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.
Sexism row: Kim Kardashian’s arse takes on Angela Akins’ short skirt
“It’s Kim Kardashian as you’ve never seen her before.” throbs the Daily Star on its front page. “Wait until you see the rear view,” ploughs the Sun on its cover. Both tabloids lead with the same picture of Kim Kardashian in:
a) a burqa
b) an orgy
c) a Job Centre
d) a bikini
e) panto
It’s ‘d’, which is a disappointment for all of you who’ve seen Kim K. in a bikini more than you’ve seen your own feet.
As for the story, well, on Page 7 the Star dubs the reality TV star Kim “Lard-Ashian”, on account of her figure. The Sun calls it a “rear treat”.
One oddity about the Sun’s ogling is that on April 10 the paper was aghast at the BBC’s perceived sexism. In “SKIRTY OLD MAN”, the BBC’s golf commentator Peter Alliss is admonished for making “disgraceful” comments about the length of Masters winner Sergio Garcia’s fiancee’s skirt.
Paul Revoir writes:
Peter Alliss caused a sexism row by referring to the short skirt worn by golf hero Sergio Garcia’s fiancee… As images were shown of Angela Akins, 31, reacting to Sergio’s win, Alliss’s muffled voice was heard saying: “She’s got the shortest skirt on the campus”…
This is the latest in a string of sexism rows to engulf the long-serving commenter.
The Sun’s outrage was supported by no fewer than 6 photos of Angela Akins in her short skirt. Indeed, you can read about the BBC’s sexism alongside two stories based on photos of Kim in her bikini:
Such are the facts.
Posted: 25th, April 2017 | In: Celebrities, Reviews, Sports, Tabloids | Comment
Transfer balls: Joe Hart to Liverpool and £20m written off
Transfer balls: a look at fake news football reporting. Is Joe Hart heading to Liverpool?
The Sun April 19: “Joe Hart is on his way back to the Premier League with Liverpool.”
KLOPP LOVES HART – Joe Hart set for Liverpool move as Jurgen Klopp signs off £20million swoop for Manchester City goalkeeper
Having scored a “exclusive”, the rest of the online media play catch up.
Joe Hart to Liverpool: Man City star set for £20m switch, Jurgen Klopp – Daily Star
7 things that will definitely happen if Joe Hart signs for Liverpool – Daily Mirror
Or as Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp out it one day late: “He’s a fantastic keeper, the highest quality, but it’s not for us at the moment, nor in the future.”
No harm done. No-one in Liverpool reads the Sun.
Posted: 24th, April 2017 | In: Back pages, Liverpool, Sports, Tabloids | Comment
Madeleine McCann: seeking the man by The Dolphin
Madeleine McCann appears on two national newspapers front pages today. You can read more about the Mirror’s news on a top cop’s theories here.
So much for the opinion. What we who have followed this story from the outset crave are facts.
The Express has actual news on the actual investigation into what happened to the missing child. The paper leads with the “phone box clue” to “Missing Maddie”.
James Murray says:
DETECTIVES are investigating phone calls made from a telephone box in Praia da Luz in a bid to trace a man acting suspiciously shortly before Madeleine McCann disappeared.
Indeed. It is odd. Who uses a phone box these days?
The story goes that Adrian and Lizelle Marais, a married couple working at an eatery called The Dolphin close to the phone box, spotted a “strange” man who “looked similar to a photofit of a suspect”. Their restaurant is around 700 metres from the Ocean Club, where Madeleine McCann was staying.
So which suspect are we looking at? We’ve seen a few in the media. The paper notes:
That led Portugal’s public prosecutor to order all phone records for the call box to be checked in an effort to find the man, who has never been traced.
Adding:
The prosecutor made the order on the grounds that the man may have abducted or murdered the lost three-year-old.
And so the jump is made. From being man at phone box at a busy summer holiday report, he is now someone who “may” have murdered a child.
We then get to which “suspect” the story relates to.
The call box is 50 yards from the spot where a man carrying a child similar to Madeleine was seen by Irishman Martin Smith and his family, who had been dining at the Dolphin at around 9pm on the night she disappeared.
Mr Smith’s account formed part of a Crimewatch reenactment.
Policia Judiciaria files on the case outline what Lizelle told officers the day after Madeleine vanished. The report states: “The person used the public telephone for long periods of time, always more than 10 minutes. To her, the person did not appear to be either a tourist or a resident. One time she had passed close to him and had felt ‘strange’ but did not know why.”
Mysterious stuff. But not new. Just old and in light of no developments in the case over ten years, still worthy of a look. And, as the Star proves with its interpretation of the Express‘ story, anything can be vital in the mystery of ‘Our Maddie’. Says the Star: “Madeleine McCann: Phone box may be key to finding Maddie.” Or not.
Posted: 23rd, April 2017 | In: Madeleine McCann, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment
Madeleine McCann: five theories, three ex-coppers and 10 years of nothing
Madeleine McCann: A look at reporting on the missing child. It remains frenzied, speculative, lurid and light on news.
Daily Mail: “Did Madeleine McCann wander off and have an accident? Was she stolen to order? Or was it a burglary gone wrong? Detective lays out theories about her disappearance.”
In short: did any crime befall Madeleine McCann? The detective isn’t sure if one did. But, then, he’s isn’t a professional detective. He’s a “former Scotland Yard detective” who “believes he has come up with the five most plausible theories to explain the disappearance of Madeleine McCann”.
Only five. This is progress. On May 10 2007, the Daily Mirror produced SIX theories. They were: the “PAEDOPHILE GANG”, the “LONE PAEDOPHILE”, the “JEALOUS MOTHER”, Madeleine wandering off and “DROWNED”, the “OPPORTUNIST PAEDOPHILE”, the “CHILDLESS COUPLE”.
Colin Sutton is the “detective” with the five-fingered theory. He first told it to the Mirror, which is the source for the Mail’s story.
Daily Mirror: “Was Madeleine McCann stolen to order, taken by lone paedo or did she just wander off? The scenarios that could explain her disappearance.”
Sutton’s Five Theories that could be useful are:
1 The McCanns or the Tapas Seven
The McCanns have been libelled. Take care. Speculation hurst lives. Says Sutton:
I can understand why the Portuguese police asked questions about the McCanns and the Tapas Seven. As uncomfortable as it is, the first place I would have started looking is their group. Without any other information to go on, the most likely scenario when a three-year-old girl disappears into thin air is that someone close to her knows what happened.
However, the police do appear to have decided quite quickly that was the only line of investigation they were going to take.
By concentrating just on that scenario they may have missed tips or other lines that meant going down a completely different investigation route.
After that he adds a further four theories:
2 Targeted kidnap by a trafficking gang
This is the most likely scenario once those closely linked to Madeleine have been ruled out.
Concluding;
Given all the facts we know, it’s the most likely and credible scenario.
But why did they take her?
