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.
Posh And Becks Marry Again: VIII.V.MMVI
“POSH AND BECKS WED AGAIN.”
The Mirror’s front-page headline is a sensation. David Beckham and Victoria have married once more. “New vows and new tattoos,” trills the Mirror. Well, what do you get the couple who have so much?
To the grounds of Beckingham Palace. A guest says: “We were in tears. It was beautiful and very non-showbiz.”
Indeed, what could be less “showbiz” that Day-vid and Vicky standing in the grounds of their UK mansion, repeating their own vows and marking the big day by tattooing the ceremony date on their wrists in Roman numerals?
As the Mirror notes the tattoo says “VIII.V.MMVI”. Out with old Latin book and we see that Posh and Becks were remarried on… 8 March 2006.
It’s a sensation. Look out for other Mirror scoops and “EXCLUSIVES”:
“Man Lands on Moon” – Dies Veneris vii Junius MCMLXIX
Newspapers run out of stories – Dies Saturni iii Februarius MMVIII
And so on…
Posted: 16th, February 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comments (6)
Newspapers Relief At Paul McCartney And Lady Mills Divorce Deal
“WE have worked it out,” says the headline on the Mail’s cover. In the nick of time Lady Heather Mills and Paul McCartney (aka Hank Marvin) have managed to secure a divorce deal.
Many thought the papers would run out of puns before Mucca and Macca agreed to disagree.
Only yesterday the Daily Star showed signs of fatigue with: “MACCA HAIR IS STARTING TO PAUL OUT.” Even the qualifying “he goes bald over divorce row” could not prevents readers scratching their own heads.
But now the good news is that they can go their separate ways and the headline writers can stand down.
As for the deal: Lady Mills, 40, “is to receive a £20million lump sum with further £2.5million annual payments until their four-year-old daughter Beatrice reaches 18.”
Posted: 16th, February 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comments (14)
Tabloid Pun Of The Day: David Beckham
LAYDIES and gentallmen, in the Daily Star: “BLAND EATS LIKE BECKS – POSH BANS RED MEAT AND MAKES HIM NOSH SUSHI.”
Posted: 16th, February 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comment
Daily Express Supports Romany Gypsies
THE Daily Express’s almost daily focus on the lives of gypsies has turned readers on to the wandering lifestyle.
Today the Express offers its readers the chance to win a Campervan.
The mobile home is worth £32,995 (on the road, on the ferry and on a patch of land by the A31). It features the last word in Romany chic.
The prize comes with four wheels, those much sought-after British number plates and a handy phrase book for connecting with your inner Rogarian, and conversing with other Express readers.
Phrases like: “Why do they stare?”, “Richard Desmond, he very nice man, please, my daughter need job on Television X to buy nappies for grandmother” and “We eat blonde children” will be yours to conjure with.
Only in the caring Daily Express…
Posted: 16th, February 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comments (7)
Child Elephant Thong Dee Falls Pregnant
SHOCK and ahh in the world of elephant husbandry.
In Taronga Zoo, Sydney, Thong Dee is almost five months into her 22-month pregnancy.
Guy Cooper, the zoo’s director, calls it an “historic event”. And in Australia it most probably is.
Good news, then. But Erica Martin, Asian Pacific Director of the International Fund of Animal Welfare, says it is “completely irresponsible”.
Thong Dee is aged nine. This, a voice tells the Mail, is “the equivalent of allowing your 12-year old daughter to become pregnant”.
Thong Dee is the “gymslip elephant pregnancy”.
The RSPCA’s chief scientist, Bidda Jones, says the captive management plan adopted by Taronga stipulates that elephants “should be at least 11 years old before conceiving… If this cow is pregnant then what it shows is Taronga Zoo’s inability to manage the elephants by the guidelines they agreed to.”
The zoo’s spokesman, Mark Williams says the father, Gung, had been mating with all the females. “He’s at them all the time. He came on second flight [of elephants]. He got off the flight, had a drink, and mounted Thong Dee.”
Much controversy. But we are not told how an aroused bull can be deterred from impregnating a receptive and fertile adolescent elephant.
Perhaps dad* or Erica Martin has a word in the chap’s ear, and takes care not to back away or all over…
* Anyone seen Simon Dee?
