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.
Bra-vo Kate Moss
KATE Moss is versatile. She’s as at home in a London recording studio as she is in pair of sheer black stockings, black knickers and matching bra. The Mirror has produced shots of both looks.
And that is not all. Over in the Star, Kate is wearing a demi bra, a thong, suspenders and stockings, all in matching burgundy.
It would not be going too far to say that Kate could just as easily turn her hand, backside and chest to blue underwear, gold underwear and, if the part demanded it, white underwear. But not yellow underwear – that would be a career threatening move and we advise against it.
Kate might also be seen in Pete Doherty’s underwear. The pair have shared so much together that this is not beyond the realms of fantasy.
And talking of the pop f***wit, there’s Pete in the Mail, his pasty face alongside a shot of Kate in black gunties. Pete’s tour of courts has arrived back in London.
Appearing at Thames magistrates’ court, east London, Pete pleaded guilty to five counts of possessing heroin, cocaine and cannabis.
District Judge Jane McIvor said that this was a “deliberate flouting” of his drug treatment order. She then commented on Pete’s rumoured career as popstar. “The Blinding is very good,” says she of one of his songs, “but I’m not sure about the words.”
As the Express reports, the Beak told Pete that if he was caught with drugs again he would be jailed.
After that, Pete said he had mixed feelings about the result. “I just want to get my life back,” said he.
Which sounds promising for those of us who have not yet witnessed one of Pete’s courtroom performances…
Breast Of British
SADLY for Steve Irwin, his death did not come in time for this year’s TV Quick and TV Choice Awards.
However we are optimistic that next year’s TV awards show will feature a special “Best Death Of A Celebrity On Camera” category, and so long as Steve can see off the challenge of Anthea Turner, he should scoop the top gong. We wish him well.
But, happily, the awards did come at just the right time for many others, some of whom are pictured in the Mirror.
None of Kym Marsh, Lacey Turner, Jodi Albert, Debra Stephenson, Fearne Cotton and Myleene Klass won an award but the Mirror recognises their work with dresses and decollage in glorious colour.
The Sun has more of the “sexy line-up” of actresses and telly presenters. And in among the talented cleavages and thighs manages to tell readers that Doctor Who won three top gongs, with the show’s David Tennant and Billie Piper collecting best actor prizes.
“BILLIE’S THE KID,” says the Star’s headline. And we get to see Billie roaring with laughter and showing the kind of teeth Steve Irwin would have gladly stuck his head between.
But Billie is not the biggest news in the Star. That star the paper notices most is Bianca Gascoigne, step-daughter to ex-England player Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne and winner of this year’s Love Island TV show.
Great things are planned for Bianca. And so long as she keeps wearing yellow dresses over an orange body she should be turning heads for years to come…
Irwin Croc-ed
“SHOW my death on TV,” announces the front page of the Star.
“Even if a big old alligator is chewing me up I want to go down and go, ‘Crikey!’ just before I die. That would be the ultimate for me.” So says Steve Irwin, TV’s The Crocodile Hunter.
Sadly for Steve, he never did get to be munched by an alligator and had to settle for being speared in the chest by a Stingray, creatures the Sun calls the “pussycats” of the sea.
While cat owners eye their moggies with a newfound respect, we look forward to seeing Steve’s death throes on the magic box. The camera did keep rolling as Steve swam “too close” (Mirror) to the ray at Batt Reef off Queensland, Australia.
And now the images will be broadcast. Who needs the news anchor discussing her “overbearing” sister-in-law when you can have a presenter being killed LIVE! on air. TV outtake shows will have a field day. Now this is entertainment.
We will watch thorough knitted fingers, tying not to puke as Dennis Norden and presenters of hilarious TV bloopers and burps shows try to extract a laugh from their viewers.
But before that treat, a pal of Steve’s remembers the man. “Steve died doing what he loved best and left the world in a happy state of mind,” says John Stainton. “The world has lost a great wildlife icon, a passionate conservationist. His last words would have been, ‘Crocs rule’!”
While not the “Crikey!” Steve dreamed about, “Crocs rule!” is nonetheless a pretty decent last utterance, even it might well have angered the ambitious stingray. Perhaps the cry of “Crocs rule but stingrays should get their chance to govern” would have saved the animal enthusiast?
We can only guess what Irwin was thinking. And that’s no easy thing given that, as the Mail reminds its readers, he once thought it a good idea to feed chickens to a crocodile while holding his baby son under one arm.
That incident caused “an international outcry”, compared as it was to Michael Jackson dangling his own son over a balcony.
But let us not dwell on the negatives. Steve left us “sadder but wiser,” says wildlife expert David Bellamy, writing in the Sun.
Steve left us with the Elseya iriwni, a new species of snapping turtle discovered by Steve and named in his honour. He left us with a new perspective on stingrays.
And above all Steve left us with some entertaining and ultimately shocking TV footage. And for that the world of showbusiness salutes him…
A Fat Lot Of Good
DOESN’T the Government realise that all the best chefs are fat?
Teaching schoolchildren how to cook might just make them even rounder than they already are.
And fat is a big issue – so big that the Sun has two stories on fat.