A trafficking ring is more likely than a lone paedophile or paedophile ring. Yes there are paedophiles, yes she is a little blonde girl. But I think six and seven-year-old girls are much more at risk from paedophiles or child abuse rings.
Paedophiles target blonde girls more than, says, brunette or black girls? We know that the media prefers blonde victims.
Looking at the trafficking angle, unless the order was specifically for a young blonde girl, why her and not one of the twins?
Dunno. Got a theory?
Babies have less memories than a three-year-old. If Madeleine is alive she will probably remember she had another mother and father and used to live in another house.
Probably. Or not. The theories contain more theories.
If you were stealing on spec you would have taken one of the twins. Not both, just one. So it goes back to a specific order for a young blonde girl.
Has a young blonde girl died and their parents want to replace her? Or is there another reason for stealing to order? When you pick it all apart it’s the most likely scenario.
He picks, but he comes up with no answers, just more questions. The scab grows back over the wound:
3 She wandered off and had a fatal accident
He says Madeleine McCann left Cuddle Cat, her toy, behind. He says the fact of the toy remaining in the holiday flat makes this theory unlikely.
4 Opportunist abducted her
This is less likely than other scenarios. The chances of a predatory paedophile just happening across Madeleine and being able to abduct her without being detected are just so remote.
Sarah Payne, right, who was eight (when she was killed by Roy Whiting in 2000), and five-year-old April Jones (who was killed by Mark Bridger in Wales in 2012) are probably the only cases that match something like that.
Yeah, Probably.
5 Killed as part of a burglary gone wrong
This is extremely unlikely. If you have got a burglar who has gone into the apartment for material theft, the chances are once they find there are kids in there they will run a mile.
The Mirror concludes this flight of fancy by telling readers: “Anyone with information about Madeleine McCann’s disappearance should call the Find Madeleine investigation line on: 0845 8384699 or email: investigation@findmadeleine.com.”
Exactly. If you know anything, tell the police. If you know nothing, tell the readers.
The Sun: “MADDIE SUSPECTS – Convicted British paedo, heroin-addicted burglar and bogus charity collectors among main suspects in Madeleine McCann disappearance, says top cop.”
The top cop is Sutton As as for the smack head being a child snatcher, well, he told the Mirror: “Junkies don’t take three-year-old girls.” The convicted British paedo is Raymond Hewlett. He’s dead.
Having conjured suspects from the ether, the Sun adds in a second story: “WAS MADDIE KIDNAPPED TO ORDER? Top Brit ex-cop says Madeleine McCann could have been snatched by traffickers to replace grieving parents’ own dead child.”
As Sutton of the newsroom guesses – is that big reward still on offer? – and the newspaper lap up his thoughts, the Mirror turns to another ex-cop for more theories.
Sunday Mirror: “Ex-top cop breaks Madeleine McCann silence to say where he thinks she was taken.”
Madeleine McCann was snatched and taken to a warren of caves nearby that have never been searched, a Portuguese investigator has suggested.
The theory comes from ex cop Paulo Pereira Cristovao – who became the boss of Portugal’s missing children agency in the same year the three-year-old disappeared.
He says: “I think this case has lots of mistakes – from many persons, from many situations, from the police and maybe from the government. At the end of the day we all forgot one person: Madeleine McCann.”
No. We don’t. There has been ten years of reporting on the case. The innocent child has not been forgotten – she has, though, be turned into the benchmark for all missing children and used to sell papers. And, like all ex-ops with opinions, Cristovao didn’t take long to add a “maybe” to what he thinks.
We’re not told why Cristovao is talking now, only that he has imagined what he’d have done if he had kidnapped a child in Praia da Luz. He thinks Madeleine McCann is dead:
“I put myself in the role of someone who knew nothing about the streets or the region. Where would I put the body of a girl? I stood at the apartment door – to the right is the town of Portimao. There are lots of people there, lots of buildings. If I had kidnapped her that’s not the way I’d want to go. I would want to go left, and find the first side road. I put my car on that road, and I went straight to Burgau. It’s a nearby beach, with a lot of rocks with caves.
“It’s a good place to put somebody. As far as I know the police never went there, because you would need divers.”
As far as he knows. Good idea to check, no? Aren’t facts useful when you’re investigating and theorising?
“In a case where you hear theories like aliens and gypsies kidnapping Madeleine, I think this is as good as all the others.”
Alien abduction is notoriously hard to verify. Police divers looking in a lake less so.
“We’ve heard theories so stupid over these 10 years,” he adds without irony.” When we don’t understand something, we complicate it. I think sometimes – always – the best solution is the simple solution.”
Clydebank Post: “Madeleine McCann breakthrough: Aussie TV show claims to have solved mystery of tot’s disappearance.”
Pull up an armchair. You too, detectives.
Channel 7’s Sunday Night show has released a teaser clip of this weekend’s programme in which it promises to be a “landmark television event”.
The video claims the show has a new line of inquiry which could bring investigators closer to solving the mystery of the youngster’s disappearance.
Trailing a theory about what happened to Madeleine McCann is grim. A post on the channel’s Facebook says:
“The disappearance of Madeleine McCann has continued to captivate the world for nearly ten years. Maddie was only three years old when she vanished from her family’s holiday apartment in Portugal. The police search that followed became the largest in Portugal’s history – but no trace of the missing toddler was ever found. Now, new developments in the case could finally reveal the truth about what happened to little Maddie.”
Could. Or could not. Stay tuned. We’re right back after these ads.
Daily Star: “Madeleine McCann: Missing Maddie now 13 and looks like THIS.”
She’s alive! The Star knows it. In the paper’s rush to dash out an “exclusive” artist’s rendering of what the child might look like, it produces this (below). The person on the left looks a lot like Kate McCann.
Daily Record: “Cop in Madeleine McCann case remains utterly unrepentant after damning book blaming Kate and Gerry.”
The hatchet job on Goncalo Amaral begins:
Despite becoming a shadow of his former self, Goncalo Amaral still has no sympathy for the parents of the missing youngster.
F*** the policeman:
On the side of the run-down apartment building, the grafitti reads “Foda a policia”. You don’t need to be fluent in Portuguese to figure out the expletive-laden translation.
This crime-ridden Lisbon estate is home to the ex-detective once tasked with solving Madeleine McCann ‘s disappearance.
In the early days, he was alleged to work just four-and-a-half-hours a day. Sporting a large beer belly, he regularly enjoyed three-hour lunches.
Amaral, 57, split from second wife Sofia in 2012, blaming the pressures of the case. He moved back to the tough Lisbon suburb of Olivais, where he grew up. His expensive suits and fedora are gone.
So too has the beer belly and chauffeur-driven Mercedes, replaced by a battered Citroen Picasso.
His slimming is a negative?
But the arrogance remains – as the Mirror discovered when we confronted Amaral last week. Amaral also refused to apologise for the mistakes that hampered the early days of the probe. Instead, he threatened to have our reporter and photographer arrested.
But it was his cruel refusal to offer any sympathy to Kate and Gerry that was the most damning.
