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.
Get Rich Quickie
“I BEDDED DIANA.”
That’s the headline on the front page of the Sun. It’s a “cameraman’s sick boast”.
Indeed it is. Diana – our Diana – shuffled off to the fabled sixth floor of Harvey Nichols in 1997. Sick is the word we too are forced to use. Is there any other?
But things are not as awful as they seem. This cameraman claims to have had sex with Diana back in 1986, when she was alive and still married to Charles.
The Express is less than pleased. What are these “sickening boasts”? They are “bound to upset Princes William and Harry and millions of her supporters”.
Wise is the Express reader that refuses to read on, preferring to simply linger on the paper’s front-page picture of Diana, forever smiling, blonde and dressed in a sparkling cornflower blue gown.
That’s how we should remember Diana, elegant and regal – not having a 2 1/2-minute quickie with one Sebastian Rich, a cameraman employed to work with Diana on the TV documentary In Public, In Private.
Rich has written a book called Through The Looking Glass. He hopes to secure a £1million book deal. But surely the man the Sun labels a “cad” has no chance of doing so.
Who could be interested in the story of the man who spent 12 months by Diana’s side? Who had a two-month fling with an unnamed courtier during the making of the show – an affair that, as he claims, caused Diana to grow jealous and fling herself at him? Who while attending an inspection ceremony at Sandhurst with Diana saw the princess mouth “I love you” in his direction?
We would be no more interested in hearing such tawdry gossip than we would in discovering the colour of Diana’s underwear at the time of this alleged quickie.
A friend of Rich tells the Sun that he is “not planning to say where or when it happened or reveal details like the colour of her underwear.”
Quite right too. But if he does, we’ll tell you what page the sickening revelation is in so you can avoid it…
Mummy Knows Best
“MUM, I’m not going to have babies til I’m old. Like 23 or something.”
How Allison Pearson must have laughed. Indeed, she and her friend Nicky both laughed.
And we too are free to laugh along with Allison and Nicky because this delightful quote from her daughter (name unforgivably not supplied; aged 10) appears in Allison’s column in the Mail.
Allison says that having heard her little love say such a funny thing, she realised the time was ripe to deliver “the speech”- “the one about how important it is that a girl has a good education, then gets a job that will fulfil her potential and give her finical independence”.
Allison has lived by this “creed” all her life.
But something has changed. Allison, and Nicky, whose daughter is also aged 10, “did something I doubt either of us thought we’d do”. It was something “shocking” and “a little bit shaming”.
Both told their children to eat whatever they liked, grow fat and happy. No. That would be madness, utter madness. No, they told their daughters that it was okay to start having a family young, so long as it felt right.
“God, what have we come to?” groaned Allison.
“Our senses,” said Nicky.
Family: Daughter
Friends: Nicky and daughter
Story: I want to be a grandma
Allison has heard the news that men are becoming redundant – not just in coalmining areas but in real life. Now that you can make sperm in a test tube, who needs men?
Allison’s friend Emma, that’s who.
What are men good for, Emma? “Bins and wine,” says Emma. And, as Allison says: “Sitting on the suitcase to get the lid closed.”
Men eh? Tsk!
Family: Allison’s man
Friends: Emma, Emma’s man
Story: Useless men
Washed Up
“THE reason I must leave EastEnders.” It’s the Mirror’s front-page headline. And rightly so.
After almost 900 years in the soap opera, and not looking a day over 79, Wendy Richards, 62, is leaving EastEnders, the BBC soap opera.
But why? Surely the woman who has folded Albert Square’s dirty underwear for 22 years is not ready to retire?
Are we living in such wealthy times that even the downtrodden plebs who make up launderette worker Pauline Fowler’s customers now have washer dryers? Or Filipino maids?
Or has Wendy, who, naturally, plays Pauline, just belatedly realised that EastEnders serves one purpose: to show the BBC’s viewers that no mater how miserable and sad their own lives are there is something more depressing and dire to watch on the telly?
Or has Pauline just run out of characters to outlive? As the Sun reports (it’s front-page news), Pauline has buried her mother, husband and son.
But the actual reason could have something to do with what the Mail calls “creative differences”. As an insider tells the paper: “Wendy tried to stare down the producers over the story lines and lost.”
