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.
Countdown To Armageddon
WHEN Richard Whitely took one from the top and the big Countdown Clock called time on his career, Des Lynam slipped his feet into some Comfi Slippers and took over the slightly warm seat.
Des realised, correctly, that he did not have to shine or sparkle on the show, merely be a little more alive than the moribund, the students, the drugged, the journalists and the institutionalised who watch the show.
But now Des is leaving. And the Mirror uses its front page to ask: “Who will be Carol’s new Countdown conundrum?”
For those of you with lives, cable telly or no telly, the last round of the world puzzle show features a nine-letter conundrum. And it also features Carol Vorderman, 45, who when she’s not flogging debt consolidation packages does sums.
The Mirror has narrowed the choice down so it is now between any middle-aged man who has ever appeared on TV. But the clear favourite must be Gyles Brandreth, whose surname is nine letters long. For Countdown purists this is all.
With that solved, you might now be wondering why such a parochial event as selecting the next Countdown sandman should be deemed front-page news. The simple answer is that telly is all important; it is the yardstick by which we measure the world and ourselves.
Just look at the Sun’s front page, which brings the nuclear tests in North Korea into the telly fold. The paper’s headline asks: “How do you solve a problem like Korea?” This is a twist on the BBC’s How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?, the show in which pretty-ish, talented-ish performers competed to be the star of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sound of Music.
(The clear answer to Maria’s problem was to hand her over to the Nazis and so give us and the hills soem peace.)
More telly references are provided by the Sun’s caricature of North Korea’s resident loon-in-chief Kim Jong-il as a puppet. The Sun tells us that the puppet is from the cult puppet movie Team America.
So you see how television is all things to all people. Indeed, if the United Nations and whoever else likes to pretend they are in charge of world affairs can shape questions into the form of nine-letter conundrums, Countdown can set about solving them.
How do you solve a problem like Korea? PODILMACY? Or how about with some LICEBRETY?
Macca Attack
LOVE does not come with a manual.
When you meet someone they arrive in your life as a blank page. Sure, they will form a vital chapter in your autobiography to be serialised in the national press, but to begin with there is nothing but potential.
Unless, of course, you are dating Lady Heather Mills McCartney, in which case there is a manual, it’s called Die Freuden Der Liebe’, a German work known among sticky-fingered adolescents and tabloid hacks as Ich Liebe Dich.
Not that Ben Amigioni, Heather’s “hunky” fitness instructor, is dating the estranged Lady Mucca. Well, at least not according to 22-year-old Ben. As the Star reports, Ben has assured his dumped girlfriend, the “heartbroken” Joanne, that he and Heather share only a good working relationship.
But the Star says Ben’s been staying at Heather’s barn conversion. And the paper reports that Ben has just jetted off to Los Angeles with his employee.
And here’s a friend of Heather’s to tell us that Ben is the soon-to-be-divorcee’s “rock”.
Whatever the truth of it, the Mirror sees more pressing news in Macca v Mucca. Its front page screams: “BREAK-IN AT MACCA’S.”
The paper says two intruders have broken into Paul’s country estate in Peasmarsh, East Sussex, and filmed themselves walking up to the front door.
In “MACCA SHOCK”, we read that footage of this daring caper is now on the Internet. And that Paul is “livid”. And, perchance, fearful.
The Mirror harks back to how fellow ex-Beatle George Harrison was once stabbed in his Oxfordshire home and that John Lennon was shot dead close to his apartment in New York.
It’s chilling stuff. But Paul need not worry. The intruders are just American tourists. And Heather and Ben are thousands of miles away…
Kate & See
HAVING dated for what feels like an eternity, and not dated for what felt like longer, Kate Moss and Pete Doherty are to marry.
That’s if they haven’t done so already. On reading the Star’s front page (“KATE WEDS IN IBIZA”), we fear that Kate and Pete have tied the knot.
But reading on it seems that the Star has made a simple mistake. The couple have not married. The Star has no exclusive camera-phone shots of Kate and Pete saying their vows in a recording studio.
What we learn is that Kate and Pete are to marry on January 16 in a “celeb-packed” ceremony to coincide with Kate’s birthday.
All very jolly, we’re sure. But we at Anorak have always thought it hard on anyone who shares their birthday with public anniversaries, like Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, National Sausage Day and so forth. But if that’s what the happy couple want, then who are we to stand in their way?
And given the memory-eroding powers of recreational drugs, it might just be that in making the wedding day coincide with a day already lodged in the Moss-Doherty consciousness both parties remember to turn up.
But should they still forget to marry, Kate and Pete can rest assured that the papers will remind them. Already the Express sees it as front-page news, promising Kate and Pete that they are to marry on “DRUG ISLAND”.
