Kate Hoey Can’t Recall If She Voted For Ken Or Boris?

THE London Evening Standard’s Paul Waugh asks Kate Hoey, the former Labour sports minister and still Labour member of parliament for Vauxhall, now operating as Boris Johnson’s Commissioner for Sport, how she voted in the London mayoral elections.

Boris or Ken?

Her reply:

“Er…when was the election…I can’t remember!”

Anorak

Posted: 16th, May 2008 | In: Politicians, Tabloids | Comment

Victoria Beckham Is Zero And Paris Hilton Is Given One

PARIS Hilton and Victoria Beckham are in London.

The Mail sees Hilton setting up her stall on Oxford Street, on which she will sell her innate smell, Can-Can, a heady blend of used tissue, warm mattress and tinned crab.

Over in Harrods, Victoria Beckham is flogging denim. “I often look incredibly rough, actually,” says Posh on GMTV, a confession she may consider a revelation, and others a tagline for her fashion range.

The Star sees the two woman doing battle. Oxford Street is “mobbed”. The traffic is at a “standstill”. Paris is selling 150 bottle of perfume.

Anorak

Posted: 16th, May 2008 | In: Celebrities, Money, Tabloids | Comments (18)

Voyeur News: Man Boobs Are Not Sexual

IT is legal to ogle a man’s breasts bit not woman’s judges rule:

Care worker Kevin Bassett, 44, was found guilty last year after using a video camera hidden in a plastic bag to take shots of a swimmer.

Yesterday, his conviction was quashed at the Court of Appeal after Lord Justice Hughes, Mr Justice Treacy and Sir Paul Cresswell ruled that a man’s bare torso did not count as ‘private parts’.

The 2003 Sexual Offences Act specifies that “private parts” must be exposed for voyeurism to have taken place. Only women, it seems, have breasts that can be seen in a sexual light.

Read the rest of this entry »

Anorak

Posted: 16th, May 2008 | In: Strange But True, Tabloids | Comment (1)

Mortgage Tips With The Express And Telegraph

MONEY matters now with the aid of experts at the Telegraph and Express.

EXPRESS (front page): “HOORAY! CHEAPER HOME LOANS.”

TELEGRAPH: “Mortgage shock as cost of fixed-rate deal soars.”

Such are the facts…

Anorak

Posted: 16th, May 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Money, Tabloids | Comment (1)

Britney Spears And Mel Gibson’s New Religion

BRITNEY Spears has been to a clinic.

The sun says that after the tip she went go Costa Rica with Mel Gibson. Could the two things be linked? Do you need a jab before spending time with Gibson, and is it something he insists upon?

Spears has tried Kabbalah, the new age religion based on Jewish mysticism. Gibson is a drink-driving ultra Catholic.

Could their meeting mark the birth of a new religion?

Or given Spears’ bulging tum-tum, the birth of something still more terrible..?

Anorak

Posted: 16th, May 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comment

FA Cup Final Preview: Meet The Players

IT’S the FA Cup final tomorrow, and Portsmouth are taking on Cardiff City.

Just time, then, to introduce you to some of the names you may be less than familiar with.

The Sun kicks off with Sulley Muntari, the Portsmouth striker.

Muntari signed for Portsmouth from Italian club Udinese for £7million in 2007. He is dating Miss Universe 2004 agonist Menaye Donkor.

And he has been sleeping with Amanda Jones, who he met at a lap-dance club in sunny Bournemouth.

Anorak

Posted: 16th, May 2008 | In: Back pages, Tabloids | Comment (1)

The Football Focus Jihad: Rangers And The Suicide Bombers

“DESPICABLE,” says the Mirror. “A pack of drunken football fans hunts down and batters a cop. Once again our national game is left lying in the gutter.”

Turns out the Independent got it wrong, although let us not be hasty and rule out the chance that the Rangers fans were intimidating the smaller Russian contingent and so preventing more mayhem.

While the Mirror salivates over the “carnage”, we wonder how much worse it could have been? And we learn in the Sun of Ibrahim Savant who, allegedly, produced a martyrdom suicide video and labelled it “Football Focus”.