So now she is to be killed off. Although her cardigan will continue to run the laundrette until it has worked out its notice…
Stones Home
HAVING drawn our attention to Michael Douglas’s haggard neck and Madonna’s sinewy hands, the Mail looks at Keith Richards’ finger.
The Mail’s ‘They’re Just Like You & Me – Probably Worse’ campaign spots Richards posing for the snappers with the rest of the Rolling Stones.
The paper says that on the surface things look pretty good for Keith, but time has taken its toll on his finger. The “final joint on his right index finger looks badly swollen and arthritic – making it look a little like the elongated digits of the alien ET.”
There then follows a picture of ET, although it might be another shot of Richards.
And while the Mail looks at Keith’s bony, odd-looking finger – which seems entirely in keeping with the rest of the man – the musician is talking to the press.
Before the Mail’s man with a notepad can ask Keith about arthritis and aching joints, Keith tells us about the accident that caused him to undergo brain surgery.
Readers will recall how Keith fell out of a coconut tree in Fiji. And they now hear that it was no such thing. “If you saw the tree, you would realise the joke,” says Keith. “It certainly was not a coconut tree…It was just a little tree.”
The Mirror hears Keith say the same thing in his, er, “exclusive” interview with the Mirror, and go on to talk about the operation to repair his head.
“They put me out like a light,” says Keith, who may well have tested the anaesthetist’s powers to the full. “Usually I would be hanging from the ceiling at the idea of brain surgery,” says Keith. “But I surprised myself and I had complete confidence in them.”
The medics have done a good job, even if Keith was “p***ed off” when they woke him up. “I was enjoying myself!” says Keith.
And we are enjoying having him back. It’s just a shame that when he was under the knife, they didn’t fix his finger…
England Expecting?
EVERYONE’S doing the Zidane-Materazzi nipple tweak. It’s the summer craze.
In “WOULD ROO LIKE A TWEAK”, the Star has a shot of Wayne Rooney on holiday in the south of France. Sitting on the table at a restaurant, Wayne looks across as one woman (Materazzi) reaches up to tweak another woman’s nipple (Zidane).
And while Wayne learns a few new tricks, the Mail spots his lover, Coleen McLoughlin. She’s standing on a boat. She’s wearing a yellow bikini. And she has a protruding tummy.
“Could Wayne be starting a team of his own?” asks the paper.
Like the Sun, we study Coleen’s belly. And we see the Mirror’s picture of her drinking a big glass on wine on the beach. We remember the partying in Germany. And we wonder if maybe, just maybe, Coleen is less pregnant than she is bloated.
Has Coleen retained water, or champagne, as it is known among the Wags?
Chest Nutter
SO great a footballer is French captain Zinedine Zidane that even his fouls are better than anyone else’s.
While Wayne Rooney warms his metatarsal in the groin of a Portuguese player and David Beckham flicks a leg out in petulant anger, Zidane headbutts his opponent in the chest.
For any young players wishing to emulate their hero in the playground, the Mirror has two educational shots of the man going about his business.
See as Zidane approaches Italy’s Marco Materazzi with purpose. Gasp as he smacks into his chest.
And to go with the movements, there is a script.
Zidane: (In Italian) Stop pulling my shirt.
Materazzi: Shut up f*****, you only deserve what you get.
Zidane: Yeah, sure…
Materazzi: All of you deserve that f*****g Muslims, terrorist b******s.
Of course, as is the way with football, players dreaming of stardom and greatness will be keen to add their own twist to the scene.
Any player enacting the role of the Italian might like to say, “You’re the son of a terrorist whore”, as the Sun’s front page has him saying. And for added authenticity, you may care to give Zidane’s nipple a tweak.
Budding Materazzis should then say: “It is absolutely not true that I called Zidane a terrorist.” And get their dad (Guiseppe) to tell the world that his boy told him he was provoked.
Of course the truth will out. And Alain Miglaccio, Zinade’s agent, tells the Mail that what was said will be made public in the next week.
By which time Zidane will have be elevated from the great to the legendary, and a million young footballers will be pushing their tonsures into the chest of each and every passing Italian…
Belt Up
GIVEN the presence of what is routinely called the “obesity timebomb”, news that Victoria Beckham wears jeans made for a seven year old need not be all that shocking.