Is the purpose of the Mirror’s barrage of ‘Our Maddie’ articles aimed at securing an exclusive with the McCanns?
Daily Mirror: “Madeleine McCann’s parents Kate and Gerry met as junior doctors and had perfect life until their daughter vanished.”
That’s pretty much the entire story, which shows no sign of reaching an end.
Such are the facts.
Posted: 23rd, April 2017 | In: Madeleine McCann, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment
Daily Mirror news trust: Arsenal and Theresa May are both for turning
How about this for wraparound newspaper cover. The Daily Mirror’s front page leads with Theresa May’s “U-turn”. Having said there would be no General Election before 202o, May has called one for June 8 2017.
If it’s all about trust, what are Mirror readers to make of the paper’s back page news story that Arsenal have made it clear Arsene Wenger will still be manager next season? The paper says Schalke defender Sead Kolasinac, 23, has been been told Wenger will remain at Arsenal for a further two seasons.
June 8 is one for the diary. And while you’re on that page, you might care to put a line through another event scheduled for that month. On June 30 2017, Arsene Wenger is to quit the club. We read that in the Daily Mirror.
Such are the facts.
Posted: 19th, April 2017 | In: Arsenal, Back pages, Politicians, Sports, Tabloids | Comment
Daily Mail health warning: breathing gives you cancer
It’s Health Tuesday in the Daily Mail. In today’s issue readers are asked: “Does your lifestyle put you at risk from Air Pollution”.
If you don’t breathe, you’re ok. If not, read on…
Air pollution can increase your risk of getting – deep breath (and so hastening you’re death? – ed) – heart disease, cancers, a stroke, asthma and dementia.
You are at most danger if you are on the school run, an urban cyclist, the owner of a wood burner or on a train commuter, says the paper. But the list should include Daily Mail readers because there’s a chance that what the Mail tells you places you in peril.
November 2016: The Mail tells its rears that wood burners are ace:
One way of making a home more cosy this winter – and potentially saving money along the way – is installing a wood-burning stove. While the initial outlay can be expensive, they can reduce your fuel bills, while at the same time being a fashionable addition to your home.
October 2016: Cycling to offices and shops is great, says the Mail:
Cycling to work drastically lowers your risk of having a heart attack – even if it’s just for 30 minutes a week
January 2017: Commuting longer distances makes sense.
House prices drop by £3,000 for every minute of train travel out of London – try our interactive map to see how much commuters could save
As for the school run, well, the Mail says you’re all mad and more likely to kill than die from air:
How stress on the school run is turning mothers into maniacs – STRESSED mothers are putting their children and other road users at risk as they race through the streets on the school run.
Don’t worry. Most likely you’ll be dead by tea time.
Digging deep for Scarlett Moffatt’s topless photos
They are, says the Daily Star, the topless pictures Scarlett Moffatt does not want you to see. They are the “sizzling pictures” topless Scarlett Moffat hoped had been “lost for ever”.
We are invited to see Scarlett go “completely topless in unearthed pics”. But how far into the earth did the Star have to dig to retrieve photos of topless Scarlett? One day after the papers were full of news that Scarlett, winner of last season’s I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, is to front a spin-off show, we learn that in 2013 she went “completely topless” on MTV’s Beauty School Cop Outs.
In case you missed it, in July 2016 the Mirror showed photos of topless Scarlett Moffatt getting a televised spray tan on the show. “Gogglebox star Scarlett Moffatt snogs Jeremy McConnell before stripping naked in jaw-dropping footage,” declared the paper.
That same month the Sun thundered: “The incredible moment Scarlett Moffatt snogs Jeremy McConnell and strips NAKED.”
But what about Scarlett being embarrassed by her “raunchy” past? Well, in June 2014, the Star told readers: “Gogglebox babe Scarlett Moffatt will flash her boobs for every England World Cup goal.” Said demure Scarlett: “I will flash my boobs for each goal.”
One month later, Scarlett told Star readers: “I’ve seen threesomes on the bar’ Gogglebox Scarlett exposes ‘soft porn’ of Magaluf mayhem.” Said Scarlett: “I’ve been working in Magaluf over the last two months now and have seen first-hand the crazy shenanigans that happen most nights. Yet to the tourists downing alcohol like water and spreading their legs more often than you lose coppers, it’s not that big a deal.”
The pictures are less the hidden photos Scarlett didn’t want to see than they are the topless photos that get an airing whenever the reality TV star scores a new job.
Posted: 17th, April 2017 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids, TV & Radio | Comment
Brexit blamed for Croydon attack on Kurdish asylum seekers
Grim news from Croydon, where a 17-year-old Kurdish-Iranian asylum seeker has been beaten up as he and two friends – also Iranian Kurds – were at a bus stop. Police are calling it a “hate crime”, which of course it is. Any violent attack is hateful. The Mail calls it a “suspected ‘hate crime'”.
Why are the police so sure it was a hate crime and the Mail and Guardian less certain? According to the CPS: “A Hate Incident is any incident which the victim, or anyone else, thinks is based on someones prejudice towards them because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or because they are transgender.”
If you think it is a hate crime, then it is a hate crime. Were the thugs who beat up three teenagers waiting for a bus looking for asylum seekers to further a racist cause or violent people looking for an excuse to hit someone? The police know. The rest of us should be less certain.
We should also wonder why existing laws are not enough and the State thinks we need a new kind of crime to cover what looks like a brutal attack?
What happened?
The teenager was set up by upon by up top eight other youths, who chased him down the road and kicked him unconscious. Croydon’s Metropolitan Police Borough Commander, Ch Supt Jeff Boothe, calls it “a frenzied attack by a large number of people”. As the victim was being kicked, “members of the public [were] asking them [his attackers] to stop”. This “horrendous and frenzied attack” only ended when the police arrived.
Gavin Barwell, Croydon Central’s MP, labels the attackers “scum”.
Det Sgt Kris Blamires has more:
“At this early stage it is believed that about eight suspects approached the victim as he waited at a bus stop with two friends outside The Goat public house in the Shrublands. It is understood that the suspects asked the victim where he was from, and when they established that he was an asylum seeker they chased him and launched a brutal attack. He has sustained critical head and facial injuries as a result of this attack, which included repeated blows to the head by a large group of attackers.”
Four 20-year-olds, a 24-year-old woman and 24-year-old man have been arrested.
The Agenda.
But can this attack be politicised? Can any agenda-driven soul find political mileage in a violent assault about which all facts are not known? Yes. Al Jazeera links the attack to Brexit. The police – those right-on champions of civil liberties – know a hate crime when they see one. Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary, Diane Abbott, tells the Sun: “Sadly, this is not an isolated incident but part of a sustained increase in hate crimes that this Tory government is yet to offer any effective response to.”
She adds: “With rightwing politicians across the world scapegoating migrants, refugees and others for their economic problems, we are seeing a deeply worrying rise in the politics of hate. We must make clear that there is no place for anti-foreigner myths, racism and hate in our society.”