Anorak

Posted: 16th, May 2008 | In: Back pages, Tabloids | Comment

Miss Great Britain Says British Troops Steal From Dead Iraqis

GEMMA Garrett, Miss Great Britain and Beauties for Britain agonist in the Crew by-election, is considering the war on terror.

Expecting to hear that those fabled weapons of mass destruction were hidden by concealer, Miss Garrett instead reveals:

“I met a veteran of the Iraq war and was utterly sickened by the experiences he described.”

Oh?

“Our boys are being forced to remove blood-soaked shirts, footwear and weapons from the corpses of their fallen enemies because the equipment this Government gives them isn’t good enough.”

Anorak

Posted: 16th, May 2008 | In: Politicians, Tabloids | Comments (8)

Amy Winehouse Signs For Abramovich And Doherty Flies Low

PETE Doherty and Amy Winehouse are the subject of much chatter.

The Express says Pete has left his flies open. The Sun wonders what their child will look like, and mocks up a picture of a tattooed baby who looks like a young John Prescott.

The Express says Doherty has sores on his face. The flies, the child and the complexion might be linked, but the Express is not one to speculate, at least not any more.

Anorak wonders if those are not sores but stud marks on Doherty’s face, badges of honour earned at training sessions for the Soccer Six tournament? The Star says that at the celebrity football match, Doherty will be substituted by Winehouse, who is even more likely to score than he is.

Anorak

Posted: 16th, May 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comment (1)

Smiling Is Bad For You

SCIENTISTS at Frankfurt University have found that smiling too much at work makes you sick.

The Mirror says Professor Dieter Zapf and his team think flight attendants, salesmen, call centre operators are most at risk.

By the same token, those least at risk are bus drivers, Gordon Brown and the Swiss.

And then there are those we’d rather not see smiling, like surgeons, funeral directors and Hezbollah…

Anorak

Posted: 16th, May 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comment

Paedos And Urban Myths In Burma

THOUSANDS are dead in Burma.

And the Sun is wondering how worse it can get for the dispossessed, distraught and crippled survivors?

And it hits upon “ORPHAN KIDS SEX TARGETS”. Know that “child sex traffickers are sneaking into Burma’s cyclone refugee camps to prey on orphans”.

The ravages of nature we can understand, but the human on human depravity we can only stare at. And we’ve been here before.

After the flooding of New Orleans, the press could not get enough of stories of rape and murder within the New Orleans Superdome. When the waters subsided, they proved to be false.

Then there were the pervs on the prowl in post-tsunami Thailand. There was the story of the 12-year-old Swedish boy taken from a hospital in Thailand by “a moustachioed European man wearing a red shirt”.

Anorak

Posted: 16th, May 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comments (4)

Fritzl Watch: Josef Fritzl’s Sunbed

FRITZL Watch: Anorak’s look at Josef Fritzl, Elisabeth Fritzl, Nazis and assorted Frtizls in the news

THE SUN: “Monster paid for ladyboy hookers”

Fritzl stayed in Pattaya, Thailand, where he “sickened” British holidaymakers, in the resort for the sun, coconuts and noodles Thai style.

British families suspected he was a German – not Austrian – because he would reserve sunloungers with his beach towel.”

The swine hund!

Anorak

Posted: 15th, May 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comment

A Glass Of Oil With Your Barbecue Kebab

A DONER kebab “contains as much fat as a wine glass full of cooking oil”.

The summer barbecue season is upon us and the Mail has the perfect menus to make a sunny afternoon go with a swing.

Careful with those matches, mum and dad, one stray spark and your evening livener burns brighter than your skin in the summer sun.

Safety first, says the Mail, which has popped out for a takeaway, and returned with a kebab, curry and Cornish pasty and chips, possibly all on one cone.

Anorak

Posted: 15th, May 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comments (5)

If Aliens Didn’t Exist The Catholic Church Would Have To Make Them Up

THE new upmarket Daily Sport is unsure how to progress.

The front page is split between a picture of Emma who “GETS ‘EM OUT ON PAGE 3” and an image of the Pope’s disembodied head overhung by the headline “ALIENS EXIST SAYS POPE”.

The Pope’s eyes are angled at Emma, offering readers the possibility that the two stories are linked and the innocent Pope has mistaken Emma’s out-of-the-world charms for two extra terrestrials.

