I Should Cocaine: Carla Bruni Shocks Colombians

THE Colombian cabinet puts much value on popular culture.

Having heard the country’s vice president Francisco Santos opine that Amy Winehouse should be “sent to rehab”, and that Kate Moss should apologise for taking cocaine, the country’s foreign minister says a new song by the wife of the French president is “very painful for Colombia”.

Carla Bruni has recorded her third album on which she is heard to croon: “You are my drug / More deadly than Afghan heroin / More dangerous than white Colombian.”

Colombia’s foreign minister Fernando Araujo says that “coming from the mouth of the wife of the President of France, this type of statement is very painful for Colombia”.

Araujo may choose to call his opposite number in Afghanistan and create an axis of complaint, and a CD file sharing hot line.

Anorak

Posted: 13th, June 2008 | In: Celebrities, Politicians, Tabloids | Comments (8)

Slap Happy Naomi Campbell’s Pratfall

NAOMI Campbell has nearly fallen over, which serves as a reminder to Mail readers that the clothes (race) horse is human and that if you scratch hard enough any amount of gloss can be removed.

The paper reports that the supermodel “almost tumbled to the ground after a night out with friends in Italy”. Ms Campbell is said to have been leaving a party on a yacht in “high spirits” when she sort of fell.

End of story, you’d suppose, another chance for the Daily Mail to clack its marmalade coated tongue and use Campbell’s picture to illustrate a story about British women holidaying in the Med.

But a spokesman for Miss Campbell denies that her client fell. The rebuttal runs: “Naomi was just joking around with friends. She was pretending to fall to see who would catch her.”

Anorak

Posted: 13th, June 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comments (6)

Gordon Brown Does The Apprentice

LEE McQueen has won The Apprentice TV show, and with his dream office job in Brentwood comes the “fury”.

Fury is how tabloid readers react to just about anything from the Madeleine McCann saga to Coronation Street being moved to Thursday nights to make way for the football.

Today’s fury is being directed at “the decision to award a £100,000 job in this year’s The Apprentice to a salesman who lied on his CV”.

McQueen claimed to have studied at Thames Valley University for two years, but in reality he remained on a course for a mere four months. He might have learned it all in that time, but this is not the point.

Such is the fury that the Mail says “even the Prime Minister” has weighed into the outcry in the “business community”. Yeah, even Arctic Monkeys fan Gordon. Next he’ll be cosying up to the McCanns and humming the theme song to children’s TV shows.

Says Gordon Brown:

“I think people should tell the truth. I think in this case someone exaggerated what they had done. [Sir] Alan Sugar is perfectly capable of making his decisions and we should support him in the decision that he made. But generally my advice to people is to tell the truth when they are applying for jobs. Because as was found in this case, it always comes out anyway and it became known that an exaggeration had been made.”

That the Government supports Sir Alan Sugar’s is of interest; it may even be right for Sugar to now support Brown. But what of Gordon Brown who never had to apply for his current job, the role of prime minister being handed to him on a plate.

But if his CV is the Labour Party manifesto, one might admire his, as Alan Sugar would say, chutspa.

Anorak

Posted: 13th, June 2008 | In: Tabloids, TV & Radio | Comments (6)

Bombed Away: Taliban Turn Cannabis Into Heroin

IN the Mail readers can see a RAF Harrier blowing up the “world’s biggest drug haul” in Afghanistan by dropping three 1,000lb bombs on a 237-ton stash of cannabis.

Bombed away!

The Mail sure does know its drugs and its drugs slang. The paper calculates that if the stash is bagged into eights it would be worth £225million and weigh more than 30 double-decker buses.

But that’s not the biggest shocker. The Mail says:

“Officials believe the area – near to the Taliban stronghold of Quetta in Pakistan – was turning dried cannabis leaves into heroin.”

Turning cannabis into heroin? Might not it have better to allow them to carry on and show us how it’s done, given the heeling properties of opiates…

Anorak

Posted: 13th, June 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comments (10)

Beat The Petrol Crisis With A SatNav

THE Express uses its front page to announce: “EMPTY SHELVES – this was the bleak scene in Spain yesterday. Now Britain faces the same misery as petrol strike is on.”