It’s no longer a very nasty incident outside a pub at 11:40 on a Saturday night. It’s a politically-triggered attack. Well, it is if you want it to be.
Posted: 2nd, April 2017 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians, Reviews, Tabloids | Comments (2)
Farage becomes the tabloids’ Great British Mascot
Nigel Farage beams from the front pages of the Daily Express and Daily Mail. Legs crossed to best display his Union flag socks-styled socks, a half-drunk pint of the warm stuff in his paw and a patriotic red, white and blue tie about his throat, Farage is politics’ answer to Ken Bailey, the man who dressed as John Bull, helped restore Erica Roe’s modesty after her Twickenham streak, and followed the Queen and the England and Bournemouth football teams across the world. Subbuteo even honoured him with his own model.
Farage is the figure who heralds the main event before vanishing from the field of play.
Including the cover, there are 6 pages given to Brexit in today’s Mail – and Farage’s one and only mention appears in the caption to that front-page photo: “Unions Jack socks: Nigele Farage in Westminster yesterday.”
And there he is again on the Express. No socks. But lots of British teeth. One page on and we do get to the socks. “Today’s the day the impossible dream came true,” says Farage sat on patio furniture. “I’m delighted.” And so too is the man dressed up as Godfrey of Bouillon across the page. Godfrey’s the bloke who led the Crusaders when they captured Jerusalem in 1099 and massacred so many Jews and Muslims, it was said, “the streets ran with blood.”
If the foreigners don’t come here to be hated by Express readers, you can always visit them.
As Farage tartily wafts his socks and waves on the main event – we suppose the UK-supporting Express would have featured a UKIP MP if such a creature existed – the opposition are notable by their absence. Not a single one of them (well, not unless you count Theresa May who wanted to remain ‘In’ the EU), is pictured in the Express. Biased, of course, but the Labour-supporting Daily Mirror also ignores Jeremy Corbyn, preferring its readers to hear from former Labour leader Gordon Brown. The paper finds space to feature an unflattering picture of Farage looking not a little gnome like. But not a sign of Corbyn.
Indeed, there is not single photo of Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition, in any tabloid. There’s not even a picture of the Labour leader wearing his signature tatty vest. Just lots of Nigel Farage and his underwear.
Posted: 30th, March 2017 | In: Politicians, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment
The Mail’s Legs-It cover triggers a race to the bottom
When Theresa May and Nicola Sturgeon had a chat in Glasgow, the Daily Mail noticed that both women had legs. It wasn’t just a meeting between two leaders of British political parties; it was a beauty contest. It was also an eye-catching front-page headline and photo. If newspapers set out to be relevant and capture their readers’ attentions, the Mail did a fine job of it.
But many leading voices – most of whom don’t much like the Mail and don’t buy it – were quick to accuse the paper of “sexism”.
Reaction to the Mail’s cover has been loud. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn looked beyond mere policy and leadership to decry the picture’s “sexism”. “This sexism must be consigned to history,” Corbyn tweeted. Labour MP Harriet Harman found the Mail’s headline “Moronic!” She checked her calendar and added with not a muon of wit, “And we are in 2017!”
Conservative MP and former Education Secretary Nicky Morgan accused the paper of “appalling sexism”.
Amelia Womack, deputy leader of the The Green Party of England and Wales, ruled that the cover was “treating women with contempt”. She went further than most and complained to IPSO, the Independent Press Standards Organisation. To her mind the over was “breaking the Editors’ Code”.
The Editors’ Code of Practice covers:
Accuracy
Privacy
Harassment
Intrusion into grief or shock
Reporting Suicide
Children in sex cases
Hospitals
Reporting of Crime
Clandestine devices and subterfuge
Victims of sexual assault
Discrimination
Financial journalism
Confidential sources
Witness payments in criminal trials
Payments to criminals
The Public Interest
Which of those topics deals with a picture of two clothed women and a silly comment on their legs? You can try and guess but you’d be hard pressed to nail it. Helpfully, Womack says the Mail broke clause 12 of the code which says editors must “avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual’s race, colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or disability”.
Of course, drawing attention to the leaders’ legs story gives Womack a chance to draw attention to herself. Like all other ‘Outraged of Westminster’ moaners, Womack uses the Mail to showcase her own clean lines. The paper must love it. At a time of falling circulations, the Mail is one newspaper still able to rile and matter. People really do care what it says.
The Mail online even features a report on its own front page:
And what of Theresa May, the poor woman being objectified by the nasty Mail? She called the cover “a bit of fun”. Which it is.
In next week’s Mail: “Put ’em away Jeremy!”
Posted: 29th, March 2017 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians, Tabloids | Comment
Ted Heath: no rest for those suspected of wickedness
9th January 1979: Edward Heath, British Conservative politician and prime minister (1970 – 1974) playing the piano to the amusement of Kermit the Frog and Paddington Bear. (Photo by Evening Standard/Getty Images)
It’s been a quiet few months for Ted Heath. Dead, of course, the former Prime Minister remains mired in allegations of sexual depravity. In today’s Mirror, the enjoyable Fleet Street Fox looks at men of Kent, of which Heath was one. Other sons of Kent’s darling, budding soil are: Nigel Farage, the former UKIP leader, and Adrian Elms, also known as Khalid Masood, the nutcase who murdered three people in a ‘loon wolf’ attack on Westminster.
In a list of rogues and reprobates born in Kent, the Fox includes Heath. The man known for his sailing, political U-turns and organ playing is billed as “suspected paedophile Ted Heath”. How’s that for a legacy? Of course, once you’re dead you can be a suspected paedophile for as long as people want to call you one. There will be no court case because the accused is dead and can’t defend himself. Justice hasn’t been denied. It’s been buried with no realistic hope of resuscitation.
In future the sane and sensible thing will be for all of us to be cryogenically frozen and, should allegations be made against us at a future date, defrosted in the white heat of a criminal trial.
Over in the Sun, news is that Heath is not to be dug up and beaten with sticks. “The £1million child abuse probe by police against former PM Ted Heath is set to be ditched,” says the paper. “Last night it was claimed the cops will close it after finding no evidence.”
Yeah, but he’s still a suspected child molester. Until you can prove he wasn’t one, the mud will stick to his bones. The paper’s next line tells us: “Detectives are investigating the former Tory leader accused of being part of a group which stabbed, tortured and maimed 16 children in churches before gorging on their blood.”
Disprove that!
Posted: 27th, March 2017 | In: Politicians, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment
Daily Mail assures terrorists: it only takes two minutes to learn how to murder on Google
Like most of you, we had no idea a knife or a car could be used by terrorists to kill and maim until the Daily Mail used its front page to advise us that Google is the go-to-place for learning about weaponising your cutlery drawer and vehicle.
It turns out that everyone who ever stabbed anyone ever or used a vehicle to carry explosives and run people down learned how to do it via the media.
