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.
Les Be Friends
‘WHEN, earlier this week, Alan Duncan became the first Tory MP to openly declare he was gay, nobody was prepared for the impact it would have on British society.
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| Les Battersby never looked like this |
And the shock waves have reached all the way to Coronation Street, where the characters are set to follow Alan’s example.
”Corrie fans are in for a big shock – when bruiser Les Battersby comes out as gay,” reports the Star.
”Loutish Les will tell the whole of Weatherfield he’s enjoying a homosexual relationship with dopey lodger Kirk Sutherland. The ‘couple’ decorate their terraced home in Coronation Street with pastel shades and vases of pretty flowers as Village People CDs blast from the speakers.”
It’s not the first gay storyline to hit Soapland, but the prospect of seeing actors Bruce Jones and Andrew Whyment play tonsil hockey is not nearly as palatable as, say, watching Anna Friel snogging Nicola Stephenson in Brookside.
But before Corrie’s ratings start to plummet, viewers should know that Les is not really ”a batty boy”, as the paper’s headline suggests.
”Les’s gay antics are all part of a desperate scam to escape being evicted,” the Star assures us.
And when you consider the lengths that some of the Big Brother housemates went to in order to avoid eviction – stripping naked on the sofa, enjoying naked romps in the hot tub, mooning the hidden cameras – viewers can consider themselves lucky that Les at least keeps his clothes on.
‘
Tub Thumping
‘SHE was wrinkled before she went in, but you should have seen her when she came out. Lillian Harkendorff, 82, of Falls City, Nebraska, spent more than four days in her bath before being rescued.
The widow was recovering from a broken shoulder, and after running her bath discovered that she was too weak to pull herself out of the tub.
”I yelled and hollered, but nobody heard me,” Mrs Harkendorff told the Omaha World-Herald.
She kept warm by running hot water into the bath and wrapping herself in towels and a bath mat. She was eventually rescued after a worried friend called round to her house. ‘
Kiss Me, Kate
‘IT’S just what you need after two months cooped up inside a house with a dozen strangers – to get to marry Ian Beale. But that’s the prospect facing Big Brother 3 winner Kate Lawler, with the Star reporting this morning that the 22-year-old is being lined up for a part in EastEnders.
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| Ian didn’t react well when Kate called him ”Spanky” |
”BBC chiefs,” the paper assures us, ”have been bowled over by her uncanny resemblance to soap favourite Tamzin Outhwaite”. Uncanny indeed – put pictures of the pair side by side (as the paper does), and you will be struck by how both women have blonde hair and are, er, female.
But this is qualification enough to become the ”new blonde bombshell” in Albert Square – and have Ian Beale (currently watching his third marriage disintegrate after he slept with a prostitute) licking his lips in anticipation.
The casting director need not stop there, however. Kate’s former housemate Jade has already revealed how she dreamed of becoming hooker Janine’s sister on the show – and that could really spice things up in E20.
The porcine one (no, not Letitia Dean) yesterday threatened to move down a few weight divisions and chin rival Kate, accusing her of using flirting tactics to win the show.
Shame! Shame! Anyone who would stoop so low as to strip off in front of her fellow housemates (and millions of TV viewers) and perform a sex act (which sounds very much akin to its recipient, PJ) should have been thrown out of the house immediately.
‘
No Sex, Please
‘IT is men like Ian Beale and PJ who give Englishmen a bad name.
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| The only Englishman to pass Leah’s stringent testing |
And women like Leah McLaren, an ”acknowledged Canadian beauty” who this morning complains to the Mail about how Englishmen are such hopeless lovers.
Not hopeless in bed (although they no doubt are), but hopeless at getting girls there in the first place. Or so says Leah, who has been on 12 ”promising” dates and doesn’t have a shag to show for it.
But one woman’s ”promising” is the rest of the world’s ”wouldn’t touch him with a bargepole” – as evidenced by Leah’s first date.
”Nigel, let’s call him, seemed promising,” she writes (although one wonders how anyone called Nigel – even to protect his true identity – can be so considered).