And then there are the many friends and showbiz pals who will be in attendance. Kate’s best friend Sadie Frost will be there, so too Elton John, Richard Branson, Jude Law, Jade Jagger and pop band Keane, whose lead singer Tom Chaplin toured The Priory rehab clinic at the same time as Pete.
But don’t worry if you are not invited. You can either turn up and hope Pete and Kate are too high on life to spot the gatecrashers or you can read all about it in the comfort of your own sedan chair.
As the Express says, the couple aim to cash in on their big day by flogging the pictures to the highest bidder – which might just be OK! magazine, the Express and Star’s airbrushed sister publication…
Reade & Right
“THE HOODIES TORIES WANT US ALL TO HUG,” says the headline above a picture on Brian Reade’s page in the Mirror.
Brian – who appears at the top of his page smiling with his head resting on his hand is a way that says “Tsk! It’s a funny life, eh” – shows us a picture of two Klu Klux Klansmen.
Brian equates the KKK with the Tories. In the picture one of the hooded fiends says “Sting ‘em up”; his hooded colleague says “Send ‘em back”.
One of the pair could be Brian’s uncles. Back in August, in talking about Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic rant, Brian harked back to his youth. “Thirty years ago, I stayed with my Alabaman uncle Bud, who was such a proud member of the Ku Klux Klan that he turned up for breakfast one morning dressed peaked-hat to toe in his outfit,” recalled Brian.
Uncle Bud then told Brian how the Jews were the “lowest of the low”. Brian was appalled; so appalled that he uses the Klan to hammer the Tories, a group led at the last election by a Jew.
“Well, set my genitals alight with a torch of liberty and throw me down a disused mine shaft,” writes Brian. “The Tories have changed beyond recognition.”
Indeed. Now they look like Brian’s uncle. And they might take him up on his invitation…
New Ways To Die
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 scientific research.
Here is a selection of things that will kill you and yours from last week’s paper of doom…
MONDAY
“Millions must wait months for flu jabs” – Well, on the bright side, winter will be over by the time the doctor sees you
“The superbug that killed 49 hospital patients in nine months” – Clostridium Difficile is out to get us
“BRITAIN’S 500,000 ILLEGAL WORKERS” –And not one of them works for the Mail or any of its employees. Fact!
“Arthritis linked to growing old fast”
TUESDAY
“Why half of our primary pupils can’t talk properly” – It’s the “death of conversation”
“Wrong hip replaced, wrong leg amputated and patient given the wrong set of lungs” – Blunders are up by 50 per cent in the past three years
“Hands frozen like claws, an enormous facial wart and a blood disorder that threatened to kill her and her twins. TV presenter Alice Beer on her…Nine months of sheer hell” – TV presenter has twins
WEDNESDAY
“Why is the Church so hell-bent on self-destruction?” – A.N.Wilson sees demons
“Killed by the cruise bug” – Grandmother dies aboard ship
“New Euro-migrants will be here before January” – The Rogarians are coming!
“NHS snub for the osteoporosis victims under 75. Women at risk of osteoporosis will have to wait until they break a bone or reach 75 to get preventative drug treatment on the health service”
THURSDAY
“Taken ill over a holiday weekend, this mother called eight out-of-hours GPs. All failed to diagnose she was dying” – Woman gets through to NHS Direct
“My fertility nightmare – and what it’s like to be Mrs F***ing Ramsay” – Tana F***ing Ramsay tells us about her f***ing health problems as if we f***ing care
“Swimming pools’ can raise hay fever risk in children’” – So says Dr Yvonne Kohlhammer from the National Research Centre for Environment and Health in Neuherberg
“Mothers unaware of deadly infection” – Nine out ten mothers have never heard of Group B Streptococcus which kills at least 75 newborn babies each year
“Our prisons are now full” – Let the revolution begin!
“GLADIATOR TV. Feckless parents, exhibitionists, families at war: why today’s confessional TV is as cynical – and brutal – as the Roman arena” – Chuck the lot of ‘em in the arena and let the lions sort ‘em out
FRIDAY
“Obesity could be the biggest threat to female fertility” – So suggests Professor Adam Balen of Leeds Reproductive Medicine unit, who says 50 per cent of women at fertility clinics are overweight
King Henry
THE Society for the Protection of Traditional Archery (SPOTA) has been conducting tests at the MoD Defence Academy.
On the day we learn that North Korea is firing ozone-depleting nuclear bombs, Britain is harking back to greener period of battle with a display of the longbow.
“Hopefully this research will help restore its tarnished reputation,” says Hilary Greenland of SPOTA.
And surely it will. As the Mail reports with no little pride (“Victory to the longbow”), these war games show that arrows fired by the big bow can travel at 100mph and strike with the “power of a sledgehammer”.
Just let those North Koreans try and attack us. Why, with a decent tail wind and a stout arm, they’d get no further than two–thirds of the way down Bournemouth pier (304.8m).
