams to go away in people’s minds."
Why Robbie should choose to say goodbye in print and in the third person is something not without interest.
But go he must. This is the star who has achieved everything he set out to achieve. Although, he did fail to crack America, which is portrayed as no bad thing, it allowing Robbie to wander about Los Angeles unmolested by fans.
This is Robbie, whose former band Take That are No. 1 in the charts and playing to wide acclaim. This is the star who created the album Rudebox. This is Robbie who wrote and sang the line: "Ok then check the tan line, make your body shape like you’re stood on a landmine call me on my mobile not the landline and the jack the mainline at the same time."
So before Robbie puts his hair in cornrows and become Britain’s answer to Kevin Federline, he wants out.
And he would give up everything he has to have what Take That frontman Gary Barlow has – a wife and children.
So give it up, Robbie, say we. Tis the season to give and give and give. The homeless man with the stack of magazines is ready to take your money…
The Wannabe Beckhams
VICTORIA Beckham “opens with the pure fresh notes of bergamot and rose petals”.
In the face of much evidence to the contrary, Her Poshness can hit top notes, middle notes and low notes of “sensual orange blossom" leading to "a seductive base of voluptuous vanilla, rich sandalwood and an elegant layer of musk”. Can the same be said of Pavarotti or Emma Bunton?
If only Victoria sang as she smelled, she would be a cornucopia of musical nourishment, her range extending beyond the shelves of chemists and department stores – where her perfume Intimately Her is on sale – and wafting on a gossamer web of sensual delights to the Royal Opera House.
Those who want to smell like Victoria’s intimate parts can buy her perfume. Just as they can buy the scent produced by her husband David Beckham. The unmistakably "intense freshness and sparkle of bergamot, tangy grapefruit zest and zingy cardomom” giving way to “a virile blend of nutmeg and star anise” before “finishing down with warm sensual undertones of sandalwood, patchouli and amber is the heady mix of energy, vibrancy, comfort and warmth” that enlivens and invigorates many football grounds.
And David is as popular as ever. While Victoria’s scent slips to Number 2 in the high street perfume charts, being pipped to the top spot by Kylie Minogue’s Darling fragrance, the Sun reports that Dave is reaching for the stars. He has just had his body insured for £10million. This is, as the Sun tells us, the largest personal policy in sport history, exceeding the insurance policy for Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho’s stubble, boxing promoter Don King’s hair and England cricketers’ butter fingers.
It is a lot of money. And, as the paper notes, "only superstars like Mariah Carey and Jennifer Lopez have deals that come close to the ex-England skipper’s".
Becks has arrived. And he had not come alone. As the Star reports, Victoria has scored a role in Tom Cruise’s latest film. Entitled The Thetan, the film is based on Cruise’s Scientology belief. In it, Victoria will play the wife of a Thetan leader.
As a source tells the paper: "Victoria is really hoping to make a go of it in Hollywood. This could be the perfect start for her with good pal Tom Cruise in charge."
Indeed. What better way to make a name for yourself than by playing a part in a film produced by the man who has been dropped by his studio in a film about a Scientology, this year’s Kabbalah.
You can almost smell it from here…
A Frost Reception
KATE Moss looks across the table at Ffiona’s restaurant in London.
She eyes Alex Zane. She wants to have him for dinner, to eat him alive. He’s the hapless lad who once dated Kate’s mate Sadie Frost.
Moss hitches up her trousers to her nipples and, as the Mirror says, enacts a passable impression of Simon Cowell. She is putting Zane under the spotlight. She wants to know if he is good enough to date her pal and join her gang.
Moss is joined by ex-Atomic Kitten Jenny Frost, acting as Sharon Osbourne and Pete Doherty playing the part of pin-headed pop impresario Louis Walsh.
All three – Cowell, Osbourne, Walsh – appear as judges in the dire TV talent show The X Factor. And mindful of this, the Star tells us more of “The EX Factor”.
“It was an incredible gathering,” says a diner observing the tableau. “Kate and her panel were sitting at one end of the table and Alex and Sadie were at the other.”
The source continues: “Alex could hardly finish a mouthful before they lined up the next question to see if he was suitable for their celebrity clique.”
Had he taken drugs? Had he ever been hideously overpaid? Had he been to rehab? How many times? Had he been arrested? Again, how many times? Had he slept with Jude Law?