News of a topless model on Page 3 is as starling as news that the Pope is Catholic. And moving beyond Emma we receive news that “THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE”, a fact illustrated by a topless female with a cone-shaped head.

And there’s the Pope in a miter, an arrow pointing to it and the Sport’s poser: “Is he hiding something?”

Anorak

Posted: 15th, May 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comments (4)

How Now Big Cow: Duke And Chilli Find A Way

ARE our animals getting bigger?

Following yesterday’s news of Chilli, who at 6ft 6in is the UK’s biggest bullock, the Mail brings more news from the farmyard.

Duke the shire horse stands at 19.3 hands, that’s 6ft 5in at the shoulder. Duke is Britain’s tallest horse.

Sara Ross, who cares for Duke, says he doesn’t like the rain, and hates snow. He also freaks out when he hears a mobile phone ringing.

If you are or know of a horse who might be suited to Duke, then get in touch with the Mail. You may even own a cow and have entertained the idea of creating a new breed of animal, the how.

Anorak

Posted: 15th, May 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comments (3)

Daily Wail: Baby Bottles Makes Children Obese

THE Mail searches, scouring medical reports and research notes for news, and finally its quest bears dividends: “Baby–bottle chemicals ‘could make children obese for life’.”

Exposure to “gender-bending” chemicals widely used in household products could “alter the genes and hormones involved in maintaining a healthy weight.”

So scientists say…

Anorak

Posted: 15th, May 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comments (2)

Amy Winehouse Is Ann Widdecombe’s Role Model

AMY Winehouse is not to be charged with “taking Class A crack”. It’s the Sun’s front-page news. And the Sun says its “CRACKERS”.

The Sun’s plan to have everyone locked up is in tatters, just as the Mirror failed in its bid to have Kate Moss arrested for her alleged drug taking.

The paper says the video the Sun obtained and then broadcast of Winehouse smoking something was not enough to see her incarcerated because of a legal “loophole”.

It turns out that Winehouse escaped justice because there was no evidence of her having taken actual drugs. Just as Moss’s cocaine might have been snorting lines of sherbet, anthrax or uranium, Winehouse’s pipe was filled with liquid paraffin and brie.

Those smart alec lawyers might have made a mockery of our judiciary but the Sun knows what’s what.

Anorak

Posted: 15th, May 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comments (3)

Sarah Ferguson On Bea’s Henry VIIIth Legacy

MORE caring mums in the Mirror where Sarah Ferguson is telling the world that her daughter Beatrice is not fat.

“Beatrice is a healthy size 10, she’s a fabulous girl, she has a completely good heart,” says Fergie, Duchess of York, her words borrowed from Elizabeth of York, mother to larger than life Henry VIII.

And the similarities between the two York women do not end there.

Says Fergie: “She has suffered with special needs at school from the age of seven with dyslexia. So much so that she has combated it in order to get a grade A* in history to go and read history at Goldsmiths.”

Ginger Henry’s own dyslexia got him in no end of strife, seeing two wives beheaded, when Henry had only meant for them to be “beheaped” with praise, forsooth.

Anorak

Posted: 14th, May 2008 | In: Royal Family, Tabloids | Comment (1)

Victoria Beckham Serves Up Turkey Twizzlers

VICTORIA Beckham, international Duty Free enthusiast, is in conversation with the Mirror’s 3am Girls. Or as the Mirror puts it: “POSH TELLS ALL TO 3am.”

First up Vicky tells the girls how she and Julia Roberts are “both mums with young children so we had a lot to talk about”.

She goes on: “Most of my friends in LA, like Katie Holmes and Kate Beckinsale, all have children so we get together and do very normal things”, like waiting for the cleaner to hoover up the spilt Rice Crispies.

“I’ve become really good friends with mums from my sons’ school as well.” No names are provided, but you know who you are. And if you don’t know, best get an agent.

Listening in, one may suppose that Her Poshness only meets people through her children. In the Sun, Posh tells us that she serves hot lunches at her sons’ school.

Anorak

Posted: 14th, May 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comments (13)

Keeping Up The Peckhams: Nicola McLean’s Posh Knockers

THE DAILY Express considers it to be of the utmost importance that Nicola McLean is given space on its front page to say: “I love big knockers.”