Above the headline, and the picture of what may the only British shopper not buying booze in a Spanish supermarket, is the offer: “WIN A TOMTOM IQ SATNAV.”

Indeed…

Image

Anorak

Posted: 13th, June 2008 | In: Money, Tabloids | Comments (2)

Big Brother Slapdancer Alexandra De Gale’s No Touching Rule

 BIG Brother 9 Watch: Anorak’s looks at Big Brother news in the media…

MORE news on Alexandra de Gale, who now functions as the Star and Mirror’s Big Brother standard bearer.

“BIG BRO ALEX FACES BOOT,” announces the Star. “Fans fury over rows.”
The show’s “producers are shocked by the ex-lapdancer’s angry rants and the hundreds of viewer complaints”.

Shocked? We thought ythsi is how she is expected to behave? What is it about lapdancers that makes them so argumentative? And how long until they’re called slapadancers, offering punters a happy slap and some verbal abuse?

“I’d appreciate it if no-one touches my things,” says Alexnadra, taking the no touching rule beyond the lap and the pole. She asks: “Why do people think they can violate my property?”

Anorak

Posted: 13th, June 2008 | In: Tabloids, TV & Radio | Comments (6)

Big Brother 9: Alexandra De Gale’s Of The Unexpectable

BIG Brother 9 Watch: Anorak’s looks at Big Brother news in the media…

ALEXANDRA de Gale is this year’s Big Brother Bully elect.

Alex has been handed the Big Brother phrase books and finds it her lot to demand “respect”, have hissy fits at the slightest things and demand that everyone keeps it “real”.

The early series’ promise of sex has been replaced by a lust for the next big row.

After the jump are a collection of Alex’s bon mots to date, as told by the Daily Mirror. The paper has come over all Daily Mail, pursing its lips like a vicar flicking through a pornographic magazine and being too appalled to look away.

Old Mr Anorak is also appalled by the language, and finds this comment of Alex’s worthy of rage, fury and bemusement:

“We’re here. We’re living the dream. The unexpectable is very close.”

Best watch out…

Anorak

Posted: 12th, June 2008 | In: Tabloids, TV & Radio | Comments (10)

The Top Ten Coma Songs Ever

“CELLAR coma girl wakes after seven weeks after being played Robbie Williams songs,” says the Mail.

Josef Fritzl’s granddaughter and daughter Kerstin Fritzl has woken from her two-month coma after being played Robbie Williams songs, says the Mail.

There seems to be something intolerably cruel in playing Robbie Williams to a comatose patient, and we would say it were further evidence of innate Austrian barbarity and how Williams is just a shorter Richard Wagner in knickers.

Sadly, the Mail’s headline is somewhat undone by Doctor Albert Reiter, who says Kerstin opened her eyes naturally from her medically-induced coma

He tells us: “We smiled at her and she smiled back. One night I had to order her to finally go to sleep at 3am as she kept listening to Robbie Williams CDs.”

Anorak recalls another coma incident, this one starring Geri Halliwell who performed unplugged for Jessica Knight: “Geri sang a couple of lines of one of their songs and Jessica started moving her arms and legs,” said mum Jill Walmsley in the Mirror.

Legs twitching, arms flailing – a desperate bid to run away?

In light of these star-led miracles, Anorak has put together a tape of the Top Ten Celebrity Coma Tracks – EVER!

1. Let Me Entertain You – Robbie Williams
2. Candle In The Wind – Elton John
3. Carrie – Cliff Richard
4. My Heart Will Go On – Celine Dion
5. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da – The Beatles
6. We Didn’t Start the Fire – Billy Joel
7. Cotton Eye Joe – Rednex
8. The Final Countdown – Europe
9. You’re the Inspiration – Chicago
10. I Wanna Know What Love Is – Foreigner

SERVING TIP:
The album should be played down headphones to the patient at full volume. Every three hours a medic – preferable one with an Austrian accent, although a Swiss or German will do – should bend down and whisper in the patient’s ear: “Want to wake up? Or do you want some more…?

Anorak

Posted: 12th, June 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comments (9)

Flip Flops Give And Prevent Cancer

SAYS the Daily Mail lead horror story of the day: “Now wearing FLIP-FLOPS can give you skin cancer.”