This seven year could well be in possession of a 35-inch waist, in which case we urge Posh to slim down before it is too late.
But reading on in the Star, we learn that this is not the case and Posh has a tiny 23-inch waist.
But if Posh does balloon, she can always borrow husband David’s belt, the one that cost £10,000 and has a movable buckle that stretches under pressure.
The Calibre 8 belt is made by Royal gunmakers Purdy and has a buckle fashioned from white gold and titanium. It slides back and forth on miniature ball bearings.
Never again need David lean back in his chair after a long lunch and loosen his belt. The automated system ensures that he does not have to.
It’s just like the elasticated waistband on Anorak’s range of Comfi-Slax – but reassuringly more expensive…
Tradesman Re-entrance
DID Piers Sellers, a British astronaut, suck on his space pencil when he saw the job he’d been asked to do?
What went through his mind as 280 miles over Asia he was asked to fix a “vital” data cable and test a robotic boom on the shuttle Discovery?
Not for no reason does Pier’s wife Mandy say this is her husband’s “dream”. What tradesman has not fantasised about such a callout? “I’m so proud of him,” says Mandy.
This will surely cost Nasa a pretty penny. Piers will do his best, but what with the specialist nature of the flux capactors and what not, the position of the stars and the new EU directive on cabling in space, there is no guarantee he won’t be called out again.
So Piers gets to work. And in the finest traditions of the great British worker it takes him 22 hours and 14 minutes, a record for walking in space.
Piers must be delighted. And though, by rights, he should charge for the full 23 hours, he might be prepared – just this once – to make it 22 hours for cash…
Kate’s New Mate
SACK the hack. Reading the Star’s “Lin’s In Love”, the story of how Lindsay Lohan has found romance in Blighty, we learn of Kate Moss’s involvement in the matter but find no mention of cocaine or Pete Doherty.
Thankfully not all of us are as ignorant of the rules of modern journalism as the Star’s “the goss” girls evidently are, and we take up a large marker pen and add “cocaine” before each mention of Kate’s name and “Pete” just beneath.
With things thus returned to normal, we learn that it was “cocaine” Kate who introduced Lindsay to her new lover, London-based 37-year-old Rhys Ifans.
Naturally enough, what with him being an actor, even a stingy unkempt one, ‘the goss’ girls remember their jobs and call him a “hunk”.
And they tell us that Lindsay plans to see a lot more of Rhys. But with the commute to London from Los Angeles being so very long, Lindsay has decided to buy a flat in Camden Town.
“Falling for Rhys was really the icing on the cake for Lindsay, say an insider.
And Pete Doherty is just delighted…
Torque & Mindy
Introducing Anorak’s new column – My Columnist & I.
Each week we will select a columnist and see how many times the word “I” is mentioned in their piece.
We will also take note of how many occasions members of the columnist’s family (pets included) are mentioned, so too friends and work colleagues.
And first up is Richard Hammond.
Richard has risen through the ranks of the media and is now in an enviable position to tell Sunday Mirror readers what he thinks of it all.
And in “no smoke without ire”, he tells us that he has started smoking again.
TV presenter Paul O’Grady has had a heart attack and vowed to ditch the evil weed. Richard’s seen a “terrifying” TV show about the dangers of smoking. “All this in the week when, after staying off them for two years, I go and start smoking again.”
“I’ve now packed up again,” says Richard, to our great relief. But if someone invents a cigarette that is not harmful to human health, Richard will “smoke a million a day”.
I count: 13
Richard then moves on to tell us about Wags, Wows (wives of Wimbledon) and WOMPS – Wives of Motoring Presenters. Wives like Richard’s wife Mindy.
Richard says Mindy is “terrified” in case she opens a paper to read about Womps.
Richard tells us that Mindy is “happiest in her wellies and a waterproof hat.” (See photo of an unsmiling and hatless Mindy).
“The thought of actually spending the entire day being photographed shopping for tiny scraps of clothing and eating a water salad for lunch fills her with horror.”
Well, so long as she’s full…
Family: wife
Gags & Wags
“ENGLAND’S football flops yesterday chatted up girls and guzzled champagne,” says the Sun with palpable disgust.