And then there’s the French. Had it not been for the longbow, Henry V would not have seen off the French at Agincourt and Britain could now be in thrall of croissants and Johnny Hallyday.
But not everyone agrees that being French is the height of undiluted evil. The Mirror says that one in five Brits wants to be French.
A survey by France magazine found that 20 per cent of us want to be French and 37 per cent want to retire there.
The magazine’s Nick Wall tells the Mirror: “Stars such as Thierry Henry have had a great influence on how we view the French.”
This is Henry the footballer, who lives in that part of France we British call London and whose team lost 1-0 to Scotland at the weekend.
Why anyone would want to live in such a place is beyond us. But not beyond the reach of our longbow…
Tally-Ban Harry!
THOUGH armed with regulation British Army issue non-firing gun and melting boots, Prince Harry might not be allowed to serve in Afghanistan.
Harry, affectionately known as Harry Baseball Cap, will be furious if he is not deployed in a war zone.
Having survived Army training and no small amount of polo, Harry wants to serve. But, as the Express reports, he may be denied.
And to add to his “humiliation”, the Express notes that although Afghanistan might be too dangerous for Harry, it is considered a safe enough place for Princess Anne to tour.
And here we must interject. There is no humiliation in being a lesser man than Anne. Aunty Anne is a fearsome fighter, having proved too tough for Mark Phillips, a Captain in the 1st Queen’s Dragoon Guards. She is more than a match for the Taliban and though she might not win the war, her presence will certainly cause the enemy to sit up straight at Tiffin and not twirl their beards in a menacing and wholly unhygienic manner.
And if Harry should stay in Britain, he will not be alone. As the Mail reports, Prince William is to turn his back on soldiering.
Rather than being shot at in some remote mountain pass, William prefers to run the Queen’s estate at Windsor.
Instead of plugging a breach in the front line, William could be checking the perimeter fence at Windsor Great Park for gaps.
No firm decision has been made, but we suggest that William and Harry team up in his task. If William is to take over the rangership at Windsor, he will need a side kick, a Tonto to help him negotiate the many dangers.
With the speed of light, a cloud of dust, and a hearty “Tally-ho Silver Spoon!” the Lone Ranger will win the war against litter, deer poachers and aunty Anne’s dogs of war…
Friel Free
WHERE America leads, we Brits are destined to follow. Whether it be nylons, rock ‘n’ roll or soap operas, America invents movements in popular culture and we Brits import them.
Would we have therapy without America? Would we even have tired and emotional stars hooked on cocaine and uppers without the United States?
And would we be able to see up actress Anna Friel’s skirt had American trailblazer Lindsay Lohan not set the standard?
Just days after the Sun carried shots of the Lohan love pocket, albeit censored, the Mail spots Anna ensuring that she is the talk of the Diesel U Music Awards in Shoreditch, London.
A full-colour picture of Anna shows her to be “elegant”. Dressed in a sparkly gold minidress, dangly gold earrings and gold sandals, Anna looks like she has stepped out of the BBC’s swords and sandals story of Rome.
And then Anna sits down and “reclines” in her seat. And the Mail is awestruck. “Perhaps it was a trick of the light,” it supposes, “or lingerie that was a little too neutral.”
The Mail does not dare linger. But the good news is that a photographer does (although the snap is “CENSORED”). And a partygoer explains.
“I saw her with her skirt riding quite high and to be honest I couldn’t see any evidence of underwear – it was real shock,” says the eyewitness.
“She was smiling broadly, she seemed totally oblivious.”
And that is only right. Was it not the Americans who taught British stars that whatever the mood, whatever the scene, it’s on with the show?
Paying The Penalty
“CAN we have our ball back police?!”
The Mirror focuses on Angela Hickling, 56. Angela has been arrested, and, consequentially, had her fingerprints and DNA taken.
Officers have searched her garden. They have “rifled” through her drawers and cupboards.
“It’s unbelievable that police waste time over such a trivial matter,” says she. “There are burglars breaking into homes, people selling drugs and pensioners being mugged.”
Indeed. And perhaps during the course of this investigation, Angela would like to tell Basher of the Yard where these crimes are occurring.
But Angela is involved in another alleged caper. It has been alleged that a ball belonging to the son of one Christopher Salisbury, Angela’s neighbour, did fly over the fence and come into contact with Angela’s property, specifically her garden.
Despite an extensive search of Angela’s property, the ball was never seen again.
Angela’s neighbour, a Christopher Salisbury, talking to the Express, says his sons kicked some balls over the adjoining fence and went to get them “but the Hicklings would not us have them back”. So he called the police.
To the Sun’s mind “YOU COULDN’T MAKE IT UP”. And were that only true. But the paper will busy itself with such news – what with all those burglaries, muggings and all…
Jade Goody Makes It Big
WE imagine it was never Jade Goody’s dream to have the epithet “big”.