Avon Walk for Breast Cancer Flip-Flops

Description: Available in Small sizes only. Flip Flop with high impact Avon Walk for Breast Cancer logo imprint and pink jelly straps. Man-made materials. Imported. Available in sizes S (5-6). 82% of the purchase price of this item is returned to the breast cancer cause. Your package will also include a Breast Health Resource Guide, your informational guide to breast health.

Flip-flops stories are aminstay of the sumemr press:

Summer 2005: Experts warn of flip-flop hazards

Summer 2006: Flip flops can damage your health

Summer 2007: Flip flop danger

Anorak

Posted: 12th, June 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comments (6)

Daily Express Does The Apprentice

THE papers can’t get enough to The Apprentice.

In “THE APPRENTICE HOT SHOTS: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?,” the Express looks at those losers who scored that office job in Brentwood.

Here’s on Ruth Badge, billed by the paper’s professional and not in the least way apprentice workers as “Ruth Badger won series 2”.

Only, she didn’t win. She came second – unlike the Express writer, who got the job at the World’s Greatest Newspaper…

Anorak

Posted: 12th, June 2008 | In: Tabloids, TV & Radio | Comment (1)

Madeleine McCann: Why Gordon Brown Did It

MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann

The Madeleine McCann case is not making much news. But you can still find the missing child being used as a point of reference for lazy hacks looking for context:

DAILY MIRROR: “If I hadn’t been found I would have had a different life –
EXCLUSIVE 20 YEARS ON ..KIDNAP BABY NATALIE”

When she was cruelly snatched aged five months by a woman posing as a store detective, Natalie became Britain’s most famous baby.

That’s Natalie Horrell, in case you’ve forgotten.

Read the rest of this entry »

Anorak

Posted: 12th, June 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Madeleine McCann, Politicians, Tabloids | Comments (207)

The Big Brother Bullying Row II: The Making Of A Tabloid Enemy

BIG Brother 9 Watch: Anorak’s looks at Big Brother news in the media…

THE Big Brother Bully story cranks up a notch, working its way up from yesterday’s front page of the Star to the Mirror’s lead news story.

“Exclusive,” announces the paper, “Big Brother in bullying row – Channel embroiled in shocker more shameful than Jade’s Shilpa attack.”

Good news indeed for those of you who enjoyed the organised bigotry of Celebrity Big Brother past but feared you’d never see the likes again.

A free £10 Big Brother FREE BET for all Anorak readers…

Like the Mirror, we look over yesterday’s news and hear Alexandra De Gale telling one Rachel Rice: “You’re getting on my f*****g nerves – I don’t give a f*** what you think.”

Not since Anorak caught the No.38 bus yesterday morning has such language been heard in public. For shame.

Anorak

Posted: 12th, June 2008 | In: Tabloids, TV & Radio | Comments (10)

Robert Dee Says He Is Not World’s Worst Tennis Player

NOT all British sportsmen are happy to be hapless losers. Eddie The Eagle does not play tennis:

Lawyers representing a British tennis player yesterday began libel proceedings against three media organisations following the publication of stories claiming that the 21-year-old was the world’s worst professional in his sport.

Libel writs have been lodged at London’s high court against Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers, news agency Reuters and Independent News and Media, owner of the Independent titles.

Read the rest of this entry »

Anorak

Posted: 11th, June 2008 | In: Back pages, Broadsheets, Tabloids | Comment (1)

Cinders The Celebrity Pig Is Allergic To Mud

CINDERS the pig is allergic to mud, or mud intolerant as her newly acquired celebrity status demands her condition be known.

Six-week-old Cinders might have mysophobia, a fear of dirt.

Owner and sausage farmer Andrew Keeble from Thirsk, North Yorks, has equipped her with wellington boots. “Lo and behold they fitted her like a glove,” Mr Keeble tells the BBC.

“She’s scared of mud, but her brothers and sisters are quite happy in it. We’ve never come across this before. They are born really to go and explore, but she never really liked going in the mud.”

And now she’s famous she won’t be slaughtered. Indeed, she’s now the mascot for Mr Keeble’s campaign to raise money for the Farm Crisis Network, which supports struggling farmers.