For just 65 pence, single mums and immigrants are able to buy the Mail and therein get directions to websites dealing in death. Moreover, we found copies of the Mail on display in shops, often on the bottom shelf where children can read them.
Says one worried mum: “I’m shocked they allow that muck on sale. I for one won’t be buying it. I’ll read it for free online.”
Madeleine McCann: horror in Cyprus and trolling the McCanns in the Sun
Madeleine McCann: a look at reporting on the missing child.
We begin this round-up with news in the Sun that the missing child’s parents are posting on their official Facebook page. In “BEATING THE BULLIES” we read that Kate and Gerry McCann have re-opened their Find Maddie Facebook account amid a “huge outpouring of love and support” after “taking a ‘break’ from trolls”.
You might well wonder how that is news. But social media functions as something nasty for old media to look down on, like a school gates mum gathering her PTA pals around to snipe at the gauche new arrival. “As the page administrator switched it back on,” we’re told “she vowed to ‘continue to turn the page off if we receive hateful posts’.”
But you can’t turn off the Sun’s comments section. Beneath the paper’s story “MADDIE PROBE SLAMMED – Good Morning Britain viewers in meltdown over ‘ridiculous’ £11million bill for the Madeleine McCann investigation as top cop declares it a waste of money”, the Sun’s bleeding hearts offer lots of opinion. These are the comments in order of appearance on the Sun’s story:
The “TOP COMMENTS” are:
One site’s ‘Bullies” and “trolls” are another’s commenters and readers.
Having made not an inch of progress in finding out what happened to Madeleine McCann, the voracious Press see if they can have any better luck with a new ‘Maddie’.
“My daughter could have been the next Maddie McCann,” says the Mail’s headline. “Mother staying at five-star Cyprus hotel woke to find maid trying to snatch her one-year-old.”
The maid did it!
Siobhan Prescott, 25, “claims she woke to find her one-year-old daughter Harper crying as a dark-haired woman in her 40s attempted to pick her up out of her cot at the five star King Evelthon Beach and Hotel Resort in Chloraca Bay, Cyprus.”
As parents cancel their family summer holiday and eyes “dark-haired” women (in Greece!) with suspicion, the Mail tells us what happened next:
The horrified mother claims she was powerless to react because she was sleeping naked, so screamed out for her partner Simon Smith who was on the balcony of their room.
Who knew British holidaymakers were so demure?
Anyhow, Simon came running.
He confronted the sheepish woman, who was dressed in a maid’s outfit, and demanded to know what she was doing.
The woman said something in another language, before bursting into tears and trying to flee the room – but stopped to make a phone call from the room phone.
Eh? She made a phone call before legging it? So there are finger prints, a number to track and you got a good look at the would-be abductor. Right now the only thing Madeleine McCann-like about his story is that readers to examine someone else’s parenting skills.
“I was napping when a maid snuck into the room and tried to snatch my baby,” says Siobhan. “The only reason I woke up was because Harper screamed out, otherwise she could have been the next Maddie McCann.”
Well, yes, aside from the fact that this time both parents were in and the child never did go missing. What the incident could have been is the subject of the thrilling headline, but what actually was it?
“We were furious and we made our way down to the reception and demanded the hotel manager immediately,” says Siobhan. “I was absolutely hysterical, but the hotel management just said she was cleaning the room and picked up my baby to check she was alright. But it was rubbish. That woman had no cleaning products on her and it was the afternoon so our room had already been cleaned. I was naked in the bed, what kind of person walks into a room when a woman is lying naked on the bed? She let herself in with the aim to try and steal our baby.”
“TOT SNATCH HORROR,” thunders the Sun. “Brit mum reveals terrifying moment maid tried to snatch her toddler from cot on holiday and says ‘she could have been the next Madeleine McCann’”.
A TERRIFIED mum said she feared her daughter could have been the “next Madeline McCann” after she woke to find a hotel maid looming over her cot.
Siobhan Prescott, 25, claims the worker was attempting to pick up one-year-old Harper, who was screaming hysterically.
The baby was crying. The woman picked her up. The Sun writes:
The family were on a dream holiday to Cyprus between February 22 and March 1 when the horror unfolded.
It was weird and unsettling, no doubt. But a “horror”?
They claim they were later told by the hotel that the same maid had been sacked two years previously following an “incident” but was on her first day back in work.
So the woman “dressed as a maid” was a maid, which is why she was dressed as one. Is that right?
Siobhan said: “I am lucky to have woken up, but if I hadn’t God knows what would have happened. Harper could have easily been snatched and we would be in the exact same situation as Kate and Gerry McCann.”
What, hated by Sun readers?
Posted: 22nd, March 2017 | In: Madeleine McCann, Tabloids | Comment
Prince William turns into his feckless father as mute Kate awaits her Diana moment
It’s the third day of the Sun’s Prince William expose. On Tuesday the paper led with news that Wills had ‘sloped off’ to the Swiss Alps to pranny about his pals on a lads’ holiday, where he met an Australian model called Sophie Taylor. So much the norm for the super-rich. But the Sun was aghast, saying that Wills should have been at a Commonwealth Day service with the rest of his kin.
Over pages 4 and 5, we saw Wills ‘sloping off again’, ‘snubbing’ the service at Westminster Abbey. Wills does a ‘high skive’ palm slap with Sophie as he ‘chills ‘with ‘topless model’ Sophie and his mates.
On Wednesday it was more of the same. There was Wills on the Sun’s cover page, his lips pursed in disapproval as he stared into the paparazzo’s lens. Wills has an ambivalent relationship with the Press. The photo-ops that make him looks good and chummy with the hol polloi are great; the ones where he’s seen larking about for the 30-plus weeks of the year in which he isn’t ‘working’ as a military-lite soldier and celebrity lifesaver are undesirable and invasive. The narrative is that the paps did for his mother, but what really hurt William’s mother was his father, cheating Charles, who refereed to Princess Diana as ‘Diana the Martyr‘ as she carved out a life for herself that involved more than being the Windsor clan’s latest ‘brood mare‘.
And it keeps coming. Wills is ‘Throne Idle’. He is – yet again – ‘sloping off’, having performed ‘just 13 royal duties’ this year (although it’s at least a couple more if you include telling the secretary to tell the nanny to wipe Prince George’s arse and smiling at Kate in public) to the Queen’s 24.
Over pages 6 and 7, we see Wills in ‘Boogie-wonderland’ getting ‘crown on it’ at Verbier’s Farinet club. We hear from a ‘stunned’ onlooker who “couldn’t believe” Wills was ‘gyrating to a rap song with lyrics about smoking cannabis’. It’s unbelievable. Where’s the future King’s sense of tradition? What happened to getting goofed on opiates, impregnating peroxide-tinted serfs, murdering dumb animals and giving Nazs salutes? It was good enough for his ancestors, so why not Wills? The snob.
“William clearly isn’t interested in taking his role seriously and I really wonder if he wants to be king,” says the chief executive of anti-monarchy group Republic.”He’s not living up to the hopes that people had of him and does seem to be taking all this for granted,’ adds a ‘Royal historian’.