Jade would surely prefer to be “sexy Jade”, “juicy Jade” or even “kebabalicious Jade”. “Big” is just so flabby a word.
But Jade takes her lot in her considerable stride. And when the Mirror says “when big Jade whacks you, you stay whacked”, Jade does not respond.
This may be because Jade has other things on her mind. As the paper says, she and boyfriend Jack Tweedy have had words. How many words is not revealed. Nor do we learn if in the course of this exchange Jade coined a few news words.
What we do learn is that Jade is deciding whether or not to believe Jack when he says he did not have sexual relations with “Essex shop-worker” Mandy.
As epithets go, “shop-worker” is not the best of them, neither is “bottle blonde”, as Mandy is also labelled. But Mandy would prefer them to “love cheat” as she tells the Mirror that she and Jack did not have sex.
“There’s nothing in it,” says Mandy, responding to pictures of her and Jack in bed together. “Everyone was just larking around and I had my shorts on throughout.”
She continues: “I didn’t know anyone had taken a photo, but I’ve had my name dragged through the dirt ever since”.
And having heard from “dirty Mandy”, we now hear from Jack. Holding his head in his hands, Jack says: “Yes, it was Mandy. She is a friend of my sister, but I don’t see her any more.”
Jack, sporting “massive” scratch marks on his arm, continues: “When will all this attention end and allow us to move on? It’s all OK.”
It’s a decent enough question. And one we can answer. It will all end when the Mirror’s 3AM Girls find out what Lindsay Lohan has been up to. Or when Big Jade whacks them…
Rivers Of Blood
“TAKE OFF YOUR VEIL, STRAW TELLS MUSLIM WOMEN.”
That’s the Mail’s front page, and it’s a theme taken up by all the other papers.
Of course, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, never puts things in such bald terms. Nor does he eye a Muslim woman in his Blackburn constituency surgery and leer: “Get Yer Veil Off.”
His message is that he feels “uncomfortable” when talking to someone whose face he cannot see. “In our society, we are able to relate to strangers by being able to read their faces,” says Straw. “If you can’t read their faces that does provide some separation.”
And, predictably, this has not been well met by all. Reaction in the papers alone is between race “tension” (Star), a “race row” (Mail) and all out “fury” (Express).
And then the Sun hears from Hamid Quereshi, chairman of the Lancashire Council of Mosques. “This is not helpful and has the potential to cause anger,” says he.
And… But there’s nothing more. Where’s the rant and the promises that Straw will get what’s coming to him? Tsk! With Tottenham Taliban Omar Bakri our of the country and one-eyed-two hooks, purple people eater Abu Hamza in jail, Britain’s Muslim community seems horribly short of raving lunatics.
But not to worry. Just as we’re about to discover if in the spirit of inter-faith alliance someone like Ian Paisley or Mel Gibson can stand in as the religious firebrand, or the Sun can get Bakri on the phone, Dr Daud Abdullah arrives.
He’s a member of the Muslim Council of Great Britain. He’ll give us some juicy stuff. “The veil does cause some discomfort to non-Muslims,” says he, “one can understand that.”
He goes on: “Muslim scholars in the community are divided over whether a woman should cover her face.”
This is interesting. Rather than cause a row, might it be argued that Mr Straw has opened a dialogue with the Muslim community?
It is not only some non-Muslims who feel the veil is a barrier to communication and understanding but some of them too. We are not so different after all.
And perhaps one day Muslim women will remove their veils and be just as expressive as Western women. So Anne Robinson, what do you think of Jack Straw’s stance on Iraq? What about you, Cher? Or you, Joan Rivers…
Basha Of The Yard
“COP OUT,” screams the Sun’s front page. “Muslim PC is excused duty at Israel embassy…on ‘moral grounds’.”
Inside, rent-a-yell former policeman, ex-Flying Squad commander John O’Connor, sees disaster ahead. “This is the beginning of the end for British policing,” says he. “Where will it end?” he asks. “This decision is going to allow officers to act in a discriminating and racist way.”
And we can’t have that. Racist police? Never! How dare Muslim copper PC Alexander Omar Basha tell his superiors that he is not prepared to guard London’s Israeli embassy.
PC Basha, part of the Met’s Diplomatic Protection Squad, does not care to look after the Israeli embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens. He doesn’t like what the Israelis did in Lebanon.
PC Basha is a copper with principles, who values the sanctity of life. And we look forward to his now boycotting duties at the Pakistani embassy, the Iraqi embassy, the Iranian embassy, the Jordanian embassy, the Algerian embassy, the Kuwaiti embassy, the Turkish embassy, the Afghani embassy, the Syrian embassy, the Saudi embassy and every other embassy of a country that has killed his fellow Muslims.
Including the Lebanese embassy, which represents Hizbollah, the life-loving humanitarian group that likes Israel because it gets lots of Jews in one place and so makes them easier to kill. Oh, and if they kill Israeli Muslims as well, then too bad.