Posted: 15th, February 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comments (2)
Madonna Hyphens Up Filth And Wisdom
MADONNA is in a new “romantic-musical-comedy drama”, says the Mail. It’s called Filth And Wisdom, which sounds like the name of a theme pub in Soho, or the legend of a club for earnest English Literature students.
It’s the story of a Ukranian immigrant who funds dreams of becoming a rock-star by moonlighting as a cross-dressing dominatrix.
The star is not Madonna but Gogol Bordello. He’s lead singer in a gypsy-punk-rock band.
Filth And Wisdom, or Filth-and-Wisdom, promises to do for the hyphen what Hale & Pace did for the ampersand.
It-cannot-fail…
Posted: 15th, February 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comment (1)
Ricky Hatton Mends Broken Britain With His Fists
“RICKY HATTON’S MANIFESTO TO REPAIR BROKEN BRITAIN.”
So many boxers have made a mess of their post-ring lives. Nigel Benn went to the I’m A Celebrity jungle and was never heard from again. Frank Bruno did a passable Window Twanky, but never made the role his own. And Chris Eubank is doing his utmost to be arrested.
Not since Henry Cooper’s crusade for equality in the perfume market, has a British boxer succeeded after the bell. Until now.
Cooper dared to think big. Hatton does too. Pictured draped in the Union Jack, a fist cocked and raised, Hatton joins the “Sun’s fight to mend broken Britain”.
The message seems to be that if Ricky catches you breaking Britain he will smash your face in – unless you are Floyd Mayweather, in which case he may need a little back up.
Says Hatton: “Things are terrible on our streets and seem to be getting worse. People are dying left right and centre. I think you need to hit yobs harder.”
Hold on. Put that cricket bat down. Adds Ricky: “By that I mean stronger sentences for them.”
But we fear his qualifier has come too late… Ouch!
Posted: 15th, February 2008 | In: Back pages, Tabloids | Comment (1)
Let’s Steralise Teenage Girls
SAYS Fay Weldon in the Mail: “WHY TEENAGE GILS SHOULD BE STERALISED.”
Well, it’s something to do, innit. Why not?
Posted: 15th, February 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comments (3)
Amy Winehouse Covers Up Tattoo For America
AMY Winehouse. New tooth. New blonde hair, albeit housed beneath a knitted bee hive.
New tan. And a fuller bosom.
Grammy winning Amy Winehouse has already cracked America, but she seems aware at how they like their celebrities over there – shrink-wrapped out of the box rebellion.
So here’s Winehouse in the Star, her tattoo of a topless stunna adapted for the American market. The nipples are coloured in, so that her ‘Girl’ is now wearing a black bra.
Not, not a red one. Ho-ho. It’s a black one, which is much more demure.
Look out for Winehouse cracking the Iranian market by swaddling her tattoo in a burka, Vatican City by dressing her in a wimple and the Swedish market by sticking a plastic policeman’s helmet on her head and piecing her nipples with birch twigs……
Posted: 15th, February 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comments (5)
Ashley Cole Makes Aimee Walton’s Man Feel Sick
ASHLEY Cole has been accused of cheating on his Cheryl Cole with one Aimee Walton.
Vomitous Ashley is in the mire – Ms Walton claiming that the England footballer yawned a bright technicolour during their night of magic.
Now read in the Star of one Andre Stephens who says he had sex with Aimee hours after her alleged romp with Cole. Andre now fears he has contracted a venereal disease.
Says Andre: “It’s like a nightmare. Just thinking about them two at it like rabbits makes me sick.”
Well, if he wants to win her back, needs mush and all that…
Posted: 15th, February 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comment (1)
Anorak’s Eazy 3 Machine Can Rebuild Jordan For Bacon Week
WITH a reduced Jordan now looking less like Jordan than a Kate Andre – and who the hell is she? – the country needs a news glamour model.
The new Jordan will be less created then moulded. Into Anorak’s Eazy3 steps young Nicola and with the addition of some vowels, GGs latex and sunset orange colouring (now in a handy spray) out steps Nikii.
The Eazy3 machine should be able to turn out at least 10 Jordans a day.
Nothing is perfect, though, and the seconds will go to the Daily Sport.
The Sport knows what it is. While the Sun has Nikkala, happy to talk about world economic issues and celebrity, the Sport has a “FREE BABE SANDWICH POSTER”.
Before that, readers get a “BONUS” babe” a kind of two-for-one deal, offcuts formed into a Sam, from Rotherham.