In “So fat towel wouldn’t fit round my waist”, holidaymaker Penny O’Toole relives the horror of undersized towels and her oversized body.
Staying in Dublin with husband Marcus, the 15st 5lb mum decided to take a shower. “I was so angry when I got out because I thought Marcus had only left me a hand towel to dry myself,” she says. But she was wrong. That was no hand towel. It was Penny who was too big.
The Sun produces a Penny “FAT FILE”. And notes how 5ft 4in Penny (that’s her height not her girth) has lost five stone and is now happy as a full-time mum in a pair of jeans and a sleeveless blouse with complementary ribbon-style belt.
But Penny should not relax. And here comes “tubby” knife victim Dave Jeffries-Tipton to explain why.
Posing with his shirt off in the manner of a Geordie football supporter, Dave from Stafford says he was stabbed eight times during a fight.
Happily, though, Dave is fat. Had he gone to a Dublin hotel with the aforesaid Penny, he might have dieted and could now be dead. As it was, he was saved from being seriously wounded by his bulk.
Be fat and live longer. It’s the motto we can all live by. And we at Anorak plan to.
But being fat might not ensure the future of mankind, just fat men like Dave.
In the third fat story of the day, the Mail says that fat men are 10 per cent less fertile. According to a study by scientists in Iowa and North Carolina, being a stone and half overweight reduces fertility in men by ten per cent. Being obese halves the chances of fathering a child.
The effects on the reproductive system of holidaying in a Dublin hotel with Penny or being stabbed in fight with Dave are not yet clear…
Posted: 4th, September 2006 | In: Tabloids | Comment (1)
Jamie Says
IT’S back to school.
After the thrills of summer, children are returning to the classroom. There they go, showing off their new Prada schoolbags packed with the latest electronic aids to learning.
They’re keen to display their fake bake tans and relive their tales of what they got up to as they holidayed at Heathrow Airport. See them as they skip from mum’s 4×4 to the school gates.
But what will they be learning? The Mail investigates. The paper says that “cookery is back on the school menu”. Children aged between 11 and 16 will be taught “how to plan and prepare affordable meals”.
Surprisingly, this does not involve getting children to ask their parents or guardians for a couple of quid for a takeaway kebab and covering it with just the right amount of curry sauce. This course involves heating up the kebab and warming the pita bread.
And such is the way of education, there will be a certificate. As a spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills tells the paper: “We want to see a resurgence in the art of cookery. When kids have completed the 24 lessons they will get a ‘Licence to Cook’ certificate.”
You can just see the little loves turning to each other. “The name’s Bond…Armani Bond. Licence to cook.” Armani then throws a frozen pizza at her teacher’s head.
It’s encouraging stuff. But the course will not begin until next September. Not that this means children can just eat more kebabs and junk in the meantime.
As the Mirror’s front page announces, 10,000 school cooks are to be trained how to, well, cook. But Education Secretary Alan Johnson, who is masterminding the scheme, cannot do it alone. As a source close to Mr Johnson says: “One of the first things he did when he got the job was to pick up the phone to Jamie to throw some ideas around.”
And that’s not Jamie Redknapp, Jamie Lee Curtis or Jamie Foxx. It’s Jamie Oliver, the celebrity known above all else for his cooking.
And you can follow the cooks’ progress as Jamie gives regular updates on his public information films Jamie’s Return to School Dinners. (It’s like The Charley Says films of the 1970s, only now the eponymous cat Charley is passed off a leaner alternative to bacon.)
Jamie says: “Cooking is fun”. Jamie says: “That seared encrusted carpaccio of venison looks pukka.” Jamie says: “Why are 10,000 cooks looking at me and fingering their frozen turkey twizzlers in a menacing way?’”
Jamie says: “Ouch!”
Tony Blair’s In Law
“WHEN women such as [Kirstie] Alley, 51, lose so much weight so publicly, women like me (size 16, her former size, most often described as ‘huge’) feel a turbulent mix of envy and admiration.
It’s Lauren Booth, half-sister of Cherie Booth and daughter of the actor Tony Booth. She now more famous for being the woman who is a ‘huge’ as Hollywood star Alley once was.
Lauren is writing in the Mail on Sunday. And she says that her mixture of admiration and envy should be combined to form the world “enviration”. “The word enviration should appear in future dictionaries next to a picture of stunning Kirtie,” says Lauren.
Yes, pictures in dictionaries. Might it be that half-sister Cherie got the brains (and the non-picture dictionary), while Lauren got the size 16 dresses and hips?
And having coined a word, Lauren now conjures up a new stream of journalism.
Lauren notes that American journalist Michael Noer says “career women make bad wives”. These men are “insecure nitwits” says Lauren.
They “want their wives to stay at home but have plenty of their own money. To be with the children all day long but not be boring.”
She concludes: “Watch out for more articles about the want-it-all male.” And, perhaps, watch out for them in Lauren’s column.
And look out for a mention of Lauren’s brother-in-law- Tony Blair. Lauren says she can hardly wait for the Labour Party Conference, and Tony’s speech.