And we assure Mr O’Connor that his fears are misplaced. PC Basha is a good cop, his name alone tells us that.
And remind him that the beginning of the end of British policing came when black Stephen Lawrence was, reportedly, murdered by white racists, and a mainly white police force managed to let the killers escape justice.
And then there was the undercover BBC documentary that revealed racism among police recruits. It heard one PC admit being racist, voting for the British National Party and saying Hitler had the “right ideas”. Would he have guarded the Israelis?
PC Basha is just another copper, albeit a prejudiced Muslim one…
Little Miss Therapy
YOU know you have made it when…you are asked to entertain children.
From TV actors reading stories on Jackanory, to Ricky Gervais writing children’s books and George Bush reading them, our celebrities crave a child’s love.
And now we learn in the Star that “fashion guru” Stella McCartney, daughter of Paul McCartney, has been immortalised in “LITTLE MISS STELLA”.
This is, as the Star rightly says, the “ultimate accolade”. Adding her presence to the Mr Men and Little Miss bookshelves, Little Miss Stella is the fist “real-life person” to appear in a Mr Men book.
The story deals with Little Miss Stella’s meeting with Little Miss Nobody. Little Miss Nobody is a non-entity, a non-celebrity, who keeps getting ignored. So Little Miss Stella makes her some clothes. And when Little Miss Nobody puts them on, she becomes a Somebody.
In the sequel Little Miss Somebody scores job as a TV presenter, develops a cocaine habit and checks into Little Miss Headshrink’s clinic.
She then bounces back, marries Mr Love Rat, gives birth to Little Baby Miracle and writes a children’s book…
Brad And Angelina FC
BRAD PITT, the professional good guy who left professional victim Jennifer Aniston and shacked up with professional fiancée Angelina Jolie and her rainbow nation, father to the messianic Shiloh (the most eagerly anticipated child since Jesus), is in conversation with the Mirror.
Brad is a real dreamboat, and in keeping with this dreamy exterior he talks as if in a waking dream. He says he has “become more clear in the direction that I’d like to take and the things that speak to me”.
Oh? “…now there’ a real pride in understanding myself and what’s important to me and my own values.” A-ha.
He says that children make him “more efficient”, and make his work mean more because “I know somewhere down the road” they will see it.
Indeed. Whether it’s shooting things in Mrs & Mrs Smith, stealing things in Ocean’s Eleven or punching things in Fight Club, we’re sure Shiloh, Maddox and Zahara will watch dad’s work with a keen eye.
And they will not be alone. The great thing about adopting children is that it does not ruin your figure. So when Brad says he wants more children, Angelina need not panic.
Says Brad: “I have three kids now and next year I’ll have six. Nine. We’re looking for a soccer team.”
Brad could just do as other Americans have and buy into the English Premier League. Why bother with children when you can adopt ready-made adults?
But Brad wants more. “I want to compete in the World Cup,” says he. With three children born in three different counties, Team Brad might have some trouble getting clearance from Fifa, football’s governing body. It prefers national teams to represent bona fide nations and be a composite blend of players born in that nation.
Although Brad’s quest is not without precedent, and if the Republic of Ireland can do it, why not Pitt’s nine-strong Team Hollywood?
Especially with David Beckham in charge of team affairs…
Madonna’s Adopt Idol
HOW did Madonna go about finding an African toddler to adopt?
The Mail leads with this news of the singer’s successful search for a child. A source tells the paper that Madge has flown to Malawi by private jet to “locate a suitable candidate”.
In Adopt Idol, the country’s many parentless children were whittled down to the last 12 orphans. Government spokeswoman Adriana Michiela says she and her team of orphan spotters visited four orphanages in the capital, Lilongwe. And using arcane and secret criteria made their selection.
The final dozen tots were presented to Madonna, who, as the Sun says, cast her expert eye over the brood. What Madonna, who has two children of her own, was looking for we can only guess at.
But surely she needed to consider the needs and welfare of her children, olive-skinned Lourdes, nine, and fairer skinned Rocco, five. This new child should not clash with them but extend the family rainbow. Something darker skinned perhaps or an Aryan child of German settler stock?
Whatever the child’s complexion, Madonna may have to leave her youngest in the country of his birth for 18 months. As the Mail says, under Malawi law, a person adopting a child has to stay with the child for 18 months while the parent’s suitability is assessed.
But Madonna is unprepared or unable to do for Malawi what Angelina Jolie has done for Namibia. So the boy will be placed in the care of the Network of Organisations for Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children Madonna set up.
As reported, the Mail says that while at the centre, the boy will be taught a curriculum based on something called Spirituality for Kids. It is, as the Mail says it is, a programme of study linked to Madonna’s Kabbalah faith.
We note that the programme comes in three stages: Level 1: “Rules of the Game of Life”; Level 2: “The ‘Spiritual’ Detective: finding The Clues Within”; Level 3: “The Art of Problem Solving.”