But it is the centre pages that draw the readers in like a rutting salmon to its spawning grounds. And there is the Star’s model du jour eating a bacon sandwich and allowing the tomato ketchup to cascade seductively down her bosom. It’s National Bacon Week.
It’s a piece of meat. With sauce, no less. But only half person. No legs, see. No feet. No page 3 backside.
They broke the mould when they made Jordan. But with the Anorak’s Eazy3, we can rebuild…
TV Tipster Statto Pulls Up Lame
WE at Anorak love horseracing. We have so far backed no fewer that 32 Grand National champions.
Sadly, all the horses finished the course with their riders some way behind. Horses are not ones to grumble and were happy to allow other beasts the glory of a trophy and with it an intensive breeding programme with gigantic testtube wielded by a thick-wristed farm girl.
Like you we followed the advice of Statto, the tipster whose tip-top horseracing tips scored him a place on the Fantasy Football TV show.
Statto used his knowledge of horseracing to tell us about football, or soccer as these horseracing types are wont to call it.
Not we learn via the Mirrot that Statto, real name Statto Loughran Boy, is bankrupt.
It sounds grim. But with any luck Statto will not be put down, his bones used as glue and his flesh placed in a crusty baguette…
Spielberg Snubs Olympics And Paris Hilton Snubs Darfur
“SPIELBERG snubs the Olympics.” So says the Express on news that Hollywood film director Stephen Spielberg is boycotting the Beijing Olympic Games. Big news, right up there with:
Paris Hilton snubs Darfur
Sarah Ferguson snubs Nobel Peace Prize
Gordon Smart snubs Pulitzer
Osama bin Laden snubs Baftas
And many more…
Posted: 14th, February 2008 | In: Back pages, Celebrities, Tabloids | Comment
Jade Goody Meets Jeremy Beadle
JEREMY Beadle is stood by Jade Goody.
“Jade Goody, You’ve been Beadled,” says the Sun. It’s a “homage” to “stunt king” Beadle, “TV’s greatest prankster”.
Beadle has been buried. But there is a remembrance service to come ,and who knows if that will be the cue for Beadle to pop up and say “Gotcha!”.
The Sun’s Beadle tribute sees two pretend coppers arrive at Jade’s Essex home. All eyes are on her Bentley car.
“Don’t tell me I’ve bought a stolen car – it’s not one of them car that’s been stuck together with another one is it?” asks Jade.
We look at the car, which appears as a composite blend of its bits of Volvo, Rolls Royce and fleet BMW.
“Are you familiar with the term cut and shut?” asks DI Dickens. (This is a real actor and not one of the UK’s celebrity coppers.)
Jade wonders. Is that when you say ‘Shut yer mahf or I’ll cut yer?’ “Oh no,” says Jade.
Jade is worried. And then the picture of Jeremy Beadle pops up from behind a bush. “Jade Goody, you’ve been Beadled.”
And everyone falls about laughing…
Posted: 14th, February 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comment
Cheryl Cole Takes The Ashley Cole Vomit-N-Tell Diet
“ASHLEY is damaged goods. How can I trust him again.” This is “STICK-THIN CHERYL’S AGONY.”
A million Arsenal fans nod their heads and skip lightly off the scales. Ashley may be a rat, but he is great at shedding those unwanted pounds.
Although looking at “skeletal”, “pencil-thin”, “six stone” Cheryl on the Sun’s front page, readers may wonder if she looks any different to the usual pre-vomit-n-tell Cheryl.
Cheryl, we learn, is “reflecting on her troubles in a Thai sanctuary”. She has, as reported, told a pal: “How can I trust my fella again? He’s damaged goods.”
Says a “holidaymaker: “That bastard Ashley has a lot to answer for.”
“Meanwhile,” says the Sun, “Ashley was pictured larking around”, larks captured over three photographs.
Look away, Cheryl, lest you, like dear Ashley Cole, allegedly, feel sick…
Posted: 14th, February 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comment
A Tabloid St Valentine’s Day Special: Present Ideas, Celebrities And ‘Over Her Dead Body’
THE Daily Mirror is offering its readers a free Mills and Boon book.
That and the spray of forecourt carnations on the kitchen table tell you that it’s Valentine’s Day.
Old Mr Anorak, as ever, will be marking the occasion by taking a table at is local Aberdeen Steak House crying with laughter at the young tongue-tied couples buying into romance.