And she’s prepared some gags. “’Knock Knock’ Who’s there?’ ‘Gordon Brown’ ‘Oh buzz off for another year, will ya?’”
Not to worry. Perhaps Lauren can sing, like Peter ‘insania’ Andre, and Cherie…
Family: Brother-in-law, Children, sisterhood of overachieving women
Story: I’m ‘huge’ and not funny
Silent Killers
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…
TUESDAY
“’Fivefold risk of a heart attack for snorer’” – So say some Swedish scientists. But don’t worry – you might be asleep when you’re time comes
“I was hit by Parkinson’s at eighteen” – TV presenter Michael Gibson speaks about his illness
“Are your arteries 40 years older than you?” – Depends how much cosmetic surgery you’ve had
WEDNESDAY
“Binge drinking booms in the affluent areas” – Rich people spend more on drink shocker!
THURSDAY
“FAMILIES CAN’T STOP DOCTORS TAKING ORGANS” – Front–page news
“Don’t fly off the handle if you want to keep the years at bay” – Getting angry make you age faster say researchers at Harvard School of Public Health
“The deadly downgrade – Deaths from drugs have soared since Labour eased the law against cannabis” – Labour party gets you onto hard drugs
“Round clock drinkers are hogging the ambulances” – 24-hour drinking keeps ambulances busy and crews on the ball
“WHY ARE WE ARGUING NOW?” – Because the Mail is making us angry?
FRIDAY
THE TERRIBLE PRICE I’M PAYING FOR TEENAGE SEX. Chlamydia is now such an epidemic that Boots is to sell home testing kits. Here one women revels how this ‘silent disease cost her the chance of motherhood – and destroyed her marriage” – Can a disease be noisy?
“Danger for motorists fuelled with fast food” – RAC warns that the fizz and fat served at service stations can make drivers feel “tired, hungry and unable to concentrate”
“Don’t be fed with fear. Worry over childhood food allergies causes needless panic, say doctors” – But what does the Mail think? Can you worry needlessly. It’s a worry
The Terrible Two
“PLEASE LET IT BEA…FOR ME,” says the Star’s headline.
This is the latest update on the divorce of Paul McCartney and Heather Mills McCartney, aka Lady Mucca. And the news is that their daughter Bea is upset.
Indeed, the two-year-old has “thrown a series of tearful tantrums”. In one scene, Bea had a “temper fit” with her mum and a minder as they dined in a health food restaurant in East Hampton, Long Island.
Onlookers say that Beatrice was carried “kicking and screaming” into the street. Heather and her bodyguard were forced to “abandon” their meals.
It was a scene of genuine horror. And it comes just days after Bea had a “similar fit” while plying on the beach. Holidaymakers claim the toddler was “crying and yelling”.
This is just awful. It was meant to be so different. Heather and Bea are renting a £42,000-a-week property two miles away from Paul’s home in the area. This was a shared holiday, a time of peace and coming together.
“It’s a difficult time for everyone,” says Heather’s spokesman. Indeed. But with the right handling things can yet improve.
And one day Bea might just get over her angst and upset. And that day might be around the time of her third birthday, when the terrible twos end.
And the other terrible twos are divorced…
Springtime for Princess Diana
SPRINGTIME for Diana and Germany. The Mail reports that Princess Diana has been turned into a stage show.
Produced by German director Christoph Schlingensief (United Trash – a comedy about German soldiers in Africa) and Das Deutsche Kettensägen Massaker (The German Chainsaw Massacre), the production is due to arrive on the London stage in October.
“The Diana piece completes my series which started with Hitler, says Christoph. (Christoph created the movie 100 Jahre Adolf Hitler – Die letzte Stunde im Führerbunker (100 years of Adolf Hitler – the last hour in the Führerbunker).) “They are all people around whom mythologies are built up”, he adds.
A provocateur my design, and a producer of adolescent vauderville by accident, Schlingensief makes a decent point. But he is wrong. Diana is not myth. Diana is a dossier.
And while a woman dressed as Her Majesty the Queen gives a Nazi salute in Schlingensief’s work, the dossier we call The Daily Express focuses on Diana’s “summer of love”.
While Schlingensief’s Diana is confused, the Express’s Dossier tells how “in the last months of her life, [Diana] enjoyed fun and frolics in the sun and fell head over heels for Dodi Fayed”. It is certain of this.
She was “relaxed”. These were “carefree days”. She was “having the time of her life”. She told the press pack in St Tropez: “You’re going to get a big surprise with the next thing I do.”
What could she have meant? Was Diana about to dye her hair, change her bikini, refuse to shave her armpits? We don’t get to hear, and are left wondering if our guess about the armpits was correct.
But things were not to last. “Diana’s summer of love was ending. But a still unfinished winter of discontent was about to begin in the most world-shattering fashion.”
Mit a bing-bang bing-bang boom…
Museum Of Pete Doherty
“AS well as not paying his rent, there’s both graffiti and blood on the wall, and goodness knows that else. We have never known anyone like him.”
Andreas Panayiotou should not worry. The blood and other substances belong to Pete Doherty, his tenant. And such is the singer’s celebrity that the flat could be worth more money in its current state then if cleaned up.