”We were seated beside each other at a dinner party thrown by mutual friends and he entertained me with stories of boarding school (he went to Eton, which I found kooky if clichéd) and of his parents, who were globe-trotting diplomats.”
An Old Etonian stockbroker called Nigel, who was abandoned by his mother to be brought up by someone he called Auntie (although she clearly wasn’t his aunt) – it’s amazing the date didn’t go off swimmingly…
‘
From Vice To Spice
‘JAMIE Theakston is not exactly the best advert for British men after his recent and well-publicised visit to a Mayfair brothel.
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| Baby changed her image after spending a few days with Jamie |
But there is barely a whip or a thigh-high PVC boot to be seen on the front page of this morning’s Sun, which spots the TV presenter ”sharing a tender clinch” with Emma Bunton.
Of course, this gives the paper the perfect excuse to use its ”From Vice Girl To Spice Girl…” headline, although in truth none of the ”amazing” pictures show the couple doing any more than hugging.
But a hug is the most the majority of Englishmen can manage before they run off, dress up in a nappy and beg you to feed them Cow & Gate while administering a good spanking.
It is certainly good enough for the Sun’s Dominic Mohan, who claims they were caught ”behaving like a pair of illicit lovers”. Telling tales of boarding school, regaling each other with stories of their parents…
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The Bottom Line
”’I DON’T get a thrill from reading buttocks,” said 39-year-old clairvoyant Ulf Buck, of Meldorf, near Hamburg.
Mr Buck, who has been blind since the age of three, has made a name for himself by offering an unusual service – namely, predicting the future by feeling people’s bottoms.
In Mr Buck’s expert opinion, the buttocks are more ”intense” than the hand. The unadorned cheeks, it transpires, provide detailed information about personality, future wealth, happiness and health.
Fortune-tellers often receive a bad press. But rest assured, there is nothing sinister about Buck. ”I am happily married,” he insists.’
Vanity Mirrored
‘IT doesn’t pay to be as vain as a peacock, even if you are one. Officials at Fredriksberg Park in Copenhagen have had to get rid of most of the park’s peacocks after they caused thousands of pounds worth of damage to parked cars.
The birds have been attacking their own reflections in new or newly-washed cars, leading bird lovers to call for motorists to stop polishing their vehicles.
‘The birds see their reflection in the cars and think it’s a rival male so they attack it with their claws and beaks,’ head gardener Soren Selch told the Expressen newspaper.
Of the park’s original population of 15 birds, all but four have been put down or moved to the island of Zealand. ‘
Too Much Of A Goody Thing?
‘WHEN it comes to Big Brother, the phrase ”Too much of a good thing” clearly doesn’t apply.
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| ”The boob jobs are on me!” |
For the Mirror – the anti-Big Brother paper, let us remind you – this simply means that they gave us ever-increasing servings of a bad thing.
For the Star, the Sun and the Express, it meant competing with each other for every tit-bit, no matter how small, stale or unappetising.
And although BB3 finished on Friday, everyone has an interest in keeping it going as long at possible.
So along with the weekend tabloid revelations, we have also had Channel 4’s own post-mortems, culminating in the truly bizarre Little Brother awards ceremony in the BB house, which had the production values of a primary school prize-giving, with none of the gravitas (or the achievement). Best falling-over, best snog, best fart… Oh dear!
Now that housemates are out, the tabloids are getting stuck into the meaty character profiles, and Jade is the clear winner.
”You’re a diamond and I’m gonna buy you bigger boobs,” announces the Star.
But this is not an expression of gratitude by the editor for the Bermondsey battler’s services to circulation figures. It is a quote from Jade’s own mouth.
She was straight on the blower to her flat-chested pal Clem Green, offering her the money for the breast-enhancement surgery upon which she had set her heart.
Jade may be all heart when it comes to her mates, but she calls a spade a spade, and the paper is desperately bigging up her rivalry with winner Kate. That’ll shift a few papers over the coming weeks, with a bit of luck and a lot of stirring.
But Johnny Depp is the person who should really worry. ”I don’t sleep around but I’d bonk Johnny,” she tells the Sun, in response to the sensitive actor’s dismay at Jade’s hounding by the press.