The boy will then emerge, fully trained in how to succeed in life and not place too much on material things. Before he is despatched to live with his multi-millionaire American mother…
Sutton Ho!
IT’S not hard to see why Britney Spears chose to name her newest child after the London Borough of Sutton.
Britney adds her name to the pantheon of Sutton locals who have achieved fame and no little fortune in the field of light entertainment.
A scour of websites reveals Sutton to be home to Bradley from S Club Seven, Harry Secombe lived in the Surrey locale, as did Windsor Davies, one of Britain’s finest actors and war heroes.
And now Sutton has new reason to celebrate. But not all is well in the Spears household. Residents of Sutton will be displeased to read in the Mirror that Brit is “livid” with her husband Kevin Federline.
Barely three weeks after the birth of Sutton, K-Ferret has been partying in La Vegas. The rapper is reported to have hired a private jet and, joined by a gang of pals, headed for Sin City.
As a source tells the paper: “Kev booked a table at Tao nightclub for both nights where he knocked back Verve Clicquot champagne and passed around the requisite cigars to celebrate his son’s birth.” He was later seen dancing on tables.
But Britney was not forgotten. And K-Ferret is said to have bought her a “push present”, a pair of diamond earrings. But the plan backfired. Brit was less than impressed with Kevin and his gift. And now they are “barely speaking”.
Poor Britney. And if Britney needs a refuge, she can always rely on the yeomen of Sutton to give her a bed. And a tour of the town’s Phoenix leisure centre before a restorative period of reflection by Carshalton Ponds…
William Baseball Cap
PRINCE William has gone to Mecca.
No, silly. He might be his Koran-reading father’s son, but William is not one to make a pilgrimage to Islam’s holiest city.
The Sun’s front-page news is that William has gone to the Mecca entertainment complex in Reading, Berkshire.
“WILLS GOES TO BINGO,” announces the paper. It’s eyes down, and eyebrows up as Wills buys a £5 book of five tickets and competes for the £20 prizes on offer.
“If he had won we were wondering if he would have shouted ‘palace’ instead of ‘house’,” says a “regular”. Indeed. And perhaps William sees the numbers in terms of succession to the throne – Charles after his mum, No. 1; Princess Anne on a racing line, No. 9; I’ll be seeing you, HRH Princess Margarita of Romania, No. 82…
It’s all jolly good fun. But Wills seems unsure. And we raise our eyebrows still higher on learning that he joined the club using the moniker “William Harry”.
The caper is then topped off by Wills sporting a baseball cap, in the manner of young Prince Harry Baseball Cap, well known gadabout and goodtime guy.
Perhaps this was just the tip of Wills’ cunning plan? Were he to have scooped the £20 jackpot, the prince may have intended to squander the booty on cigarettes, women and hooch.
But he did not win. He lost. But nothing ventured, nothing gained, and we will be on the look out for William Harry at other gambling dens and sinks of vice…
Matthew McCounaughty Keeps Up
LEST we labour under any misconception, Anorak needs to make its position clear – men do not enjoy watching other men exercise.
Indeed, the common British response to seeing a man out jogging is to say, “Look at that twat.” We take no pride in this. And we are aware that in America male exercise is considered a rite of passage. For this reason it is called “training”.
So we are sensitive to the Sun’s news that Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey – “Gym Matt” – is in training to make a workout tape.
Matt, pictured in the Sun pulling himself up on a bar, is getting in shape to make it as a video fitness trainer.
A source tells the Sun: “Matt wants to create a lifestyle and fitness video for me. It will be centred on how to get a killer surfer’s body.”
By “killer”, the source means “good”. And anyone who wants to be just like Matt can soon pop down to the video emporium and score footage of the actor doing push-ups, pull-ups and all manner of other ups.
And, assured of our sexuality and machismo, British men know that women prefer a man with a sense of humour and a body that does not make them feel inadequate…
False Alarm
“ALL I did was go shopping,” says Peaches Geldof, daughter of Bob Geldof, patron saint of globalised stadium rock.
But such is life of a young celebrity that when Peaches goes shopping, the newshounds track her every move.
You can hear the shrill blast on the whistle as the paparazzi mass outside the windows of Urban Outfitters on London’s Oxford Street.
But that’s no high-pitched dog whistle, telling the tabloid hounds that their quarry has been cornered.
It is the screech of the store’s alarm. Peaches is holding a £285 cost. The security tag is still on it. Staff arrive. And Peaches is taken upstairs to the management suite for a chat.
“SHOPLIFT QUIZ FOR PEACHES,” says the front page of the Sun. The shop workers want to know why the alarm went off. And there are more questions in the Star: “PEACHES GELDOF IN SHOPLIFT QUIZ.”