Cinders is famous, and reviewing the following pr0ojects:

Celebrity Pig Brother – Cinders moves into a one-storey bungalow with Pinky and Perky, Porky Pig, Babe, Piglet, the Three Little Pigs and the Little Pig Who Went Wee-Wee-Wee all the way home

Loos Women – Pig lives and laughs with Rebecca Loos

Anorak

Posted: 11th, June 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comments (4)

Big Brother 9: Alexandra De Gale Blows Off

 BIG Brother 9 Watch: Anorak’s looks at Big Brother news in the media…

“BIG BRO IN NEW RACE ROW FEAR,” screams the Star.

The house is on the verge of “all out war”, says the paper. It’s an “X-rated bust up”. Tempers have “exploded”.

Alexandra De Gale, an outreach worker version of last season’s Charlie Uchea, is telling Rebecca Shiner: “You’re getting on my f****** nerves, you p****. I don’t give a f*** what you think!”

A free £10 Big Brother FREE BET for all Anorak readers…

Indeed, dear readers, it is now ok to refer to a women as a p****, so forwarding the female equality movement.

Rispeckt due to Alex, whose extreme touchiness demands it…

Anorak

Posted: 11th, June 2008 | In: Tabloids, TV & Radio | Comments (23)

Stephen Moyes’ Tabloid Lines Worth More Than Cocaine

MORE news of Mirror hack Stephen Moyes who was, allegedly, told by one Anthony Kelly (who has admitted to a charge of perverting the course of justice) that Amy Winehouse would stump up any cash for her husband’s plot.

Moyes has quite a record. It was Moyes who “exposed Kate Moss’s cocaine shame” (surely talc? – Ed) and soap actor Craig Charles smoking crack in the back of a taxi.

Moyes is now the man who has exposed an, alleged, plot to pay a beaten-up barman £200,000.

James King, the stricken pub worker, may yet profit from Moyes’ story. After the Moss Talc shocker, the model went on to reap an estimated seven-figure increase in earnings.
And now the Mirror reports that Craig Charles is writing a kiss ‘n’ “hell” autobiography.

(Picture: Beau Bo D’Or Website)

Without news of his drug taking what odds on anyone caring to read the story of a jobbing actor and voiceover man?

Moyes has the Midas touch, his words being worth more per line to a celebrity than cocaine…

Anorak

Posted: 11th, June 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comment

Kevin Maguire And UK Politics Fear Of A Black Man

“WE’RE still a long way from a British Obama?” says the Mirror’s Kevin Maguire, Gordon Brown’s media vessel.

That must be disappointing news for Lord Levy, the former Labour fundraiser, who in reply to the question “Who would you like to see as the next Labour leader?” offers “Barack Obama”.

Says Maguire: “The Democratic US Presidential hopeful [Surely Democrat Party hopeful?] has bypassed rich vested interests by mobilising people, filling his war chest with thousands of small donations from ordinary citizens instead of a few megagifts tied to personal strings.”

He’s no Hillary Rodham Clinton, who lent her own campaign $10,000,000.

True enough that many “ordinary people” have backed Obama with small amounts. Obama’s state Senate campaign received $2,000 from companies controlled by Antoin “Tony” Rezko, the “politically influential Chicago businessman indicted last year on state government kickback charges”. As reported, “Rezko’s additional fundraising helped the rookie candidate set up shop.”

But if it’s not the money – it’s the skin colour that intersts Maguire (white). Maguire wonders if Britain will ever have a black leader.

“Yet the big question is whether Britain will follow suit and [should Obama win the presidential election] and vote a visible ethnic minority Briton into number 10.”

You mean an efnic like Michael Howard, the Jew, the son of a Romanian, who led the Conservative Party at the last election, the man the Mirror compared to Dracular and the Labour Party compared to Fagin?

Anorak

Posted: 11th, June 2008 | In: Politicians, Tabloids | Comments (10)

Amy Winehouse In White House Plot

THE full shocker goes: “Amy Winehouse’s jealous husband offered a hardmarn £20,000 to have Pete Doherty ‘smashed to pieces’.”

Getting smashed is what Doherty does best, it being the root of his tabloid fame. Chances are he would have extended a veiny limb and accepted Blake Fielder Civil’s offer with relish.

But the Sun says this smashing was to occur not with pipe and syringe, rather by way of fist and claw.