Andreas is advised to pass the Hackney flat off as a Pete Doherty installation and charge people a fiver to see it.
And, as the Mirror says, the flat was the setting for those “notorious” snaps of Pete appearing to inject an unconscious female fan with drugs. Make that ten pounds on the door, and stick a chalk line around the area where the girl was seen lying.
Sadly, Pete will not be making an appearance at London’s newest museum. He has been chucked out of the £350,000 flat on account of his owing £10,000 in rent.
Pete is now residing at The Priory rest home for celebrities, where the Star says he has developed a new addiction. No, not to fame and writing hit songs – Pete is addicted to cooking.
He’s befriended an Irish chef who is teaching Pete how to cook dishes like Dublin Coddle and Boxy and Buttermilk Bannock.
And so hooked on food is Pete that he is, apparently, thinking of setting up a restaurant in London’s Camden Town serving traditional Irish fare.
And he could do well. A survey by independent health research groups Dr Foster Intelligence and Experian data (as reported in the Mail) positions Camden third in a league table of “thinnest areas”. (Camden is beaten by Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster).
These people need feeding up. They need an injection of Pete’s good stuff…
Getting The Horns
“MICK’S girl makes a striking Viking,” says the Mail’s front page.
And there’s a picture of mo-del Elizabeth Jagger wearing a “Wagner-inspired” smock on her lithe body and a hat with horns on her head “at a jaunty angle”.
Like so many daughters of rich and famous men, Lizzie has inherited all her looks from her model mother. Lizzie has her mother Jerry Hall’s trademark mane of brown hair and refined rubber lips.
And she’s raising her hand as if making to cover the camera lens of the Star’s snapper. Ooops! Silly us. That’s not Elizabeth. That’s dad Mick, and he’s arriving at son James’s 21st birthday party at London club Hedges & Butler.
Mick has not dressed in a manner keeping with the party’s medieval theme. But his son James has. The Mail shows him dressed in orange leggings and a tunic.
James clutches an authentic medieval carrier bag and a packet of ye olde cigarettes tucked into his belt.
For your information, James is not in the music business. And he is not a model. James is training to be an actor in New York.
And should the part call for him to gyrate his hips, strut like a demented cockerel (see orange tights) and pout, we’re sure he will rise to the challenge…
George Bush Is Dead
“FURY AS DUBYA ‘ASSASSINATED’ BY C4,” announces the front page of the Mirror.
And there surely is much upset. Not since Noel Edmonds was offed by the BBC has a British broadcaster cancelled a world figure.
But the pictures do not lie. “BUSH WHACKED,” says the bigger headline. “President Bush staggers after being ‘gunned’ down by an assassin,” runs the caption beneath a shot of a suited President staggering.
This can only be front-page news. And looking on we expect the customary page upon page of speculation based on few facts and many questions. Did the grassy knoll do it? Did Dubya accidentally shoot himself in the foot? What did the President’s minder, seen running towards his man, have for lunch?
“GEORGE BUSH ASSASINATED,” says the Star. “President Dubya done for,” reports the Sun. “Prince of Hearts struck by battered white Fiat Uno,” says the Express.
“I am appalled and shocked,” says Mitchell Reiss, the UN special envoy to Northern Ireland in the Mirror. “It sounds obscene. What on earth is the justification for television like this?”
That’s right. The murder of President Bush is part of a Channel 4 drama. It’s a film about how Bush will be murdered in 2007 after flying to Chicago. Bush will be killed, and his Syrian murderer put on trial.
Pete Dale, head of More4, the Channel 4 cable station which will screen the 90-minute movie, says it is a “thought-provoking critique” of contemporary US society. Lest you think it is cheap sensationalism, Dale tells us it is a “sophisticated piece of work”.
Indeed. It’s not real. It is art. “It’s a film. Just ignore it,” says the Mirror’s TV critic Jim Shelley. “The publicity is exactly what the film-makers want… Nothing will change. No one will die.”
Won’t they? The Mirror’s front page says, “There are even fears it could lead to a real-life assassination. John Beye of TV watchdog MediaWatch says the film “may well out ideas into people’s heads”.
“If something happens as a consequence of this film, the blood will be on their hands,” he continues, referring to the TV executives who have backed the show.
This is, of course, utter bunkum. A deluded American with dreams of fame needs little encouragement to fire a gun at their president. And a Syrian killer might well just get Hezbollah do the job for them and then blame the thing on an Israeli conspiracy.
Or on Tony Blair. The film has him on trial for war crimes…
Clooney’s Loony
HANG onto your surgical support stockings girls – George Clooney has a new lover.
“Clooney mad for Birkin,” says the headline in the Mirror. And we take umbrage at the word “mad”. Surely actress Ellen Birkin, for it is she, is a woman to be fancied by the sane as well as the crazed?
Which man would not lust after a Hollywood siren? Sure, she is a 52-year-old mother of two but George is 45. Is Ellen not more suited to George’s age than his past loves, like cereal model Lisa Snowden, 34, and Krista Allen, 35?
Whatever the reason, the story is that George has “fallen for” Ellen. George is captivated by her “stimulating conversation” – “they’ve bonded as on fast rides on his motorbike.”