Meanwhile, we notice that the Daily Mirror is celebrating this day of love. The paper is so fond of Valentines Day – and all those sickly sweet stories, present ideas and filler:
FRONT PAGE: The off of an evening with a Mills and Boon paperback
Page 3: “Expert boiler care now form only £9 a month”
Page 14: “HALF PRICE” vacuum cleaner offer from Littlewoods Direct. More news on that Mills and Boon book. Soften her up with a love story, then seal the deal with the hoover
Page 15: “OVER HEAR DEAD BODY”
Advert for rom-com film, in which Eva Longoria is murdered by Paul Rudd following a romantic candle-lit dinner for two at a local carvery
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 14th, February 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comments (2)
Caption Of The Day: Love Is
Caption Of The Day, via the Dail Mail’s piece on what woman are attracted to in men:
“Scoal climber: women love men who scale cliffs”
Posted: 14th, February 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comment (1)
HooRAH Henry, Prince William’s Oasis Is Shattered
PRINCE William and Prince Harry are RAHS.
This, as Grazia magazine tells us, means they are “Royals And Heiresses”. They are HooRAH Henrys. No big departure for HooRAY Henrys (Rich And Young), but on such details are the reputations of magazines made.
Wills and Harry Baseball Cap are also “the new Noel and Liam”, believed not to be Irish footballer of yore Liam Brady and resurgent TV personality Noel Edmonds, rather Liam and Noel Gallagher, popular singers and champions of wrapping up in a chill wind. (“Hoods and Anoraks on, kids!” is their catchphrase.)
No sign of a scarf and woolly hat for Wills on the Mail’s front page, but he is sat before 14 bottles of alcopops and two pints of lager.
Can it be that having dabbled in the City, the Armed Forces and as a peacenik, Wills is now learning to be a hellraising rock ‘n’ roll star?
“William and the clubber slashed with a bottle,” comes the headline. And we wonder some more.
“Our future king on a boys’ night out. An hour later in the same nightclub, a reveller is slashed with a broken bottle.”
Are the two things linked? “ROYAL EXCLUSIVE,” announces the Star on its front page. “WILLS GLASS ATTACK HORROR.”
Wills is on a “larger and vodka bender”. He is “caught up in a vicious attack”. There is a “bloodbath”.
To the Barracuda club in Newquay, Cornwall.
“I WAS BOTTLED AT PRINCE WILLIAMS £1-A-DRINK PUB.” So says the Mirror’s front-page headline, which makes it seem as though Wills is drinking for research purposes, having opened a nice little boozer on the south coast.
But look out! Dan O’Callaghan has “just spotted Wills” and his. Dan is having a row with two men. A broken bottle is introduced to his face. And 25 stitches later (35 stitches, says the Mail) he is speaking to the Mirror.
“I watched Wills down £1 drinks… then thugs did THIS to my face,” says the headline, a neat surmising of the night’s events.
Are the two events linked? Did looking at Wills earn Dan a bottling, or glassing as the Star has it, exclusively?
In what way are the two things connected? We need to know. This one could run and run…
Posted: 14th, February 2008 | In: Grazia, Royal Family, Tabloids | Comments (3)
A Shed Load Of Tears For Randy The Bigamist
“BIGAMIST rumbled by a guest from both weddings,” reports the Mail.
Randolf Edge is marrying Patience Carey.
The paper provides the ages – un-blushing Randalf is 54, his bride is 21. They began dating in 2004, when Patience was 17.
Randalf, Randy if you must, is stood at the King’s Lynn Register Office, Norfolk. All of Patience’s family are in attendance. They hear Randalf declare himself single.
But a guest is not so certain. He recognises Randalf from a past marriage, a betrothal between the groom and Helen Winkle (BBC), Edna Winkle (Sun) – are they the same person?
Bigamy. A call to the authorities. A report. A judge – “Do not treat anyone with this kind of disdain again.” Patience is gone. Randalf has a 12–month supervision order. Randalf is back with this first wife.
It’s a good story. But it is about to be made great.
Patience’s father appears. “I am not amused,” he tells the Mail.
“It has been a great shock. I just wish I could sit in my shed until it all goes away.”
(Somebody fetch me a cymbal…)
* The name in the above story have not been altered
Posted: 13th, February 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comment (1)
The Manilow Method Blows Away The Youthful Mosquito
DUM-dum-dum-bleep-bleep. Hey what’s that sound, kids?