Things seemed to be going well. The source tells us that Katie giggled at Zane’s answers and was flirting with him. It also says that for the duration of this trial by terrine, Doherty remained in a car outside.
And at once we realise Zane’s big mistake – to be truly in with the in crowd he should not have bothered to turn up at all.
Something Zane may only have belatedly realised – he has now separated from Frost…
A Ripping Yarn
FROM the prolonged and endless mysterious tale of Princess Diana who died ten years ago, we turn to five women who were irrefutably murdered.
Not that these five were just women. To the Star they were “VICE GIRLS” and they had a “SEX SHACK”.
This shed of vice is pictured. The Star notices scorch marks where someone has tried to burn it down. It hears from Laura Butters, a local councillor and landowner. So fed up with the “hookers” was she that she erected a sign warning: “You are being watched.”
We are not here to judge, and if Ms Butters wants to engage in a little light voyeurism and advertise the fact to others than so be it. This story is a far bigger matter than the sordid tale of women having sex with men in the outdoors.
Not that the five are women. As we note, to the Star they are hookers, what one writer calls “emblems of immorality”. They are the kind of people who have sex in a shed. There’s a picture of a girl peering into a car window. Is she a prostitute?
And let us take a look at that car in detail. Is it a battered white Fiat Uno, as seen in the vicinity of the Alma Tunnel in Paris all those moons ago? Or is it a blue BMW?
“I saw Annette climb into blue BMW too, was it killer’s car?” runs the Sun’s headline. A shop owner says she saw the victim Anette Nicholls being driven in a blue BMW. Her fellow “hooker” Anneli Alderton was seen in such a car last Thursday evening. As the paper says, it is feared Anneli was driven to her death.
Do you know anything? Can you help? Are you the chubby man with glasses looking to pay for sex? Have you ever been a chubby man with glasses looking for sex?
And what about that car? The Mail shows a policeman questioning the driver of a BMW on the outskirts of Ipswich. Is this motorist the Suffolk Strangler, the Suffolk Ripper, the River Ripper etc?
Or is he just another Eastern European in a car? “Strangler police hunt BMW Pole,” says the Mail. And we learn that a “migrant worker” is being sought. This pole drives a dark blue BMW.
Is he the killer? And is the story no longer about the horrific murder of five women, but the tale of the perverted foreigner and the prostitutes?
Princess Diana’s Bun Fight
“DIANA: THE VERDICT.”
The Sun shows a picture of forever blonde Princess Diana on its front page.
The paper tells us that with NO evidence to the contrary it has been proven that she was “NOT murdered, NOT pregnant, NOT engaged” and did NOT have her hair tied in a bun.
There is surely much else Operation Paget, the police inquiry into Diana’s death, has to reveal, like how there were “NO” traces of cocaine in her system.
The facts just keep coming. The investigation that cost millions and took three years to conduct has unearthed all manner of facts.
But this is Diana and there is always more to know. No cocaine, says the report, but what of no heroin, no ecstasy and no glue? She was not pregnant with a child but what about being not pregnant with twins, triplets or more.
Were Diana and Dodi Fayed, her lover at the time of her death, planning to buy a dog together. No engagement ring, you say, but what of a pet?
“NO COVER-UP,” says the Sun. “£3.7m…to tell us this was an accident.” For that much money you’d expect something more than a lot of negatives.
“NOW LET HER REST IN PEACE,” says the Sun’s headline. We have heard everything there is to hear. The Mirror publishes the “DIANA REPORT”, the definitive last words on the woman who entered the House of Windsor as breeding stock and left an icon, feet first. This report has “Everything you HAVEN’T heard” before. You see, more negatives.
What we want is something new. So here comes the Mail to say on its front page: “DIANA: CHARLES WANTED RID OF CAMILLA (SO HE COULD MARRY TIGGY!).
It seems that Diana believed Prince Charles wanted to dispose of Camilla like a used tampon and hook up with this sons’ ex-nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke. “Diana ‘believed Tiggy was having Charles’s baby’,” says a further headline.
A baby? This is more like it? Now we have something to work with. Did Tiggy have a baby? Did she give birth to a child, the lost prince? Has Tiggy ever smoked a joint? Does she wear her hair in a bun?