This is the front-page news that feels like a swift kick in the metatarsals for the legions of Sun readers who stuck little plastic crosses of St George flags on their ears and supported England through thin and thinner.
Or should that be thick and thicker? The Sun spots Rio Ferdinand, he of the badly drawn mouth, at large in Marbella for England team-mate Ashley Cole’s stag night. And it hears Rio asking girls: “World Cup? What World Cup?”
Heading the ball can do strange things to the human brain, and it might just be that Rio’s amnesia has not been helped by the £5,000-worth of champagne he and the rest of the Cole party quaffed in just two hours.
Whatever the explanation, clubber Jonathan Clarke is unimpressed. “I couldn’t believe how arrogant footballers were,” says he. They “didn’t seem to be crying into their pint glasses like all the football fans back home”.
Indeed not. The boys are not crying. And, for the record, champagne is rarely if ever served in pint glasses, although with this being a footballers’ night out, we cannot be certain.
But let us go easy on the boys. Might this be a change of career for them? Having toiled away in Germany, displaying little sign of skill or ability, they have perhaps realised that it’s better to be a Wag than a player.
Just get a load of Rio “refusing” to queue for the men’s toilet and swanning into the ladies’ loo.
Might it be that rather than chatting up girls in a Spanish nightclub Rio was researching his new role in football as a Gag (gentleman and girlfriend)?
So we look again at the picture of Rio at the nightclub. We see his flute of champagne, his massive diamond watch and the oversized sunglasses.
Now, if he can just find a footballer to date? Any takers?
Meat Is Murder
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.
Here is a selection of things that will kill you and yours from last week’s paper of doom…
MONDAY
“ALARM OVER BEEF IMPORTS” – John Verrall, “a member of the Government advisory committee”, thinks eating beef from cattle pumped up with growth hormones” could “trigger cancer”
“Epidemic that may leave a generation infertile” – The Mail’s favourite STD, Chlamydia, is on the rise
TUESDAY
“Gas bills will soar again by an average of £100 – Well, they “could”
“One in three is haunted by paranoia” – The other two in three are out to get them
“The hormone scandal. Will Britons be forced to eat hormone injected beef?” – Can we be forced to eat beef, especially when we’re all already eating crisps?
“Schoolgirls’ websites make them prey for paedophiles” – Headmistress Lynda Wynbar is worried about “networking websites”
“Is going to the gym BAD for your health? Lurking on the dumbbells. Hidden in the towels. The millions of killer bacteria festering in your gym” – What with all the faulty gum equipment, filthy changing rooms (“a breeding ground for MRSA”), fungi-infested running shoes, bad hot-tubs (“a breeding ground for dangerous bacteria”), “nasty gut bug” cryptosporidium in the pool and a strain of bacteria in the sauna that can cause pneumonia, of course it is. And then there’s the heart-attack.
“Top cyclists Emma was in agony after being hit by a car. But she didn’t know a shard of bone was close to shredding her spinal cord – A SECOND AWAY FROM PARALYSIS”
“IS YOUR X-RAY SAFE? Last week, experts claimed mammograms can increase the risk of breast cancer. So how worried should we be about those scans?!” – Here’s the Mail to tell you just how worried you should be
WEDNESDAY
“Cannabis ‘gateway’ to heroin” – Researchers writing in the journal of neuropsychoparmacology (ask your news agent for it by name) say cannabis prepares users for harder drugs
THURSDAY
“1.2m patients a year are hit by NHS blunders” – So says the Commons Public Accounts Committee
“NAZI DEMONS LAID TO REST”! – World Cup fever and why we now all love the Germans
“Germany in shock as Nazi thugs burn Anne Frank diary” – and kick is about like a, er, football
FRIDAY
“A year ago, Britain’s streets were swarming with police. The great mystery of life is: where are they today?” – next week Tom Utley wonders why he hasn’t seen a baby pigeon since the 1950s
SATURDAY
“What happened to the Britain I loved? After living abroad for 25 years, this writer returned for a sentimental tour of England. The changes he found left him baffled, wryly amused…and more than little uneasy” – Joe Bennet hankers for 1981, that golden year of the Brixton and Toxteth Riots, Bobby Sands’s hunger strike, Joe Dolce…
“The ‘healthy’ fruit drinks with more sugar than Coke – Children like sugary drinks sensation!