Leave it, Jade: you’d crush the poor man to death with a single flick of those hips
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Writer’s Block
‘ONE man who has also tasted freedom for the first time in a long while is Lord Archer, who is pictured arm in arm with his fragrant wife Mary while on a day release from North Sea Camp prison.
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| Archer got four years; his writings got life |
This was his first day release, and will have cheered him up after the failure of his appeal last week – although the Mail reports that he didn’t expect to succeed, and was simply trying his luck.
However, he is cheered up by the news that his wife has been given a new job, as chairman of the Addenbroke’s hospital in Cambridge.
And everyone else will be pleased that such an important post has gone to a woman whose probity and judgement has always been beyond doubt – never more so than when trouble-makers have tried to implicate her in business scandals and other disreputable affairs.
The Mail says that Mary is still angry about what she considers to be the unfair treatment meted out to her husband, and her brother David agrees, saying that they have ”thrown everything at Jeffrey”.
Unfortunately, they have also thrown a supply of paper and pens in Archer’s direction, and his cell contains four cardboard folders of his prison writings.
”Four separate books, perhaps?” suggests the Mail. ”Or four chapters of one book?” Just the one, we suspect, as Archer will soon find that his days are filled with other things.
”The prison authorities will have been casting around for work outside the prison grounds for Archer,” the paper reveals.
But prison is also meant to improve as well as punish, we are reminded. In which case, his forthcoming opus should be well worth the wait.
‘
Bonkers As Conkers
”’WHAT’S Forbidden,” reads the headline above a list that will strike fear into the hearts of traditionalists everywhere.
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| With marbles banned, the kids had to use rocks of crack instead |
”The following pastimes have been banned in some British schools,” announces the Mail, above a list that includes handstands, making daisy chains, playing in bushes, crabby (”moving around on all fours”), conkers, playing with leaves, marbles and hide-and-seek.
Of course, if these pastimes have indeed been banned then that is to be deplored.
But – with the obvious exception of the Big Brother house, where hide-and-seek still rules – is there anywhere in Britain where anyone would want to do any of the above things?
Even in the most time-warped Daily Mail household it is hard to imagine Dad tapping his pipe sharply on the heel of his shoe and saying: ”Listen up, kids! Let’s have a game of crabby!”
And if he did, we doubt that the response would be an enthusiastic, ”Yes, let’s!”
And as for making daisy chains, well, wasn’t it precisely that sort of thing that led to Quentin Crisp and his sort grasping the reins of power in the 1960s?
Sometimes, it seems, progress can be for the better. Now, please excuse us, it’s time to download a new S Club ring-tone
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Dyke A L’orange
‘YESTERDAY Jade ate her whole fist. In fact, yesterday Jade managed to eat herself. Which is more than pop did.
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| The identity of the waitress was kept secret for her own safety |
But follow the van to the front page of the Sun and we find that lesbians have been engaged in a sex scandal at Chequers – or, as the headline has it, ‘LESBIANS SEX SCANDAL AT CHEQUERS’.
More specifically, ‘a Blair chef’ (one of the half dozen special forces gastronomes retained by No.10 Downing Street to be parachuted into France in case of all-out war) groped a Wren waitress.
Our beloved Prime Minister is, we are all not surprised to learn, ‘shocked by claims his head woman chef groped a Wren waitress at a drunken party’.
While Tony was waiting for his seared tuna on a confit of rustic potatoes and a drizzle of rain, it appears that chef Corporal Rose McLaughlin was (according to evidence at a court martial) sticking her hand up a waitress’s skirt and trying to pull her knickers down.
The Sun is naturally horrified by the claims. ‘The scandal,’ it says, ‘has stunned Mr Blair and his wife Cherie. They both appreciated the superb dishes prepared by McLaughlin and her team.’
And so say all of us – as we hope she washed her hands before preparing said dishes. ‘
Ready, Aim, Duck!
‘THIS is just the start. They want our monkey on Gibraltar. They catch our fish. And now they want to slaughter our ducks. How long is it before the Spanish come for our heads?