Incidentally, George and Ellen are both filming Oceans 13, the movie in which Danny Ocean and his crack team of thieves recreate the Last Supper in a bank vault of a Vegas casino. Al Pacino stars.
As a source says: “She fancies him like mad and you can cut the sexual chemistry on set with a knife.”
Might it be that we are on course for another film set romance, in the mould of Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn, J-Lo and Ben Affleck and Rin Tin Tin and Lassie?
And might it be part of the script..?
Do Yer Ken?
“WORLD wide capitalism kills more people everyday then Hitler did. And he was crazy.”
Don’t worry, intrepid travellers, not everyone in London sounds as miserable, pathetic and up himself as mayor Ken Livingstone.
Some Londoners sound like this: “Gis yer money or I’ll smash yer face it. Innit”; “Nah. I don’t go over the river. Innit”; and “Gaw blimey, guv’nor, luv a duck, you ‘aving a giraffe. Innit.”
London is a veritable melting pot of dialects and languages. But to simplify things Ken and the people at Visit London have come up with a crash course in learning to talk London, innit.
As the Sun reports, the work begun by Ali G and Smiley Culture will be continued by the Festival Season Language School. Set up in Trafalgar Square, the school will offer students three-minute lessons in learning to talk London.
“It’s a celebration of our diversity,” says a spokesman for Visit London. “More than 250 languages are spoken in the city and some have blended together.”
And to get things rolling, before modules in Urdu for Irishman and Polish for anyone who wants to get a job done around the house or garden, we introduce you to Multicultural English.
The Sun has a handy cut-out-and keep translator. It tells us that “skets” are loose girls, “low batties” are trousers worn low on the waist, and “yard” means home.
For those of you who did not understand that, this article will be available in 249 other languages just as soon as we’ve found the Swahili word for “bollocks”…
Brand New Love
ONE celebrity on the up is Russell Brand. The gauche presenter of Big Brother spin-off shows is in the Sun, appearing under the headline: “THE SWINE, WOMEN..AND SONG.”
Earlier in the Sun, readers are introduced to a topless shot of Kate Moss, one of Russell’s conquests. She’s dressed in a pirate hat (get a load of her “treasure chest”) and a pair of hideous knickers in red, white and blue.
While some Sun readers dream of giving Kate a Jolly Rogering, others get to read of one man who has. And that after “bedding” three fans in one night, Russell turned his attentions to crusty rocker Courtney Love.
“He was delicious,” says Courtney of the night she and Russell spent together in London’s Claridge’s hotel. Courtney says she gave Russell a cravat as a “love token. “He certainly earned it with his performance,” she adds.
This is no slur. For many of us, having our lover hand us a cravat after making love would be an insult, a snide inference that we are blessed with all the sexual know how of a member of the Morris Minor owners’ club, Bromsgrove chapter.
But to Russell this is praise. The man who dresses like a demented fop is probably delighted with his rag.
And he may have earned more neckerchiefs after romping with three girls after his Edinburgh Fringe show. One 18-year-old girl who says she did not sleep with 31-year-old Russell (she’s called Nadine and mum might be reading) says the telly star seduced his fans with the line: “We have maters to discuss.”
“He kept lifting my skirt and grabbing my backside,” says Nadine. “He wanted to sleep with me but I’m just not like that.”
Indeed. So she and another girl just kissed him instead. And got to see him in his Y-fronts and fluffy socks. “He is quite well equipped downstairs and he clearly wanted to show off,” says Nadine.
Although he might have just found someone new to wear his cravat…
Robbie Williams Quits
“THE music industry won’t be the same without him,” sobs one fan in the Star. “I am devastated – he is the king of the charts and he’ll always be my number one.”
Don’t panic, music lovers, Elvis is not dead. And neither is Cliff Richard – few if any of us will live long enough to see Cliff say his final “hey kids”. No, this is the story that Robbie Williams is to give up pop music.
It’s the Star’s front-page news. “ROBBIE: I QUIT MY JOBBIE,” says the headline, the childish words trying in vain to soften the blow to the Star’s considerable Robbie fanbase. “I’m going to stop singing…pop has turned me into a monster.”
But nothing is for certain. And inside the paper, monster Robbie is musing over his retirement. “Do I take things into my own hands and dismantle this monster and have a nice life?” he wonders.
Or does he carry on reminiscing about the last Millennium and imitating Kevin Federline as he raps “Grab this double fantasy where we just never stop/ I’ve got one design and that’s to funk you to the top” on his latest offering?
Robbie is unsure. But he is self-aware. As he tells the Sun: “To the six millions people who keep buying my records, I’m the best thing out there. But there’s a whole group of people [who] think I’m a joke, that I am some end-of-the-pier entertainer, which I am.”
Oh no your not! I am, says Robbie. He’s not! I am, says Robbie. And keen to let him finish, and get to the bit of the show where Lionel Blair dances with Spit the Dog, we let him continue.
He continues: “I’d be an entertainment manager in Caenarvon Bay, if I hadn’t written Angels.”