Questions and more questions. What triggered the alarm? What was someone with ambitions of cool doing shopping on Oxford Street – no self-respecting Londoner ever even walks down the mobbed Mecca of vendors selling polluted pizza slices, T-shirts bearing a picture of the Pope smoking a refer and language schools?
The Star is right to use its front page to announce “SHOPLIFTING AGONY OF GELDOF GIRL”. The shame!
But reading on we learn that it was a misunderstanding. The Star hears from a shop worker: “Peaches was shopping in here when the alarm went off. It turned out the police weren’t called.”
And that about the coat? Why, as a close friend of Peaches’ tells the Mirror, she had bought it.
Although the Mail adds a little spice. The paper cites a shop source who says guards “had thought Miss Geldof might not have paid for the coat but was walking out wearing it anyway”.
The source goes on: “We could not find a record of her having paid for it and she did not appear to have a receipt…We checked her bags as well.” Finally: “We came to an agreement and she left through the back door.”
Where Peaches, and her new coat, are whisked off in a Mercedes. The newshounds stand down. It’s all been a false alarm…
David Beckham Trains Angelina Jolie’s Boy
WHEN the film of David and Victoria Beckham comes to be made, Brad Pitt (David) will turn to Jennifer Aniston (Vicky) and curse the day he ever met Rebecca Loos (Angelina Jolie).
And it might yet happen. As the Sun reports, having added Tom Cruise to their celebrity Rollerdex, Day-vid and Vicky have now scored with Brad and Angelina.
In “Pitt’s a goal for Becks”, readers learn that the Jolie-Pitts have hired Day-vid to teach their son Maddox how to kick a football.
Having been enrolled in the David Beckham Soccer Academy in Los Angeles, the paper says that Maddox has shown early promise.
We do not wish to burst the young lad’s dreamy bubble of one day scoring for Manchester Devils, and merely note that at age five most lads have already been tapped up and tied up by clubs. If not over the hill, five is at the very least on football’s downward sloping pitch to Yeovil FC.
But their remains hope. And with intensive training Maddox might catch up. So Brad has asked Dayve to give his boy one-on-one tutorials.
If things go well, very soon Maddox will be able to strike the ball with rare skill, kick out a passing Argentine and hire his own PA…
Lunatic In No 10
“LUNATIC GETS INTO No 10,” announces the Sun’s front page. You want satire. You get satire.
Surprising to see it on the front page of the Sun, but there you are. The internet is a hotbed of new journalism and the newspapers will take it on any way they can. Satire, celebrity gossip, pictures of badgers – they’ll publish the lot so long as it keeps readers.
The Mail seems very much in on the joke as it announces: “The tricky questions go on hold as Blair tells all to Blue Peter.”
The Mail’s Tony Blair tells Blue Peter presenter Konnie Huq that he can’t remember if he ever made anything shown on the programme.
And what began as a promising parody falls away. The Mail misses the chance to show Tony making a Dr Who Tardis from a small plastic berry container and empty juice carton and dreaming of travelling back in time to watch Jackie Milburn score for Newcastle United and marry Maggie Thatcher.
And so it’s back to the Sun’s story, which now announces in headline form: “ALARM WAS OFF AT No10.”
It seems that when the lunatic was in the Downing Street grounds the alarms were not on. They had been shut off to allow gardeners to go about their work unmolested.
The “deranged intruder” was only spotted when a passing policeman heard the soft thud as, having scaled the 6ft railings, he jumped to the ground.
The Mirror uses its finest cartoonist to re-enact what might have been the scene. At 10:36pm, the intruder scales the fence at the back of Downing Street and enters the outer security area.
He his heard by an officer from the Diplomatic Protection Squad. The two men struggle. The intruder is pinned to the ground and found to be carrying “quite a large” knife.
The man is arrested on suspicion of affray and assaulting a police officer. The accused is due to appear before London’s City of Westminster magistrates court today.
Where he will give his name as G. Brown and explain that the sword is a ceremonial claymore as used by all true Scotsman and lunatics who want to get into No.10…
George Michael Chants
“THERE was spliff in car but I don’t have drug problem,” says George Michael on the Sun’s cover.
And we hang our heads low. Poor George. Has it come to this? Once he was a top lyricist, rhyming “Wham!” with “Bam!”, George is now too tired and emotional to use anything but the bare minimum to communicate.
The very real fear is that George is but a toke on a Thai stick away from speaking in a series of grunts, his work reduced to one long Gregorian Chant.
But even though George’s record label, Sony BMG, says he must get help for his “cannabis addiction” (Mail), George uses what linguistic ability remains to tells us that he has no problem. Dope addict? What, er, you know, addict?
Referring to his recent brush with the law, George tells the Star: “This is the second time in a year I have been caught with an unused spliff in my car.”
He goes on: “I had no drink or drugs in my body. I haven’t got a problem with drugs.”