Her Own Fault
FOOTBALL has its pies. Cricket has its fruit cake. And tennis has strawberries and HRT. It’s just the way things are.
So when Marilyn Still arrived at Wimbledon brandishing yoghurt, there would be trouble.
Yoghurt may be right for combat yoga, but it has no place at Wimbledon. And the authorities were, understandably, less than pleased.
And here is Marilyn to explain what occurred. Holding up a pot of the offending and, some would say, offensive yoghurt to the Mail’s readers, Marilyn, a 57-year-old housewife, utters the kind of moan Maria Sharapova would be proud of.
“The security guard looked through my bag and then just took them off me,” says Marilyn of the removal of two pots of soya yoghurt and two more pots of chocolate soya milkshake from her charge.
The guard said that they were not official products and may constitute “guerilla marketing”.
Marilyn says she has “low blood sugar”, and it’s important she takes on sugar when she needs it.
No problem with that. Marilyn can eat all the sugary strawberries and sugary cream she likes. But yoghurt is just wrong.
If it were allowed, the world would tilt on its axis and before long rugby fans would be sipping Lapsang souchong tea from china cups and screaming “Come on Tim!”.
Getting Personal
“YOU’RE TIRED!” Cut!
You join us at the filming of Jade Goody’s new reality TV show.
Based on the Apprentice, the programme where a captain of industry chooses their new lackey (“You’re Fired!” or “You’re Hired!” “dippy” Jade will be filmed looking for a personal assistant.
The Sun says that twelve girls will undergo a series of challenges to see which of them is good enough to work under Jade.
What these Herculean tasks will involve is not said, but cleaning out the changing rooms at Jade’s Ugly Rumours beauty salon and squeezing Jade into a new girdle cannot be ruled out.
Hooking The Part
WHEN Abu Hamza was found guilty of incitement to murder and locked up for seven years, we groaned.
Who now would be the tabloid’s favourite mad mullah? Who would raise his hooks in the air and be the face and wiry beard of fanatical Islam?
The search was not exactly aided by the flight of Omar Bakri. The so-called Tottenham Taliban removed himself to Beirut, leaving behind his green Ford Galaxy and a legion of admirers from Wapping to Fleet Street.
The search for Public Enemy No.1 went on. The papers even flirted with the idea of using Heather Mills McCartney, seeing her missing limb as a sign of latent evil.
So the papers have little option than to return to old foe. Yes, folks, Abu Hamza is back.
And the Sun’s news is that Hamza is to undergo surgery on his stumps. The NHS treatment will cost £10,000. And the paper hears an insider at Belmarsh jail, where Hamza is in residence, say that the patient has jumped the queue.
The paper is outraged.
But things may yet turn out fine. If Hamza can just get his old hooks to the outside world, some nutcase may well take them up and accept the tabloid challenge to say exactly the wrong thing at the right time.
Fingers – and hooks – crossed…
Simple Truths
“IF you see pictures of me out I’m being paid. When I turn up at an event it is work.”
Given that Paris Hilton, for it is she, would turn up to the opening of a fridge door, she is in danger of becoming a workaholic.
Speaking in the Sun, Paris goes on to say that her job is no stroll in the park in a pair of diamante knickers. Paris is no natural exhibitionist. She has to work at it.
“People don’t think I am shy,” says Paris, “but I am.” She’s right. People do not think she is shy, at least not those among us who have looked up the word in the dictionary and found it to mean: “avoiding observation.”
But then Paris might be right. Shy can mean “easily startled”, and who has not seen the open-mouthed look on Paris’s face when she was spotted in a bedroom with her boyfriend?
And having set that record straight, Paris moves on to reality TV. Paris stars in a TV show called The Simple Life, in which she is filmed doing simple things, like breathing, wearing knickers and working in a fast food restaurant.
“Simple Life is a reality show and people might assume it’s real,” says Paris. And they might. But it is not. “It’s a fake,” she says.
And she goes on: “All reality TV shows are fake basically. When you have a camera on you, you are not going to act yourself.”