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| Six down, 3994 to go |
According to the Mail, 4,000 ruddy ducks (not a drinking game) are facing slaughter to satisfy Spanish conservationists, who see the whole species as ‘a genetic menace’.
And that represents the entire population of the duck, which was introduced to Britain from the Americas 50 years ago.
The Mail says 20 marksmen are employed to shoot the birds in a £5m operation, which could take 10 years to complete.
Animal Aid director Andrew Tyler said: ‘This is a callous, very expensive and anti-democratic exercise in the genetic cleansing of nature.’
Indeed it is. Who gave the mallards the vote?
‘
The Fight Club
‘EXTREME wrestling came to Walford this week as a freestyle bout between the Slaters and the Trumans broke out in The Vic. The standoff began when Cat accused Zoe of being ‘a selfish caaahh’ for not coming to Little Mo’s appeal.
Paul then discovered that Mo had been spreading rumours that the B+B had mice so decided to get her in a headlock to teach her the error of her ways.
The bout ended as a draw, but with the Slaters coming out just ahead on points. Paul lost more than the fight though, as in the chaos, Angel appeared and whisked Precious away.
Angel was found not guilty at his murder trial and went to track down his errant wife. But being a reasonable sort of murdering psychopath, he gave her the option of disappearing and never seeing Paul again if they both wanted to live.
Paul has taken Precious’ departure badly and is taking the Angie Watts heartbreak cure. ‘Take a bottle of whisky for breakfast, a handful of painkillers for lunch ’
There’s more heartbreak in store in Walford for Mark as Lisa has started seeing Phil again. ‘You can’t fight it,’ whispered Phil in her ear, ‘and the longer you hold out, the better it’s going to be.’
Lisa managed to hold out for a whole two episodes before succumbing to the charms of Mr Potato Head, which in soapland is pretty impressive. But as Mark is due to be written out of Walford in the next few months it’s safe to assume he’s going find out.
Gary is also about to discover that Lynne has been serving up more than fried sausage to Jason. Lynne almost left Gary for her former finance and a new life in Dubai. But then she discovered that dogs have to spend six months in quarantine so decided that she couldn’t face it.
Sam Mitchell has decided that she wants to change her life too. She’s replied to an advertisement in the Walford Gazette for ‘Models Wanted’. Something tells me though that Sam will end up ‘modelling’ just a light layer of baby oil, answering an advert like that.
Ian is likely to be modelling a vat of boiling oil once Laura finds out he’s gone to have a vasectomy behind her back (so to speak). Ian’s decided he doesn’t want to have a child with Laura and rather than mention this to her, he booked himself in for the snip. Laura is already bearing down on him with a thermometer, demanding that he impregnate her.
Mind you, if she does eventually drag him down the fertility clinic, he might be off the hook, as any expert will surely pronounce that Laura’s face is the best form of contraception known to humanity.
‘
Future Schlock
‘LIFE after Big Brother? Surely there’s no such thing. How could life be worth living once the Elstree house is deserted and Kate, Alex, Jade and Jonny are no longer welcomed daily into our homes?
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| Jade took instantly to the modelling game |
The Star is not so pessimistic, however, and consults PR guru Max Clifford to draw up a ‘guide to the career prospects of the most famous housemates in Britain’.
Fireman Jonny Regan is tipped to become a celebrity chef a la Jamie Oliver, but with a much smaller tongue.
Kate, with her propensity to strip down to her smalls at the slightest provocation – or none at all – would make a good model for lingerie firms Wonderbra or Agent Provocateur.
Hygiene-obsessed model Alex is set to become the poster boy for Domestos and Brylcreem.
As for Jade, the possibilities are endless. Unfortunately, none of the ones canvassed in the Star involves shooting her into orbit as part of the Pigs In Space programme.
Clifford says the porky one’s raunchy antics with PJ could result in her advertising condoms and with her enormous gob ‘she’d be perfect for advertising food or booze’.
He also adds that her fondness for stripping, ‘despite her kebab belly’, could see her become a Page 3 model.