The Sun is less than convinced. In “OFF HIS TROLLEY”, it says that when medics arrived at the scene of George’s latest escapade they found him “slumped” in the driver’s sat.
George was “sweating”. They had to “support” him. And fearing that he would collapse they kept a “trolley” on stand by.
But George says he is clean. And the Mirror wonders what could be wrong. In “SO JUST WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH HIM”, the paper asks if George is tired. Is he suffering from narcolepsy? Has he been listening to James Blunt?
Has he got an unused spliff in his car because he has misplaced his lighter?
All questions will be put to George in the fullness of time – but don’t expect a coherent answer any time soon…
The Yellow Perils
STRICTLY speaking, Nasser Khan, driver of a red Toyota MR2, should only have received a parking ticket once he had moved his vehicle.
As the Mail’s picture clearly shows, the workman who painted double yellow lines on the road under Mr Khan’s car, which was already parked, was unable to get beneath the wheels.
We put it to the Beak that Mr Khan was parked legally, his wheels resting on nothing but unpainted tarmac. He only touched yellow when he moved he vehicle.
As Mr Khan says: “When I parked it that morning, there had been a gap with no marking, so obviously I thought it was perfectly fine to leave my car there. But when I got back, the line has mysteriously appeared.”
Salford council are investigating the incident. And we too are interested to find out why Mr Khan’s car was not lifted into the air to facilitate correct line paining.
Leaving a gap in the double yellow lines that add colour to every street in Britain is a clear breach in council policy. Heads will roll.
Third-World Mothers
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 scientific research.
Here is a selection of things that will kill you and yours from last week’s paper of doom…
MONDAY
“Daren’s Cup of tears. Six weeks after losing his wife to breast cancer, Clarke can’t hold back the emotion as he celebrates Europe’s victory” – The Mail sees Darren Clarke help Europe to win golf’s Ryder and uses a long lens to capture his tears
TUESDAY
“Excuse me, did you notice the decline of good manner?” – It’s the top skill dying our, dont-yer-know…
“THE NHS CHILDBIRTH CRISIS – This couple lost their baby after being turned away from a busy maternity unit. Mothers tell of being left to struggle for hours in delivery rooms with blood-caked floors. Welcome to Britain’s third world maternity service” – Perhaps Angelina Jolie will adopt us?
The Numbers:
“11m – the number of back pain sufferers in the UK”
“24 – the percentage of parents who send their children to school without breakfast”
“25 – the percentage of people in the UK who experience some kind of mental health problem very year”
“Can you trust home blood pressure kits? – Dunno
“THE MID-LIFE BINGERS – If you thought only the young drank to excess, think again. That oh-so civilised bottle a night may be more than your ageing body can cope with”
“The lung transplant gave her cancer. It just didn’t seem fair”
“The generation at risk from a ‘toxic society’” – So says Rowland Constaine, chairman of the Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools
WEDNESDAY
“THE AGONY OF WE EMPTY NEST MUMS – You’ve worried yourself sick bringing them up but now they’re leaving home for university or that first job. Here broadcaster Jenni Murray, whose youngest son has just left, describes the terrible emptiness that she and countless other mothers are experiencing” – Perhaps they can fill their days by writing about it, like Jenni?
“DANGER LURKING IN FRUIT AND VEG” – Avoid fruit and veg!
THURSDAY
“Playing fields crisis ‘boosts child obesity’” – And we thought it was because they ate crisps all day
“Crisis for the crabs of Cromer” – The velvet crab is off the menu
“They have long been glorious, if mysterious symbols of the British landscape. But today our owls are dying out in record numbers. VANISHING OF THE NIGHT” – Are Romanians and Bulgarians eating our owls?
FRIDAY
“Danger of a baby bulge. Mums who don’t lose the weight gained in pregnancy face problems with later births”
Jessica Simpson Makes Eyes
When Nick Carter learned that his girlfriend at the time, Paris Hilton, cheated on him with Chad Michael Murray, he got revenge. He immediately hooked up with Asshole Simpson. Are these bitches twelve years old?
Nick told Page Six:
“I’d fallen head over heels with this chick. Then, all of a sudden, three months go by and I got people telling me, ‘Nick, you know what Paris is doing to you,’ and I got a little upset,” Carter related. “So then I just decided to fight back a little bit and started doing my own thing again. The result is I hooked up with Ashlee Simpson. When Paris came back from Australia, they talked to each other and she found out about it.
“So I brought it up to her and said, ‘You know what I did, and now it’s your turn. Why don’t you tell me what you did.’ And she goes, ‘I never did anything! I never cheated on you.’ I had kind of started to really like Ashlee and I was thinking about the dating stage, then, before you know it [bleep]ing bitch-face comes back.”
Nick is dropping bombs left and right to promote her new reality show, House of Carters. Nick’s brother, Aaron, also apparently hooked up with Paris right after her break-up with Nick.