So who is the vapid blonde we see on TV? “Before I started the show,” says Paris shyly, “I thought I’d make a character like the movies Legally Blonde and Clueless mixed together, with a rich girl all-in-one.
“Even my voice is different and the way I dress is different from me in real life. It’s a character I like to play.”
And that is encouraging. You see, Paris plans to be a singing sensation, and has recorded an album of what she hopes will be popular songs.
Anyone who has heard Paris speak (the TV Paris) might suppose her singing voice to be a cross between Alvin the Chipmunk and Geri Halliwell.
That her voice is put on can only bode well. Unless, of course, it disguises something worse. But then she can always distract us from it. She can always show us her knickers…
Major Cock Up
“DOOMSDAY DOSSIER,” says the Sun’s front-page headline. A Sun reader has found the Ministry of Defence’s “blueprint for terror attacks” lying in a ditch.
The work’s official title is “Directorate Counter Terrorism & United Kingdom Operations Duty Officer File”.
And the paper says the document contains details of covert military operations and “top brass” phone numbers. It would be a “God-send” for al-Qaeda.
The paper calls this a “scandalous security blunder”. It could have “fallen into the wrong hands”.
Happily it is now the hands of “Sun girl” Veronica. And it “throws up a frighteningly long list of potential targets for al-Qaeda assassins, bombers and kidnappers”.
Scary stuff. No matter that al-Qaeda kills indiscriminately, just be very worried that Major Guy Jones, who lost the document, left it in a kit bag behind the front seat of his car.
He’d parked his vehicle and popped into a Sainsbury’s supermarket in a Home Counties town. A thief saw the bag. He broke into the car. He stole the bag. And then, apparently, he tossed it into ditch.
For the record, the major’s kit bag is dark blue. It contains blue T-shirt (1), dark shorts (1) and training shoes (2). And top-secret dossier (46 pages).
A spokesman for the MoD thanks the Sun for returning the document to its headquarters at 32a Acacia Crescent, Hitchin, and promises to review its security procedures at the next policy meeting on July 23rd between 7pm and 9pm (knock three times and bring biscuits).
Court Out
LOOK out! Cliff!
Or is it. To date, the Fathers 4 Justice campaign has seen its members dress up as Batman, Spiderman and all manner of fantasy figures.
But now, has one of the campaigners achieved something more? Has one disgruntled dad dressed up as Cliff Richard? And has he done so at Wimbledon?
We ask this in light of the Sun’s news that two protesting fathers managed to get onto Centre Court and play a knockabout in front of Roger Federer.
That both campaigners, Simon Wright and Alan Jamieson, are British should not be overlooked – the Swiss “ace” was appearing in the quarter-finals and any domestic involvement at so late a stage in the tournament is appreciated.
But while police haul them off, the Mail spots this Cliff. Seated in the Members’ Area, Cliff is seen wearing a black tie and a white floral patterned shirt.
And over that he wears what the Mail says is a “lilac” jacket. But could it be purple, the colour of Fathers 4 Justice, the colour of that flour bomb members of the group once chucked at Tony Blair?
We cannot be certain. But if so, it is nothing less than a sensation – either it’s not the real Cliff, or the Peter Pan of Pop could be feeling paternal…
A Slippery Slope
PRINCESS Beatrice occupies a slot on the Mirror’s front cover. And there’s a headline: “BEA’S PAL CAUGHT TAKING COCAINE.”
The paper takes a trip to St George’s School in Epsom, Surrey, and learns the results of a random drugs test.
The chilling news is that a 17-year-old pupil by the name of Lucy Jubb has failed the test.
And it has caused no little shock and sensation. “Gosh!” says former school governor Carole Jacques, putting into words what so many Mirror readers are thinking. “It doesn’t sound like the St George’s I know.”
Nor any public school we have any knowledge of. Just one bust for drugs in a sweep of the entire school! Not in our day.
But this is the shocking truth. And there is more. We learn that Lucy is the daughter of barrister Brian Jubb QC. Her mother Susan holds down a job in Prince Charles’s offices.
And Lucy has come into close contact with head girl Princess Beatrice on at least one occasion. The paper says that Lucy has taken part in the British schoolgirls ski races with Bea. The pair finished 39th out of 44 teams.