Even though readers of such august organs as the Star and the Sun rarely bother to look at the faces of topless models, the prospect of seeing Jade’s nearly naked body is no more attractive than having to gaze upon her porcine features.
Besides, unless the tabloids start publishing in broadsheet format, they’d never fit all of her on one page.
‘
Fat Of The Land
‘JADE herself is clearly aware that drastic steps will have to be taken if she ever wants to model for anything other than Wall’s Smoked Back Bacon.
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| ‘If you want us naked, you pay extra’ |
The Star reports that the ‘dizzy blonde’ is considering having a facelift and has vowed to have a boob job if she scoops the £70,000 prize – but a reduction, not an enlargement.
Resorting to surgery to remove unwanted flesh is an extreme measure, but it’s the only one that could possibly help Jade – and the men of Britain could soon find themselves in a similar predicament ‘as they pile on weight as never before’.
A report in the Express reveals that as well as having to contend with the traditional beer belly, men ‘will now be able to swap sob stories with wives and girlfriends over rapidly expanding backsides, hips and thighs’.
Their hip measurements have grown by an average of two inches in three decades, and the Sun adds that by 2032, they will measure ‘a whopping average of 42in around the hips’.
Long periods spent sitting down at work, combined with booze, lack of exercise and a high-fat, high-sugar, fast-food diet, are responsible for the encroaching flab.
‘Already one in ten men is so embarrassed by his big backside that he won’t strip in front of his partner,’ says the Sun.
Could that be the reason why they make love in their socks?
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Space Invader
‘IT’S a depressing thought that in 30 years, the average bloke will have to convert a marquee into a pair of trousers to have any hope of squeezing his 42in hips into them.
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| Coming to a planet near you |
But there’s no need to take out that gym membership or embark on that low-fat diet just yet – hope is at hand, and just 17 years away.
‘The Armageddon asteroid is coming,’ announces the Mirror. Astronomers have discovered that ‘a giant asteroid is hurtling towards Earth at 28 kilometres per second’.
‘If the huge rock strikes – and scientists predict that on its present course it will crash from the sky on February 1, 2019 – the impact will be devastating,’ says the paper.
‘It will hit with the explosive force of hundreds of atomic bombs, causing catastrophic global changes, igniting immense fires and transforming the climate.
‘If it plunges into the ocean it will create killer tidal waves which will wipe out millions.’
So those of you sitting at your desks while tucking into a high-fat, high-sugar mid-morning snack from your nearest fast-food establishment may continue – you might as well live for the moment.
‘
An Offer Too Good To Accept
‘BURGLARS who have been raiding a Norwegian company might get away with more than they planned, after the company boss offered them a two-month holiday.
Bill Schjelderup, managing editor of Bergen Energy, says recent burglaries have cost the company £86,000, and that sending the thieves on a holiday would be more cost-effective.
‘This is completely crazy,’ he told the Bergens Tidende newspaper. ‘We can’t take any more. If the thieves will report in I’m willing to give them a two-month southern holiday, plus spending money.’
If the police happen to be there when they report in, however, then they’re likely to go away for a lot longer than two months. ‘
Money Troubles
”MILLIONS drown in a sea of debt,’ announces the Express. ‘Asylum seekers’ summer fun with YOUR £1m,’ says the Mail.
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| Young asylum seekers train for their first Channel crossing |
Which all adds up to money leaving YOUR pockets and going into theirs. The Express ponders those ‘caught in the debt trap’, the ones who will be ruined should taxes or interest rates rise.
People like Clarissa Jones, 25, who has £13,000 of debt ‘and blames the high cost of modern living on the woes’, and Elizabeth Martin, 24, who works at her parents’ bakery.
Debt might be an ugly word but its face is white, fresh and full of feminine vigour. And not a little unlike Mari Hill’s, 32, and Sarah Dutson’s, 26, who both appear in the Mirror’s feature on the Kylie generation.
According to the Mirror’s economist, teenagers of the late 1980s, the so-called ‘Kylie generation’ have ‘matured into financially independent adults’. To illustrate, see Sarah’s £60,000 second home, and Mari’s designs to take a bank loan and replace her bathroom – her indoor bathroom, no less.