Nicola loves knockers so much that she has three sets of them in a variety of, tons, sizes and shapes. But it’s the big ones she loves best.

“I’d never have Victoria Beckham boobs,” says Nicola, sporting Wednesday’s 32G twin set. “They’re plastic looking. In fact, they’re disgusting.”

Cosmetic surgery shops may well look at their stock of Peckhams ™ and sigh.

Anorak

Posted: 14th, May 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comments (7)

Soldiers Caught In Afghan Drugs Caper

ONE in the eye for those who say the British are tying to create a New Glasgow in Afghanistan.

The Sun reports that four squaddies have been caught trying to buy cannabis from an Afghani soldier in Helmand province. The quarter (surely quartet? – Ed) are all in the Royal Regiment of Scotland.

Says an “insider”: “We are meant to be training the Afghan army – not scoring drugs off them. It makes the whole British Army look bad and doesn’t do the Afghans’ reputations any good either.”

Anorak

Posted: 14th, May 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comments (5)

The 11th Rule Of Tabloid Journalism: Ich Bin Ein Veteran

THE 11th Rule of Tabloid Journalism states: Any person or persons who should find themselves the victim of “political correctness gone mad” shall have their war record used in the context of the story.

The Mirror is never one to stray from the rules, at least not since those photos, and introduces readers to 96-year-old Lenny Woodward.

Binmen in Norwich have refused to empty Mr Woodward’s bin because he has two glass jars in it , one Nescafe coffee and one tomato ketchup.

Anorak

Posted: 14th, May 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comments (2)

Fritzl Watch: Dr Frankenstein And Nazis

FRITZL Watch: Anorak’s look at Josef Fritzl, Elisabeth Fritzl, Nazis and assorted Frtizls in the news.

THE SUN: “Fritzl-STEIN”

CELLAR monster Josef Fritzl was branded “Dr Frankenstein” last night as psychiatrists began tests to determine whether he is mad.

Dr Frankenstein, the Swiss Germanic character conjured by the mind of an English novelist?

Top psychiatrist Dr Christian Ludke rejected that claim, saying: “The criminal energy of this man is unbelievable. He is ice-cold and is still playing power games. We can only separate him from society.”

Dr Ludke compared Fritzl to the fictional Dr Frankenstein, who created a monster he thought he could control.

Read the rest of this entry »

Anorak

Posted: 13th, May 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comments (8)

Premier League’s Got Talent: Wags Special

THE football season is over at last, and the Wag season can begin in earnest.

Although the summer streets of Vienna will not be echoing to the lilting cackle of England’s First XI on a meet and greet for Euro 2008, Joanna Taylor, Wag to her footballer Danny Murphy, is making do.

“I was so proud of Danny on Sunday and not just because of his performance on the pitch,” says Joanna, cradling a ball under her arm in the Sun.

Danny scored for Fulham, thus enabling the Cottagers to remain in the Premier League, and sparing Joanna lunch with women who live in Hull, Ipswich and Preston.

“The previous day Danny had also played a blinder at home by being a brilliant husband and a caring dad.”

It turns out that Joanna and her footballer’s daughter, Mya, was ill with a virus. She is now much better, thank you.

Danny is a “hands-on dad”. Danny is mad about his son, from a pervious relationship. Danny stayed “strong for me” after two IVF attempts at pregnancy.

Nice one, Danny.

And he gives us an idea. The Premier League is a carve up between the richest teams and their richer owners. English football needs shaking up.

So here is Anorak’s new Premier League’s Got Talent, in which players and Wags step forward to say why they should win.

Anorak

Posted: 13th, May 2008 | In: Back pages, Tabloids | Comments (2)

Cherie Blair: Speaking For My Husband – The Reviews

CHERIE Blair has a new book out.

Speaking for Myself, her follow up to Speaking For My Husband, Speaking For Suicide and Bingo! is being read by the columnists.

Those Cherie Blair recommendations in full:

Fergus Shanahan (SUN): “Revenge of the grasping Mrs B”

(Picture: Beau Bo D’Or Website)

Daily Star phone poll: “IS CHERIE A MONEY GRABBING WITCH?”

Anorak

Posted: 13th, May 2008 | In: Politicians, Tabloids | Comments (4)