Or perhaps in Tenby, where Robbie tells us he went when a boy. And that’s close to the internationally famous Caerphilly Cheese Festival. Robbie and Cheese – you can just smell the future…
Sharon Osbourne Asks
FOR anyone on Hillbilly Heroin, or indeed any kind of medication, TV’s new The Sharon Osbourne show is required daytime viewing.
The demented-Pixie-voiced professional mum was on telly in conversation with Penny Lancaster, girlfriend to Rod Stewart.
Sharon introduced her guest by way of a question. No, not, “Who wants to see Rod’s latest blonde and hear about her baby?” Rather: “What’s smooth, hot and so long it makes women wince just to hear in the inch measurement?”
Clue: it’s not Sharon’s script. So it must be “Penny Lancaster’s legs”.
Penny’s legs duly arrived, bringing with them the rest of Penny. And there’s a pictures of Penny and Sharon having a cuddle in the Mirror. And once separated, Penny confided to Sharon, and her tens of viewers propped up on pillows and OxyContin, that her son Alistair is “an angel”.
He’s: “Naughty, very funny and he brings a sparkle every time. I can’t wait, if I’ve been out for an evening to see him.”
And ditto Rod, of whom Penny says her little bundle of blonde highlights and Spandex is so very much like.
And there is to be another one. Once Penny and Rod have married – the Mail says he has bought a £3.5million southern French villa for just this purpose – they plan to try for a baby.
“Yes,” says Penny, to Sharon’s question on this matter, “we plan a brother or sister after the marriage.”
Then the Lancaster-Stewarts can grow up to be like Sharon’s own delightful children Jack and Kelly. Only with longer legs…
A Rock & A Hard Place
THE highlighted hair. The tears. The big cars and bigger yachts. The signs were there. And now we know – David Beckham is having a mid-life crisis.
The Express’s Day & Night girls hear from a source who says Victoria Beckham fears Day-vid is going through a difficult period in his life.
“Victoria has told David she is his rock and as long as he has her, he need not feel bad, weepy, anxious or distressed,” says the source. Vicky is brunette butler Paul Burrell to David’s Princess Diana.
“David calls her ‘my powerhouse’,” continues the source. “They are going through a new romantic phase in her marriage.”
To many men approaching middle age and worried about the future, this romantic phase is known as “the guilts”, and comes after a previous romantic phase in which the man has romanced his secretary, PA or some insignificant and utterly meaningless other.
Not that Dave would cheat on his Posh, with whom he is “besotted”. Says the source: “He thinks she is the most beautiful sensual woman in the world and he loves her new hairdo.” What is beauty and sensuality without a choppy bob?
And it’s not just the way Posh does her hair that keeps her man happy. “David loves Robbie Williams and Victoria has started playing Robbie around the house, grabbing his hand and dancing with him whenever he’s gloomy.”
How envious other men must be. What better when the mood is dark than a blast of Let Me Entertain You and your significant other dragging you up for a boogie? It’s Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party made real.
Posh should be made available on the NHS. Who needs Prozac and Valium when you have Posh, Robbie Williams and a choppy bob?
Junk Mail
YOU are the vanguard revolutionaries who will make this nation great again. Shake out your newspapers, throw off your inserts and join the “great junk mail revolt”. it’s revolution now.
And – irony of ironies – the revolution against junk mail begins on the front page of your trusted and very much wanted Daily Mail.
The catalyst for this uprising was the suspension of Roger Annies, 48, a postman in Barry, South Wales. Roger’s crime was to have produced a leaflet in which his “customers” were told how to opt out of receiving junk mail.
This “backfired” and now thousands of us are demanding an end to junk mail, otherwise known as “door-to-door”.
But the authorities are fighting back and those lucky enough to get through to the Royal Mail’s anti-junk mail hotline are given a “scarcely-veiled threat”. They are told that they might not receive local and national government missives which “could contain vital communications”.
The letter Royal Mail despatches to applicants advises them to be “fully aware of the implications”.
We already are. The end of such letters would mark the cessation of Anorak’s campaign to create a living library of official communiqués.
Letters from your local representatives, in which they tell you how very local they are (we once found proud-to-be-local LibDem MP Sarah Teather living in the bread bin here in the Anorak Towers kitchenette), are gems. They must be allowed to get through.
It pains us to say it, and we are not proud, but Anorak does not back the revolution. We advise our readers NOT to tear out the Mail’s “HOW TO STOP JUNK MAIL” form, which should be signed and sent by post to Door to Door Opt Outs in Oxford.
We have put up a “JUNK PLEASE” polite request above our letterbox and welcome a flood of paper.
Vetting what falls through your letterbox of a day is the thin edge of the wedge. The Mail should think on. Ban the missive today and ban the Mail’s sport section tomorrow.
It’s the road to anarchy…
No Business Like Shoebusiness
THE British are coming – and they’re wearing period costume and stripper’s shoes.
The Sun brings news of the Emmy’s, the “US telly ‘Oscars’”. It’s the AGM for the American TV industry.
And this is news because it’s a chance to see what Charlie’s Angels look like now (less lined and careworn then in their 70s heyday) and to applaud the best of British telly.