The haves and the have nots look pretty similar, sound much alike and have nice pouting mouths. Nothing like those asylum seekers.
Mail readers don’t get to see pictures of Ali, Osman and Svetlana because they’re at the beach having too much fun to pop into the paper’s offices.
And, boy, does it sound like fun. Having stepped from the ‘Ride of Death’, a lorry-style adventure, asylum seekers are now learning how to abseil, set up camps and swim.
Home Office Minister Beverley Hughes says the aim is to help asylum seekers ‘use their time constructively’. And what could be better than improving their swimming technique, learning how to scale cliff faces and live off the land?
If apprehended, those living in Kent can cut the local police down to size with a karate chop learned at class. ‘You’ll never take me alive, copper!’ as the repatriated may soon be saying in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Sydney…’
Madame’s Newest Girl
‘PART of the cavalcade of fun enjoyed by the hard-partying refugees involves a trip to Madame Tussaud’s.
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| Kylie begins to melt under the heat of the museum lights |
‘Dear mother,’ writes Yuri on the back of a photograph of himself and David Beckham, ‘England is fantastic. I have new friends (see reverse) and am happy.’
Yuri might then send another snap to his pals, the lads back in the village. ‘This is me with my new girlfriend. She, like me, is an immigrant to this wonderful country. Her name is Kylie.’
At first glance, Kylie appears to have fallen in with a bad lot, conjuring up money by turning tricks with her foreign body. And thanks to the front pages of the Star and the Sun, Britishers who can’t afford to have ‘fun’ in Madame Tussaud’s can see what they’re missing.
What they’re missing is the chance to see Kylie showing off her black lacy knickers as she crawls along the carpet, dressed in a red basque and black thigh-high boots.
Back in Kyrgystan, a million more men and women clamber into a truck, with dreams of Kylie and being ‘Kylie independent’ in their minds.’
Ciao, Tony
‘THAT we should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky to be asylum seekers. Instead, we’re saddled with debts, and a future that says no pension, no NHS and no World Cups.
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| We’re all going on a summer holiday |
We have no-one to complain to, either, since our MPs are off on their 81-day summer holidays this afternoon.
The Mirror reminds readers that our top politicians get four months off work each year, and have already taken five days off at the turn of the year, 12 days off at Whitsun and 10 days off over Easter.
Interestingly enough, the dash to Tuscany coincides with Transport Secretary Alistair Darling’s unveiling of a plan to increase the number of runways at Stansted, Heathrow and Manchester airports.
When parliament reconvenes, look out for tax breaks for people buying second homes on the continent, index linked Chianti and generous perks for employing non-domestic au pairs.
Or asylum seekers, as the Mail would have it.
‘
(Sex) Toys R Us
‘WHAT do you think of when talk – as it inevitably does – turns to the subject of sex toys? A blow-up rubber Jordan (with foot pump provided) for sir; a Fokuoko 9000 or Hitachi Magic Wand for madam. Maybe thoughts turn to harnesses and restraints, to Prince Alberts or Prince Edwards – but rarely do you think of a Scooby-Doo souvenir.
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| Put a tiger in your love life |
However, according to the Star’s front page this morning, that is precisely what ‘saucy’ Big Brother couple Kate Lawler and Alex Sibley are using to play kinky bedtime games. ‘Model Alex found the unlikely sex aid in a cereal packet and saved the glow-in-the-dark toy for his secret sessions under the duvet with curvy kick-boxer Kate,’ the Star reports.
And what pray is this glow-in-the-dark toy? It is ‘a toy version of the doggy detective’s famous Mystery Machine’, which the pair use to play their kinky games of ‘Follow The Van’. The Star explains the rules: ‘She lies in her bed and hides the van under the covers. Excited Alex then has to grope around in the dark to find the glowing toy.’