And so to Thursday’s Sun‘s lead story. We hear that Sophie did a slut drop’ dance in a rarified Swiss club. On pages 4 and 5, we learn that Wills was ‘cavorting on a club dance floor with two beauties’. We also learn that the slut drop is a dance move ‘made famous of Geordie Shore’, the TV show in which orange-skinned Geordies shag on camera and then read each others tattoos by the light of their teeth.
What it all amounts to is not very much at all. Unless you consider Kate, the missing part in all her husband’s life of privilege and privacy. The Sun invites its agony aunt Deidre to ‘imagine’ what Kate would write about her husband. Imaginary Kate is worried that her ‘boring and ‘balding’ husband ‘has been pictured with his hands all over some girl’. She wonders, ‘Has the magic gone?’ Above all she is terrified he’s turning into his father. We hope, of course, that Kate learns from Diana, a woman who touched the shunned and sick (literally) and attempted with no little success to turn a life of public virtue and private vice into something the subjects can look up to.
Over to you, Kate…
Posted: 16th, March 2017 | In: Key Posts, Royal Family, Tabloids | Comment
Madeleine McCann: a manhunt, a lifeline and a missing man
Madeleine McCann: a look at reporting on the missing child.
Daily Mirror (front page): ”Maddie Cops Hunt Worker At Resort.’ The now ‘ex-employee has ‘vanished’. Like the missing child, he just disappeared?
In the very first paragraph we get not facts but news that ‘cops believe’ the missing worker has ‘clues about her disappearance’. The Portuguese man worked at the Ocean Club resort at the time Madeleine McCann ‘was snatched in 2007’.
The next headline adds: ‘Madeleine McCann cops hunt worker at resort as they fear he “kept secrets” from local police.’ So the missing man spoke with police, then. ‘He gave a statement at the time but detectives fear he may have kept secrets.’ The man spoke with police two days after the child vanished.
Believe. Fear. May. It’s the Maddie Mantra.
As ever with this story of the missing child, facts give way to feeling. Unable to add anything of substance, the Mirror repeats itself: ‘British officers trying to find the youngster fear he may have kept secrets from local detectives that could have led to a breakthrough in the case.’ Why do British police believe the wanted man may not have told local police everything? A Portuguese police ‘source’ tells readers: “British officers are convinced he knows more than he was previously saying and are very keen to question him.”
They don’t believe it. They know it. they are convinced. Is that why the ‘Maddie cops’ are ‘hunting’ him? They are not looking for him to help with their enquiries. They are hunting him, as you might hunt for a man who doesn’t want to be caught. The word is more loaded than Gorge bush at a frat house party. But hold on. The unnamed source tells us that the hunted man might not have anything to do with the missing child. “They are not suggesting he stole Maddie,” says the ‘source, “but he may know people who could have been involved after a burglary went wrong. The investigation in Britain seems to be grinding to a halt and they want to rule him out of the case if not rule him in. Then detectives know they have done everything in their power to try to solve the case.”
So much for the manhunt.
As for the facts, the Mirror soon revisits the old news: “Her doctor parents Kate and Gerry McCann , of Rothley, Leics, have always believed their daughter is still alive.” As ever, the paper mentions the parents’ jobs.
Daily Express (front page): ‘Parents’ joy at lifeline in hunt for Madeleine’
Another hunt, but this time it’s the search for the missing child. The Express hones in on Madeleine McCann’s parents. The child peers out from the paper’s cover, as she has done scores of times over the past decade.
And we learn nothing new. All we know is the child went missing. The rest is speculation.
Such are the facts.
Posted: 13th, March 2017 | In: Madeleine McCann, Tabloids | Comment (1)
Arsenal balls: Wenger stays and Allegri agrees to take over
It’s been a huge two days for Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger. Only yesterday, the Star was pleading with Wenger to make up his mind and tell everyone if he was going to sign a new contract and stay at Arsenal for a further two years.
The paper said Juventus manager Massimiliano Allegri was tired to waiting to get the call to move up from the Italian giants to English football’s also-rans. The Star thundered:
EXCLUSIVE: Massimiliano Allegri sends ‘come and get me’ plea to Arsenal
Words from Allegri on his dream to manage Arsenal: none.
Of course, the Star is a rich source of fake news. On February 28, the Star told its readers ‘Allegri confirms he’s joining Arsenal’.
You click on that news headline and you get told on the Star’s website: ‘Calciomercato has this afternoon sensationally claimed Allegri, 49, will join the Gunners this summer.’ On that Italian site, we’re told:
The news comes from his hometown of Livorno, where reports are circulating that the manager let this story slip at dinner with friends.
And that’s it. No quotes. No links.
Looking for more, a search for ‘Allegri’ and ‘Livorno’ produces a story on another Italian news site. It says the Allegri to Arsenal news is sourced in the – get this – Daily Express, sister organ to the Daily Star. In the Express we learn that Allegri and Arsenal have agreed a deal.
All done and dusted, then. No dithering at all. Allegri in. Wenger out. Which brings us to today Daily Star story that Wenger is, er, staying at Arsenal.
All utter balls, then.
Such are the facts.
Posted: 12th, March 2017 | In: Arsenal, Back pages, Sports, Tabloids | Comments (2)
Madeleine McCann: just £85,000 left to find ‘Our Maddie’
Madeleine McCann: a look at reporting on the missing child. The Metropolitan Police continue to search for Madeleine McCann, the child who became the media’s ‘Our Maddie’.
Sunday Express (front page): ‘Madeleine Bombshell – Police net closes in one just one man who is key to the mystery’.
The police have been given more funding to find our what happened to Madeleine McCann in 2007. The Express‘s lead story and the extra cash are linked, as Caroline Wheeler explains:
DETECTIVES investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann have identified a person they want to question and have been given an extra £85,000 to follow up the crucial lead.
That doesn’t sound like very much money. The BBC says it’s enough ‘to extend the search for a further six months’ – a search that has to date cost anything from £11.1m to £13m, depending on what publication you read.
Is it a sign the cops are closing in on their quarry? Or it a sign that funds are being reduced considerably – that the investigation is being wound down? The Express says there’s a ‘specific person of interest they need to question’:
The lead is seen as solid enough to persuade the Home Office to grant the extra money which will extend the search until September.
It’s not much money, though, is it, especially to follow up a ‘solid lead’.
All we’re told is that the mystery man was possibly in Portugal when Madeleine McCann went missing. If you think that’s all a bit blurry, it isn’t cleared up one line on when we’re told:
International intelligence agencies have been working together to find the “person of interest” who detectives believe may hold the key to solving the case.
And with that we’ve progressed not an inch. What detectives ‘believe may’ could be the Maddie Mantra. And very quickly what looked like fact becomes editorialised wishful thinking:
Had the information not been deemed a “solid live lead” then the £13million police investigation would have been wound up.