For we Brits, TV may be all dire soap operas (BBC), tatty celebrity vehicles (ITV) and American imports (Channel 4), but for American viewers it is something else. As we say, it’s people in period costume and cheap shoes.
So here’s Dame Helen Mirren collecting her Best Actress In a Mini Series or Movie gong for her performance in Elizabeth I.
America might make all the funniest comedies, the most entertaining soaps and the most innovative news shows, but when it comes to dressing in period costume and reliving history, we British rule the airwaves.
And here’s Dame Helen to accept her award. “My biggest triumph is not falling arse over tit,” says she. “If you saw the shoes I had on you’d understand.”
Good on her. Not only has Dame Helen not fallen over, but she’s scored a palpable hit by lacing her speech with a quintessentially British phrase. Aspiring British actors should note that Dame Helen said “arse” and not the Americanised “ass”. Bravo!
As for her shoes, they cost Helen $49.99 on Hollywood Boulevard and add an extra six inches to her legs.
Helen totters off, and it’s time for Jeremy Irons to collect his Best Supporting Actor in a Mini Series for his role as the Earl of Leicester in Elizabeth I.
The Mail looks on Jeremy (shoes unseen) says: “I don’t watch television – it destroys my reading time.” Bravo! While Helen has performed her role as game British gel with aplomb, Jeremy is the classic snotty British male.
If there was an award for Best Briton in an American Awards Ceremony, the top prize would be a closely run thing between Helen and Jeremy.
The contest would be televised live on ITV, feature prominently on the BBC’s nightly news bulletin and form a Channel 4 show in which celebrities tell us how they watched the show and what the result means for their new loft conversions…
Vial Music
IT’S Pete Doherty. And he’s got a syringe shaped like a guitar.
But before you impressionable kids dash out to get a customised syringe of your own, know that we are mistaken – it is a guitar.
And though a fretboard might make an ideal place to store syringes, know that Pete is using his guitar to play music on.
This is a change in focus for Pete, whose career to date seems to have consisted of taking drugs and dating a model.
But the Star has a picture of Pete standing in front of a microphone. And it says he is at a music festival.
Only we can’t hear the music. And while the Star says fans flocked to see Pete and his Babyshambles band play, the Mirror says he is under a 10pm to 8am curfew at The Priory clinic for tired and emotional celebrities.
This means that Pete is either playing music in daylight hours, a matinee show before the main event, standing in his bedroom dreaming of being an actual pop star or else listing to the Rolling Stones.
In which case Pete should look out for the quiet bits and seize his chance to help Mick with the words.
“Brown sugar how come you…”
As Years Go By
“GOOD evening…” A pause. Mick Jagger, for it is he, disappears from view behind the microphone stand. He consults an autocue screen hidden in speakers on stage. He re-emerges. “…London!”
The Sun (“I CAN’T FORGET NO SATISFACTION”) says that “ageing” Mick is using an autocue to help him through his latest performances.
In itself, there is nothing unusual in this. Many performers get prompts. Indeed, we should applaud Mick for embracing new technologies and being able to read without spectacles.
But surely by now Mick knows the old routine. His is a tried and tested performance, a Pavlovian response to putting on a sparkly jacket over a V-neck T-shirt.
But surely if Mick gets stuck he can always rely on that other aid to memory loss and direct the microphone at the crowd.
Many artists have been saved from embarrassing long pauses by the fans accepting the invitation to hear themselves sing.
Of course, like Mick, his audience is not getting any younger, and after a while one ageing rocker looks just like another. In bending the mic to their mouths, Mick runs the risk that “Jumpin’ jack flash it’s …” will be met by the sound of thousands of OAPs chiming “…a summer Holiday”.
But Mick is a risk taker, as, indeed, are all The Rolling Stones. And we read in the Mirror that Keith Richards has been taking risks in Scotland.
For those of you not in the know, Scotland is now smoke free. The Scots run a clean house and smoking has been banned.
And here’s Keith puffing on cigarettes all through the Stones’ gig in Glasgow. Perhaps he is less able that Mick to take on new ideas and cannot comprehend a ban on smoking?
But rather then being taken to a remote location and forced to listen to the bagpipes and pay a £50 fine, Keith’s smoking is simply ignored. It seems that the Hampden Park venue is not an enclosed space and therefore not covered by the new rules. Keith is not in breach of the law.
Of course, Keith would have known this had he read the signs…
Tall Stories
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
“Inquiry after CT scans are linked to cancer risk” – Committee on the Medical Aspects of Radiation look deepo into this issue
“One in three adults ‘will be dangerously obese by 2010’” – The other two will be bringing home the biscuits
TUESDAY
“A soggy end to summer. And stand by for flooding in September” – It’s monsoon season
“By train, plane or car, we risk DVT after just 4 hours”
“Eyeball to eyeball with…JAWS UK. This summer giant sharks have been spotted off Britain’s cost. We sent one writer to track them down…with only a flimsy cage for protection” – Jane Fryer stares down foreign invaders
“She asked for a rugged professional man who owned his own home and did not smoke. She got a lorry–driving chain-smoker who lived in a caravan. No wonder Janet is suing the agency for eight…DATING DISASTERS” – Men today. Tsk!