How the days – and nights – must fly by…
‘
Posted: 23rd, July 2002 | In: Tabloids | Comments (2)
The Breast Of Hear’Say
‘HEAR’SAY ordering Myleene to cover up her boobs may not be quite in the same league as the Rolling Stones asking Mick Jagger to get lip reduction surgery – but it does mean that now the only two boobs on show in the band will be Danny and Noel.
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| Myleene steps from her corset and into obscurity |
And that should sound the long-awaited death knell for the Popstars winners.
The Sun says the 24-year-old’s ‘glorious cleavage’ [passim] has been leaving fellas agog at gigs in Wolverhampton, Southampton and Newcastle. But record company bosses are worried that her 34D chest is so popular it is overshadowing the rest of the band.
An insider tells the paper: ‘Myleene’s image is great, but we want to contain things a little bit. Over recent weeks most of the pictures in the Press have focussed on Myleene’s chest. All the talk’s about her breasts, not the band’s performance.’
Reason enough, you would think, for the record company to beg Myleene to perform topless.
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Arranged Marriage?
‘WAITING for ‘the one’ often drives people crazy with frustration. But no one considers that ‘the one’ might not even be born until they’re 57.
The ridiculousness of this notion was quashed when a 20-year-old Iranian man married a 77-year-old virgin in the village of Gonabad (how apt). Local reports claim that the youthful groom, Hesam Khalili, has wed septuagenarian Fatemeh Jamshidi Khakhi – referred to by newspapers as the ‘happy girl’.
But speculation has begun to mount that the groom had wed his ageing bride so as to cut his two years of military service. Married men only serve half the term. ‘
Nasty Nick Nicked
‘UNLIKE most British villains – the Krays, Frankie Fraser, Kenneth Noye, John Palmer – Nicholas van Hoogstraten scores some big points at scrabble.
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| S-A-S-S-I-N-A-S-S |
It is a pity that he didn’t stick to playing scrabble as this morning the papers celebrate the end of a life of crime for the multi-millionaire property developer.
The Sun tells how the ‘£500m killer’ swapped his palace for a prison last night after being found guilty of hiring two hitmen to bump off a rival. And the Mirror expects the man it dubs ‘Britain’s most evil landlord’ to receive life behind bars when he is sentenced in October.
It tells how he used killing, blackmail, intimidation and extortion to build up a huge fortune, with ‘a crooked CV that included beatings, jury nobbling, a fire-bombing and even a grenade attack’.
But it is his views on ginger people that really upset Mirror reporter David Edwards (who, you will no doubt have guessed, is a carrot-top himself). ‘He dismissed people with ginger hair – such as myself – as ‘anarchists’,’ Edwards writes in horror.
Well, anyone who watched Big Brother Tim’s constant flouting of the rules and saw him urging his fellow inmates to tear down the rich-poor divide will know there is some truth in Nasty Nick’s opinion.
Admit it, David – even you have thought about crossing the street without waiting for the green man, haven’t you?
‘
Caine Mutiny
”WILLIAM Hickey meets Michael Caine. Again and again and again and again ’ Thus spake John Cooper Clarke a quarter century ago, in his seminal work, (You’ll Never See A Nipple In) The Daily Express.
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| ‘My name is Sir Michael Caine – and no-one likes me’ |
And upon buttering our toast and sipping our tea from a bone china cup, we pick up the Daily Express dated 22 July, to discover, on Page 7 Michael Caine.
And once again, the Express lends a sympathetic ear, with its Caine-in-a-nutshell headline: ‘Everyone hates me for being a success, but I don’t mind.’
Yet even the Express is finding Michael’s routine a little difficult to take, what with him being a knight of the realm and being regularly voted at the top of the popularity polls in the land of his birth.
Not only that, but three of his films were voted the ‘coolest’ of all time by what the Express describes as the ‘younger generation’.
It all makes his claims that he was resented for his working class origins a little hard to swallow.
The paper quotes Caine’s biographer William Hall, who is ‘disappointed’ by this latest outburst.
‘I’m amazed he’s still mentioning this,’ says Hall. ‘I certainly thought he had got it out of his system at the Baftas and, frankly, if the knighthood didn’t settle it I don’t know what will.’
First President of the Republic of England might do it, we humbly suggest.
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