Questions must be answered. Diana is not yet free to go. “DIANA: IT’S A WHITEWASH,” says the Express. It says the report does not answer the key questions.
Mohammed Al Fayed, writing in the paper, talks of “monstrous injustice”, “an Establishment cover-up”. He draws comparisons with the Hutton Report into the death of Dr David Kelly. Was Diana killed by one of Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction? Any see a grassy knoll?
“I will not weaken,” says Fayed. “I am defiant. There must be a public inquest.”
And, as the Mail says, the preliminary hearing of Diana’s inquest will be heard in public next month. On January 8 2007, Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss will bring the Royal Court of Justice to order.
Then we will know. The truth will out. Did Diana wear her hair in a bun? And where is that bun now..?
Denying The Truth
WHO better than to face down Iran’s Holocaust Denial Conference than Our Man Elli in Israel, New York City born and now living and working as a TV jbnournalist in Jerusalem? While we worry about Nicole Richie’s driving, Elli’s got more pressing issues to deal with.
He sent us this dispatch this afternoon:
There’s really so much to say about the Holocaust denier’s conference in Iran. Actually, there’s little to say about the conference itself: It was nothing more than a nutfest, a summit meeting of antisemites celebrating themselves jerking off to the Holohoax. What can you say about the conference attendees that hasn’t already been said about hemorrhoids?
Tough guys, all of them. I’d like to see them strap on a pair and hold a conference denying that black slavery took place in the United States and around the world.
It’s ironic, really: one of the questions definitively unanswered that continues to haunt America, mostly, but other allied countries of the free world that fought Hitler as well, is why didn’t Roosevelt drop a bomb on Auschwitz, or at least the train tracks to Aushwitz, in the summer of 1944? He and everyone else already knew not just that the Holocaust had taken place, with over five million Jews already murdered, but that the Nazis were racing the clock to finish off Hungarian Jewry before the end of the war fast approaching.
The irony is that America or Israel should have dropped a bomb on this conference. In one fell swoop, we could have decimated the Iranian leadership, rubbed out those scum Neturei Karta fake “rabbis,” and said goodbye to David Duke, Bradley Smith, Robert Faurisson of France, Jurgen Graf of Switzerland, Michele Renouf of the U.K., Ahmed Rami of Sweden, and the rest of world’s Holocaust deniers. Oh well, another lost opportunity.
(For those reading this who saw pictures of those Jews in all the wire photos – of course, many, many photos, because they are such a cute novelty act to the main circus tent show– and didn’t understand how Jews were attending a Holocaust denial conference, understand that allethnic groups and religions have their bastard children; these guys are ours. They have been virtually ex-communicated by world Jewry from right to left, religious to secular, and even by the much larger ultra-Orthodox non- and anti-Zionist Hassidic groups. Moreover, they were paid to come. Kind of like one of their brethren who used to go to Ramallah to fawn over Arafat – he was directly on Arafat’s payroll).
No, what’s far more interesting is everything surrounding the denier’s conference. You have Prime Minister Ehud Olmert asking the pope to talk about the Holocaust denial conference, and not just to make do with a mere statement. And you have countries across Europe shocked– shocked! Gambling in Rick’s Café! – that such an event is taking place. But is even one of those countries doing anything besides issuing a statement?
Like boycotting Iran, perhaps? Certainly not Germany, where Holocaust denial is a crime. The Fatherland is not about to upset the $4 billion at stake in trade with Iran. That is saddest of all, really, because if there’s one country that can play the point man in the full-court press against Iran’s nuclear ambitions, it is Germany.
If the U.S. or Israel can’t take the risk to bomb Tehran before it goes nuclear, certainly Germany has the moral weight to do so. Who’s going to argue with Germany stepping into the leading role against a country that openly and directly threatens to destroy another country?
But I digress.
The point of this conference had little to do with Holocaust denial, and everything to do with Israel denial. If the Holohoax didn’t happen, or mostly didn’t happen, then Israel– allegedly established on the ashes of Europe– has no right to exist. Indeed, a quote by Deputy Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mohammadi (cited, strangely, only in a CNN story) says so outright:
“Mohammadi said if Iran accepts the validity of the Holocaust, the next question examined will be, ‘Why should the Palestinians pay for the Holocaust?’ ”
And that’s it in a Yellow Star.
Posted: 15th, December 2006 | In: Tabloids | Comment (1)