“Rap stars ‘pushing teen fans into sex’” – US study says music can corrupt the yoof. And you thought Elvis was dead…
“Extinct by 2016. Virus carried by grey invaders threatens to wipe out our remaining red squirrels” – The price of immigration
“Chemicals in food ‘can block children’s vaccines’” – And then there’s autism
“MY HAVEN’T WE GROWN! At the age of just 12, Tara is already 6ft. So why ARE your children growing so tall…and what impact will it have on their health” – Well, it’ll take them longer to touch their toes in the doctor’s surgery and…
“ADVANTAGE LLOYD. Agonising stomach spasms plagued by career for 20 years. Now I’ve finally found a cure” – Tennis player John Lloyd gets a new career as a pundit and Daily Mail celebrity sufferer
“Artificial hospital lights can harm premature babies”
“I was too blind to be WPC. Now, thanks to cataract surgery. I’m ready to be a marksman” – Cripes!
“They’re meant to stop ageing and stave off disease. But now experts are asking…Are all those vitamin pills doing you more harm than good?” – Pass the Evening Primrose oil nurse
WEDNESDAY
“The yobs of Cambridge. College records reveals shameful saga of drunken students behaving badly” – Never in my day
“6in of rain ‘could turn London into a New Orleans’” – And all that JAZZ!
THURSDAY
“THE town the Poles took over. Peterborough used to be a quintessential cathedral city. But, as this special report revels, it has now got a very different claim to fame” – There are Poles! Here! In our city! Breathing our air! Working hard! We are under attack. Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!
“Gambling ‘as addictive as crack cocaine’” – Shhh! Fiver says you tell Pete Doherty
“Bleak winter ahead as gas gets dearer and scarcer” – You can always keep warm by burning your Daily Mail
FRIDAY
“Pregnancy alert over aspirin”. Taking painkillers in early pregnancy “may” increase risk of defects – And may not
“Family day out? Try finding fresh fruit in Blackpool” – Soil Association doesn’t do toffee apples
Dear God…
DEAR God. Will you fix it for me to be a Roman Catholic so that I can attend our Lady of the Sacred Heart School and not be made to go to Bogside Comprehensive City Academy where I will discover drugs and that you CAN get pregnant outside of holy matrimony. Amen.
The Mail thinks the time is ripe to take a look at the kind of things children ask God for. As its front page says: “Heart warming and unintentionally hilarious letters children write to the Almighty.”
Someone has compiled these missives into a book. Here are a few of them. “In Sunday school they told us what you do. Who does it when you are on holiday?” asks Jane, age not supplied.
By holiday, Jane means Sunday. And since no-one does anything on this day of rest, no-one is in charge. Although if God takes a lengthy sabbatical, John Prescott would like to be known that he is open to offers.
There are many more letters. “Dear God. Are you really invisible or is that just a trick?” asks Lucy.
“Dear God, I think the stapler is one of your greatest invention. Ruth M.”
“Dear God. When people talks of selling their soul to the Devil, what are his rates and should you take his signed personal cheque or stick with gold? Young Old Mr Anorak.”
Sadly, God is too busy to reply to each of these letters. But his spokesperson tells us that he is always happy to hear from his fans and to keep buying the book.
And that anyone who doesn’t will be cast into the very pits of Hell. For it is written.
It’s A Gas, Gas, Gas
THE golden rule when reporting on the Rolling Stones dictates that early in the piece the writer must mention the band members’ combined age.
And so it is that “with a combined age of 249” (and that’s human NOT dog years) the Rolling Stones are rocking like a confused geriatric at the bus stop.
Ronnie Wood, the band’s sprightly 59-year-old guitarist, says that his mates are boring. “They can’t f***ing take it,” says Ronnie in the Mirror. “They always have to go home to rest. Instead they leave all the f***ing partying up to me.”
Might it be that Ronnie is also getting old? Surely Ronnie means to celebrate the fact that with his mates tucked up in bed there is more wine, women and drugs for him. And here he is moaning like an old curmudgeon.
And Ronnie is put out that the rest of the Stones failed to appear at his all-night party on Sunday night. The paper says that the do at Ron’s house was “wild and raucous” and police were called at 4am.
While the rest of the lads were reading A Year In Provence and listening to Radio 4’s nightly show “Why Old People Need Less Sleep”, Ronnie was “inhaling laughing gas-filled balloons”. We who have seen the impressive dimensions of Ronnie’s hooter are nonetheless impressed that he can inhale an entire balloon filled with gas.
And while Ronnie does his party piece, the Star looks on as Mick Jagger gasps for air. It seems that there is method in allowing Keith Richards to sing two songs on the Stones’ current world tour.
As soon as Keith looks like he about to sing, fans nip out for a wee and a drink, and Mick straps on a gas cylinder and inhales sweet, life-giving oxygen.
A source tells the Star: “Although it can look alarming, there’s nothing in any way dodgy about it.”
Mick is no Frank Booth, the sadistic oxygen-inhaler in the movie Blue Velvet. He is just a man. An old man…