This is chilling stuff, and we hope that in the course of their skiing no cocaine rubbed off on Bea.
And that going off piste on the white powdery snow was all good clean fun…
Drugs & Working
BEFORE Kate Moss became ‘cocaine Kate’, the model’s career was in something of a nose dive.
The Sun confirms what many have suspected: cocaine has been good for Kate.
A look at the figures for Kate’s company, Skate Enterprises, reveals that in the year to February 2005, profits fell from around £2.5million to £1.3millon.
(How much of this apparent slump in Kate’s earning power was due to her making withdrawals from petty cash to pay for this, that and the other is unspecified.)
This year, thanks to some post-cocaine Kate deals with Burberry, Calvin Klein, Roberto Cavalli, Nikon and Virgin Mobile, Kate is expected to earn up to £10million.
How many standard-length lines of cocaine £10million buys, we know not, nor are we told how many weeks such a fortune will enable a celebrity to stay in one of the country’s top rehabilitation centres.
All we know is that where there’s cocaine, there’s brass. And if you still doubt it, just ask Pete Doherty.
Before ‘cocaine Kate’, Pete was just another pasty-faced wannabe pop star with a taste for drugs – now’s he’s in a televised conversation with the BBC’s Jonathan Ross.
Pete says he loves “Kate’s bones”. And more than he loves drugs – he’s trying to stop taking them. “Being clean means I can sit down and rediscover writing,” says Pete. “My song-writing suffered, being on drugs.”
Although drugs have done wonders for his career as a celebrity, and Kate’s bank balance…
Tweedy Not Needy
CHERYL Tweedy, Victoria Beckham’s mini me, is on the offensive. As the Sun’s front-page headline says, this is the “WAGS AT WAR”.
Cheryl, who is famous for having finished in the top five of a TV singing contest, being found guilty of assaulting a nightclub worker and dating England footballer Ashley Cole, says “everyone’s so flash”.
“It’s like, ‘Who’s got the best watch on, who’s got the best bag, which wife is dressed the best, which wife’s got the best hair’?”
But Cheryl is not like that. No, she is not. “I’m like, ‘I’ve got my own career’.” And very possibly her own hair and her own watch.
She then criticises the other girls for “living off their man’s money”, overlooking any possibility that in earning £50,000 a week for a kicking ball, the men have cash to burn.
But Cheryl is keen to tell us just how better than the rest of them she truly is. “I’d die of embarrassment if I had to resort to taking boyfriends’ [credit] cards.”
So be prepared to die, Cheryl, as the Sun hears you tell a magazine: “I’ve got my own money, so if my husband’s card is declined I whip out mine.”
Of course, Cheryl is not married, and only dates the wealthy England footballer. And until she gets that gigantic boulder on her finger – her own finger! – she cannot be called a true footballers’ wife…
Marie In Haste
IS Robbie Williams the new Sven Goran Eriksson?
We ask in light of a comment made by the comedian Frank Skinner – “At half-time, Big Phil would have spotted a weakness in our formation, whereas Sven would have spotted a woman with big tits in row G” – and news in the Sun.
While treating 50,000 fans in Gothenburg, Sweden, to his music, Robbie spots a woman in the crowd. She is wearing a T-shirt with the legend “Snog me, I’m a doctor” writ large across the low-cut front.
Robbie stops singing. He points at the woman, known to be called Marie. He asks: “Are you a doctor?” Robbie then points to his crotch and wonders: “Do you want to examine this?”
He says he’d like to take a proper look at Marie. And serenades the target of his ardour with his hit tune Feel.
And – of course – his routine works. Like the Sun we have no firm evidence that Robbie and Marie spent the night together, but Marie was later sighted heading for Robbie’s hotel room. And seen again in the lobby the following morning.
What happened in the intervening hours is not yet revealed. And what with Marie being a doctor and all, we may never know…
Hoff Centre
“NUDE balls please!” It’s Wimbledon, and a streaker has just bounced on to Centre Court.
Other than Cliff Richard singing in the rain and the HRT-raddled Henmanics chanting “Timmy” in something approaching unison, a streaker is the most exciting thing that can happen in British tennis.
But who is the man who rudely interrupted “sexy” Maria Sharapova’s match against some other girl with shorter legs and darker hair?