The mystery man is called a ‘crucial lead’. What was once shrouded in ‘believe’ and ‘may’ is now ‘crucial’.
A Home Office spokesman delivers the official line:
“Following an application from the Metropolitan Police for special grant funding the Home Office has confirmed £85,000 in operational costs for Operation Grange for the period April 1 until September 2017.
“As with all applications the resources required are reviewed regularly and careful consideration is given before any new funding is allocated.”
Cue an anonymous ‘insider’ to tell us: “There is just one person who detectives want to speak to who was near to the area where Madeleine disappeared almost 10 years ago. An international search has been underway to find them.”
Them or him? How near were they?
Policing Minister Brandon Lewis, who rubber-stamped the cash, steps in:
“I am pleased to be able to support the British police who are trying to get to the bottom of what happened to Madeleine McCann and give some kind of closure and justice to her family.”
When one newspaper leads the rest follow.
The Sun: ‘NEW MADDIE SUSPECT Cops given extra £85k to probe new key suspect in Madeleine McCann’s disappearance a decade ago.’
Detectives have identified an individual they believe was near the coastal resort of Praia da Luz, Portugal when the tot went missing in 2007
That police only ‘believe’ the person was in Portugal soon becomes a fact that they were:
The person was near the area where Madeleine went missing from in the coastal resort of Praia da Luz, Portugal in May 2007.
Is this person who was there and maybe wasn’t there a suspect, then?
The person could be a Portuguese suspect.
For that insight we can look to now fewer than three journalists, the story is ‘By Ryan Sabey, Political Correspondent, Tracey Kandohla and Brittany Vonow’.
Over on LBC this morning, Andrew Castle has been fielding calls about whether or not the cash is value for money. After an hour of chatter, in which Castle says ‘as a parent, “you would expect your government to support you”, it turns out that no-one who calls in can be certain of anything other than that the child is missing.
And so it is that on a slow news day you can still press’f9’ on the keyboard and call up an ‘Our Maddie’ story and field all those nasty, doltish, unhelpful, anonymous and to-deadline opinions.
Posted: 12th, March 2017 | In: Madeleine McCann, Tabloids | Comment
Celebrity Weed Farm: BGT dancer inspires new TV show
Remember Stavros Flatley, the chubby fella from Britain’s Got Talent, whose dance with his chubby son scored them a job on Sugar Free Farm with Ann Widdecombe, Alison Hammond and Gemma Collins, a show which proved that shovelling shit was not just for TV’s executives? Well, the boy, who the Sun bills as ‘the chubby young lad’ (CYL), is the subject of the paper’s front-page headline: ‘Stavros Flatley Drugs Bust.’
Police ‘have said’ marijuana plants have been found at a North London flat allegedly ‘owned’ by CYL. The Sun calls it a ‘cannabis factory’ and values the plants at £56,000. Yeah, that’s what we thought, too. Forget the lo-cal farm. Legalise weed and put celebs to some profitable use.
Posted: 6th, March 2017 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comment
Jeremy Corbyn meltsdown in the Sun, Mail and Express but is smiling in the Mirror
When Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn appeared on Sky News, he was asked about his leadership. “I’m carrying on as leader,” said Corbyn, “because I’m determined that we will deliver social justice in this country.” So, er, will you stay on as leader. “I have given you a very, very clear answer, yes,” said Corbyn.
At one point he face contorted. As @ExcelPope quipped, “Have you ever been so angry that your monocle fell out?”
The Express calls Corbyn’s reaction a ‘meltdown’. He ‘dramatically flew off the handle’. On page 2 it features the same screen shot you see above, in which Corbyn seems to be auditioning for Steptoe and Son.
On the Sun’s page 2, it’s ‘JEZZAAARRRGGH!’ cornyn ‘snapped’ on TV. He ‘snarled’ as he ‘dodged three questions on whether he would be in the job to fight the 2020 election’. The paper quotes a Comres poll that 77% of Labour voters ‘think their party has the wrong leader’.
In the Daily Mail, ‘snarling Corbyn features on page 24. He ‘snapped angrily’ when asked about his future. It’s slightly better news for Jeremy, though, because in the Mail he only ‘twice ducked questions about whether he would keep his job until 2020’.
The story gets a different twist on the Mirror’s page 2. Thereon, Corbyn is issuing the rallying call : ‘We won’t give or retreat.’ No sign of a screw face here, it’s just Jezza with one thumb up as he addresses Labour’s Scottish conference – yes, they still have one, albeit in the room under the stairs. There is no word on his Sky ‘meltdown’. There is no word on the Comres poll.
Such are the facts.
Posted: 27th, February 2017 | In: Politicians, Tabloids | Comments (3)
Jimmy Savile’s sex-free sex den at High Royds Hospital
Fancy a peek inside ‘Jimmy Savile’s sex den’? This is where the ‘shamed star preyed on victims’. The Daily Star’s wrong, of course. Savile wasn’t shamed. Sir Jimmy was buried with full honours. The great and good lined up to praise the “colourful character”, the embodiment of “diligence and decency” who will be “greatly missed“. Savile was not shamed. He was dug up, possibly beaten with sticks and buried a good deal deeper down than the normal six feet, but the Papal knight died a State- approved hero.
Savile’s ‘sex den’ is the abandoned High Royds Hospital in Menston, West Yorkshire. Savile was a depraved, gibbering loon who hid in plain sight. He didn’t need a sex den. He had a caravan, a BBC studio pass and an NHS-issued gown.
Reading on we learn that the sex den featured no actual sex. The Star reports:
It was here sexual predator Savile targeted a number of women during the get-together in 1988. The party was to celebrate the centenary of the hospital, according to a 2014 report.
More of an office party than a sex den, then?
An investigation found that the monster had cupped women’s boobs and put his hand up one victim’s skirt during the event.
All nasty, pervy, leery, criminal and sad. But not what anyone would call a sex den, least of all the Star, whose Television X stablemate broadcasts hardcore pornography with such titles as Sexual Predator 1.
As for Savile, well, the Star continues: ‘But the women didn’t make a formal complaint because sexual assault was considered an “occupational hazard”, the report said.’
Maybe that should be investigated – why nurses were seen as fair game?
Over in the Mirror, the sex den is gone. We are in the former hospital ‘where Jimmy Savile groped nurses and asked for a room in case he “pulled”‘. We see photographs by Kieran Young, 20, who posts as Exploring Lancashire.
“I had been here a few times previous but never found a way in,” he says. “I’ve always love the look of Victorian buildings so this really took my eye so I kept going back to get in. After five or six attempts I finally got in with a friend. My pictures encapsulate the past while also showing the morbid reality of the present.”
They’re good. We like looking over disused building, which given their massive size and emptiness often look haunting and sinister. Was Savile the worst thing to have occurred at West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum, later Menston Mental Hospital and finally High Royds Psychiatric Hospital, where up to the 1960s inmates were buried in unmarked graves? Who listened to the poor and vulnerable back then? Who listens to them now?