Richard Lyttle, an ex-bouncer (do you ever really leave the job?) tells one and all: “We were sitting in my cell and he said: ‘If you get Doherty for me I’ll give you £20,000.’ He kept saying ‘Can you arrange it?’ and telling me to get some guys to his house.”

No other word nor proof is offered, and whether Doherty is smashed or not, we leave for you to work out.

But back to the £20,000? If it’s the going rate for smashing someone’s face in, it might also be the rate for perverting the course of justice.

Anorak

Posted: 11th, June 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comments (2)

Drop The Dead Dolphins

NO little disappointment in the new Government league table that puts British dolphin schools rock bottom of the EU zone.

Proof of our dolphins’ lack of intelligence comes on the Sun’s front page where we learn of “Dolphingate” and are asked: “WAS IT THE NAVY OR KILLER WHALES?”

The Sun says “marine experts” believe the 26 dolphins stranded on the Percuil River near Falmouth, Cornwall, may have been driven to their fate by a killer whale.

If it was murder then good and right of the Sun to cover the best part of a page with a mugshot of a killer whale. If you see this whale, do not approach it but tell the police.

Anorak

Posted: 11th, June 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comments (22)

Dysfunctional Families Are The Global Warming

A PERSPECTIVE on global warming:

“Family breakdown is bigger threat to UK than global warming”

– Says the Sun’s headline in a piece by Matt O’Connor, founding father of Fathers 4 Justice.

But is it bigger than the War On Terror, oil prices, knife crime, paedos or immigrants? It’s high time the Government produced a league table and let us know… 

Anorak

Posted: 10th, June 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comment (1)

Amy Wineshouse’s Arresting Sight For Blake Fielder Dreams

THE Sun can’t let it’s failure to get Amy Winehouse convicted of snorting talcum powder out of its head.

As Blake Fielder-Civil, Amy’s husband, pleads guilty to GBH and perverting the course of justice, the Sun delivers a picture of Winehouse’s “arrest photo”.

How the paper came by this image is uncertain, but it bares all the hallmarks of the Celebrity Police Force, the special squad whose mission to pose with the great and not so good keeps us all entertained.

Anorak

Posted: 10th, June 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comments (2)

Jill Dando Killer And Blondes

“DANDO suspect: ‘A stalker with fixation on TV stars’,” says the Express.

It’s news of Barry George, and the paper says the convicted killer of BBC presenter Jill Dando (he’s now making an appeal) was obsessed with TV presenters, like Anthea Turner and Caron Keating.

Both the late Keating and eternal Turner are blonde, so too Dando, and all three can be seen in the Express, which has a massive store of blondes who have been on the telly, such as Madeleine McCann, Princess Diana…

Anorak

Posted: 10th, June 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comments (7)

Watching Lily Allen And Pink

NEWS in the Mirror is that rent-a-gob Lily Allen has been “under constant surveillance” by American spooks.

The Mirror does not specify which branch of the “Yanks” security services have been observing Allen, and it might be all of them. Although given their massed ranks and the viewing figures for Allen’s BBC3 TV show this is unlikely.

Anorak

Posted: 10th, June 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comment (1)

Big Brother 9: Rebecca Shiner’s One Woman Romp

BIG Brother 9 Watch: Anorak’s looks at Big Brother news in the media…

BIG Brother’s Rebecca Shiner has taken off her top. Or, as the Star puts it on its front page: “Big Brother wild child Rebecca Shiner launched a wild swimming pool sex romp with a boob-flashing game of truth or dare.”

Before fame tapped her on the shoulder and unhooked her bra, Rebecca was a nursery nurse from Coventry. Mums and dada leave their children with Rebecca, or they did.

Anorak

Posted: 10th, June 2008 | In: Tabloids, TV & Radio | Comments (8)

Newspapers Investigate Labour And Conservative Sleaze

SLEAZY POLITICAL debate and in the papers:

DAILY MIRROR: Watchdog to look at Spelman expenses”

“The Tory sleaze crisis deepened yesterday,” says the paper. The apparent crisis is that Caroline Spelman, Tory Party secretary, used her child’s nanny to answer calls made to her constituency phone line.

You want more? Can you handle more?

Anorak

Posted: 10th, June 2008 | In: Politicians, Tabloids | Comments (10)