The Mail, which produces four shots of the incident – readers see the miscreant execute a wobbly cartwheel and then wave to the crowd in triumph – says he is a Dutchman called Sander Lantinga.
Having enjoyed the moment, and been arrested for indecent exposure, Lantinga, who presents a show on Dutch TV, says, “I know it was stupid, but it is something I always wanted to do.”
Indeed. But was it really him? The naked flesh, the exhibitionism and the curly hair all remind us of someone. And over in the Sun we read that David Hasselhoff has been at Wimbledon.
In “HOFF HIS FACE”, the paper says that the “beer-swilling” Baywatch actor has been kicked out of Wimbledon on account of his being “steaming drunk”.
The paper looks on as the actor argues with security guards at Centre Court. He has no ticket and they will not let him pass. He then tries to get another drink but is banned from doing so.
“You should let me in,” he says. “Do you know who I am? I am the Hoff.”
Which leads us to wonder what happened next? The Sun says Hasselhoff’s pal Michael Brandon, star of 1980s show Dempsey and Makepeace, bought him a Centre Court ticket.
And then… Let’s just look at that shot of the streaker a little more closely. Could it be..?
Good Enough To Eat
“DO I think of myself as sex symbol? No. But ask me if I like dirty dancing in the bedroom, yes.”
The words of Keira Knightly, actress, model and wearer of gold foil dresses; words that seem to have been conjured up specifically for a tabloid audience. Do people beyond the pages of tabloid papers use euphemistic phrases like “dirty dancing”?
While we investigate that, the Star gives its readers the headline “KEIRA TWICE KNIGHTLY”. But the Mirror says that Keira’s love life has been “Sunk by Pirates”.
This is a play on words on Keira’s new movie Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and a comment on how she and boyfriend Rupert Friend don’t get to see much of each other.
So much for that dirty dancing twice a night. Perhaps Keira dances on her own? Or with someone else?
“It must have been a hard job kissing Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom [Keira’s co-stars in the movie]. I’m sure she hated every minute of it!” says Rupert forlornly.
Well, a woman has her needs. And Keira is keen to tell Star readers that she loves wearing “raunchy outfits” and “I love a bit of saucy stuff now and again”.
Which leads us to that dress, the gold halter neck bacofoil number Keira wore to the London premiere of her new movie. Not since Keira wore a dress to the Oscars has her outfit caused so much sensation.
The Sun has a shot of the garment and delivers the headline: “Anorexia runs in the family…but I have not got it.”
Keira says both her grandmother and great-grandmother suffered from the eating disorder but she does not. “I don’t have it,” says she. “I am very sure of that.”
The Star is naturally slender. And, as we observed yesterday, wearing a gold metal dress in the searing heat can be an aid to weight loss. As can dancing – the dirtier the better…
The Third Way
“AND between work and the kids we don’t have as much time for sex as we did. But I’m working on it! I try but we’re both too busy and knackered!”
How can this be possible? We can hardly believe it. But here it is in black and white, with traces of orange tan. Jordan, for it is she, says she can’t find time to make out with Peter Andre.
In case the message has still not hit home, the Star summarises the news in bigger print: “Jordan and Pete too tired for sex.”
Our head is in a whirl. It is barely a year since Jordan, aka Katie Prince, and pop acorn Pete tied the knot. And already love has taken a backseat. Such are the pressures of raising children, conducting magazine interviews and writing a book.
Yes, Jordan has found time to pen a debut novel. It’s about a glamour mo-del from Brighton who becomes famous after having a boob job. It’s like Pygmalion without the flowers, although Dick Van Dyke may well feature.
It sounds sensational. But the pen is not mightier than Pete’s sword. As the Sun hears Jordan say, “You’ve got to have sex to have kids.”
Or do you? No sooner has Jordan said that than she realises that the sex involved need not be between she and Pete. Other people can have the sex and she can get the children. Jordan can adopt.
“I spoke with someone last night,” says she. “They’re going to look out for me – the way Angelina Jolie gets them.”
No, not by shagging Brad Pitt but by jetting off to Asia and Africa and picking up children.
It’s a terrific plan – and so much less arduous than having sex with Pete…