A staff member is quoted talking about Savile in 2014: “He was just very free with his hands, so hands going round people, round their waist but then upwards, cupping under breasts, hands up the skirt. We just laughed it off, said ‘Dirty old man’ and didn’t go near him for the rest of the day. I can’t imagine that if we had said anything to anybody, or the police, that anybody would take it seriously, I don’t think, at that time. It was just an occupational hazard of being a woman.”
It sounds like Savile wasn’t the only man free with his hands. But he’s the focus of the Mail’s report, even if the paper does spell his name wrong.
The Mail issues an invitation: ‘Look inside an abandoned psychiatric hospital with a truly dark past: Jimmy Saville [sic] once prowled these corridors to launch sickening attacks on nurses.’
He more walked and jogged than prowled. That was the thing with Jimmy Savile – he was there for all to see, often dressed in a shining gold tracksuit and neon hair. He was hard to miss. But no-one was listening.
Posted: 26th, February 2017 | In: Key Posts, News, Reviews, Tabloids | Comment
Roly-Poly Goalie Wayne Shaw gets a job in the Sun
Having lost his job at Sutton FC for eating a pie in the dug-out at odds of 8-1, ‘roly-poly goalie’ Wayne Shaw is today pictured eating lots more pies in the Sun. The paper loves Wayne. After all, it was Sun Bets, the paper’s betting wing, which offered odds that seemed so tasty to Shaw’s pals. He didn’t bet. But they did. The game was brought into disrepute. Rules governing betting rules were broken.
Shaw, a man prone to depression, offered his resignation after what predictably became known as pie-gate. Shaw’s former manager told BBC Radio 5 live that Wayne was “crying” on the phone and “very, very sorry about the whole situation”. The Sun talked of ‘fan fury’ of her ‘sacking’.
Good to see, then, that the Sun is sticking by their man and getting him working as a pie taster. It is Wayne Shaw’s ‘new career’. ‘My football career may be on hold, ‘says Wayne optimistically, ‘but I’m not letting it stop me exploring new opportunities.’
It’ll be interesting to see how long the Sun can keep this going until it feels that any debt has been repaid.
Posted: 24th, February 2017 | In: Sports, Tabloids | Comment
Madeleine McCann: flogging apartment 5a at the Ocean Complex
Madeleine McCann: what the media says about the missing child.
The Sun (page 4), tells us that the ‘MADDIE HOLS FLAT’ has been sold for ‘half price’. The flat in which Madeleine McCann and her family were staying when she vanished has been bought for ‘just £113,000’ by a ‘British gran’, having been put on the market for £225,000, we read. The new owner has been ‘living in the property after secretly buying it “years ago”‘.
Is she bought it year ago, why is her purchase news now? As the 10th anniversary of the child vanishing looms, is the Sun campaigning for an interview with the parents? And the price seems not far off the going rate.
In 2008, the Mail told us the flat’s owner had been ‘trying to sell the two-bedroom ground-floor apartment since 2007 with an asking price of £255,000 – around £50,000 less than the asking price’.
But the Portugal Resident website told its readers in 2008: ‘THE APARTMENT rented by the McCanns while they were on holiday in Praia da Luz in May 2007 is on the market for 215,000 euros.’
Such are the facts.
Posted: 24th, February 2017 | In: Madeleine McCann, Tabloids | Comment
Is Sun Bets or Wayne Shaw the greedier?
When the Sun Bets bookmakers sponsored Sutton for their home FA Cup match against Arsenal (final score: – 0- 2), they offered odds of 8-1 that the home side’s home reserve goalkeeper Wayne Shaw would eat a pie during the match.
Given that Shaw’s in the ‘big lad’ territory of players, Sun Bets could have offered a spread of how many pies, tubes of Rolos, lamb bhunas and ‘cheeky’ kebabs he’d eat inside the 90 minutes. As chance had it, Shaw did eat a pie, and because the game was being broadcast live on the BBC, we all got to see him do it. Shaw later admitted that ‘pals’ had placed money on the bet, which, says the Sun, were offered at a £5 maximum stake. The Mail says Sun Bets ‘tweeted that it had paid out a five-figure sum after Shaw finished his pie’.
For his (hunger) pains, Shaw was sacked for breaching FA rules concerned with betting on any “aspect of, or occurrence in” a football match. The Sun says on its front page that Shaw was ‘Hung out To Pie’. Shaw was handed his ‘Pie 45’.
The Sun calls it pathetic. So outraged is the paper that nearly all the media are talking about its Sun Bets (the Mirror doesn’t mention the company by name in any of its reports) – that’s S.U… – it calls on some unlikely comrades. Sun readers hear from Piers Morgan – for whom Shaw’s sacking “sums up the pathetically PC-crazed world” – and the BBC’s Gary Linker – “FFS!”.
Sun Bets says its investigating and working with the Gambling Commission, which is doing the same.
Shaw helps them out by noting his ‘pie’ was a ‘pastry’. Sun Bets says a pie is a “filling totally encased in pastry”. So it paid out. But, then, it’s the big winner in a sad story of greed.
Posted: 22nd, February 2017 | In: Arsenal, Sports, Tabloids | Comment
‘The Chuff of Dreams’: Daily Mail’s X-rated headline of the day
It’s the ‘Chuff of dreams’ in the Daily Mail.
For those readers not au fait with a chuff, the Urban Dictionary defines it yhus:
chuff
anglo-slang for snatch, vagina.
“How’s the weather in Phoenix?”“Dryer than a nun’s chuff.”
Steamy stuff in the Mail.
PS: good to see old Viz writers getting wok in the mainstream press.
Spotter: Sub-Edited
Stephen Lawrence: The Daily Mail V ‘Murderers’ was huge but the ITV interviews were extraordinary
Twenty years ago today the Daily Mail published one of the most eye-grabbing front-pages in recent history. It accused five men of murdering Stephen Lawrence, the black youth killed in a racist crime covered up by an incompetent and racist police force.
In February 1997, one day after an inquest jury ruled that Stephen Lawrence was unlawfully killed “in a completely unprovoked racist attack by five white youths”, the Mail produced its front page.
The Mail challenged Neil Acourt, his brother Jamie Acourt, David Norris, Gary Dobson and Luke Knight, to sue for libel. They didn’t.
Today the paper revisits its sensational front-page headline.
The paper accuses Luke Knight of being ‘The Murderer Who Got Away’. Wow!
The Mail’s allegation is undermined by its own teaser, which says of the self-styled “loveable rogues”: ‘Two have been convicted, one’s in jail on a drugs charge and a 4th is on the run.’ If the Mail claims the five are murderers and only two have been convicted, how can there be only one who got away?
In 1999, the accused men spoke with ITV news. It was compelling television. And a word before you watch: I was in the crowd when they swaggered from court. One thing struck me as remarkable: the restraint shown by all those who saw them.
Posted: 14th, February 2017 | In: Reviews, Tabloids | Comment