A new song by far out Alvin Stardust?
No, it the Mosquito, a device that emits s sound detectable only to the ear of persons below the age of 20. It’s used to repel the toughs from shopping malls and street corners. But now the Children’s Commissioner for England, one Professor Al Aynsley-Green, says the device is “demonising” young people.
Says a voice for the Children’s Trust: “These devices are indiscriminate and target all young people, including babies.” Sami Chakrabarti tells the Mail that it’s a “sonic weapon directed against young people”.
But there is an alternative. No, not to place huge video screens on wasteland and over ravines so attract youth toward them – they really will watch anything so long as it’s on a screen.
The plan, as the Express notes, is to blast Barry Manilow out over loud speakers. Not the real Manilow, rather his music. This will “drive young rowdies away from street corners”.
Richard Stokoe, a spokesman for the Local Government Association, says the Manilow Method could work. It sounds like something the North Koreans would use to increase procreation rates. But in the UK one blast of Mandy is enough to see the nippers off.
Of course, the problem, is that the youth can move away, but the shopkeeper cannot, Mr Sherbet Lemons forced to listen to Mandy and Copacabana on loop morning, noon and night. Madness beckons.
On a brighter note, the ruffians will associate Manilow with rebellion and the singer will see a new audience for his work…
Posted: 13th, February 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comments (2)
BlackBerry Blackout: Those Emails You Missed
THE Mail reports that the BlackBerry email device is broken.
The paper says that the service crashed, hitting millions of users.
Happily, Anorak has gotten hold of those missed emails and can now bring them to you:
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 13th, February 2008 | In: Tabloids | Comment (1)
Jeremy Beadle Approaches
“FAREWELL to Beadle,” says the Express.
The paper says tomorrow the prankster will be buried. Anorak liked Beadle and cannot help but think this is all part of his greatest jape yet.
As the mourners bow their heads and bend to throw some earth into the grave, the message “Kick Me” – from notes stuck to their pew seats – is made clear.
The sound of boots on gravel. A bearded man in a policeman’s hat approaches from the rear…
Posted: 13th, February 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comment
Migrant Workers Bring Flood And Tidal Wave To UK
“OVER 860 MIGRANTS FLOOD IN EVERY DAY,” announces the Express on its front page. (And that’s just the ones we know about.)”
The parentheses are key to the Express’s story. A visit to the paper’s website reveals no interactive headline in which a woman in a pastel-coloured rain hat purses her lips and loudly whispers the words in brackets.
Reading on we discover that these 860 migrants are all in the UK legally. This means, says the paper, that since 1997, when Labour took power, 2.3 million immigrants have moved to the UK. We learn that during the same period, 715,000 Britons have left.
It looks like we are winning. All talk of a pension crisis, in which the population becomes top heavy and the workers toil to keep grandma alive, can be ended. More immigrants, means more taxpayers, means more money in the big pot. Unless the migrant workers are all aged, an idea undone by the Express’s picture of young men walking along a train line in Calais. The migrant workers could be idle spongers, but nine out of ten waitresses and chambermaids are Polish, so that can’t be it*.
Damien Green, the Shadow immigration Minister, says: “It is clear there are huge pressures on public services because of the sheer scale of the rising population.”
Not to worry, though, because if the new workers are given jobs and can pay into the big pot, then there will be more money to renew public services, which are by definition under strain – if the hospitals were all empty, they’d be shut down; if roads were not full, would we need to maintain them?
Let’s hear it for the powerful and energetic “tidal wave” of humanity…
* Anorak School Of Statistics, Table 2, Bacchus Greek Restaurant, London NW3
** Flood and tidal waves do not ,necessarily, mean that immigrants lead to more flooding…
The Mills McCartney Divorce Circus
NO cruelty to animals at the circus please, just more of the delightful Nataliya firing a crossbow bolt towards her husband’s head.
Such wholesome entertainment is on offer at the Moscow State Circus. And there is an added element of danger.
As the Express reports, Nataliya is estranged from husband Anton Popazov. The two are in the throes of a divorce.
Anton and Nataliya have been married for 20 years. The marriage is shot to pieces, much like Anton should he move an inch as his soon-to-be-ex-wife takes aim and fires.
“I still trust her because Nataliya is very professional,” says Anton. “It’s not every man’s cup of tea to have his ex-partner firing arrows at him every day, but the show must go on.”
It must go on for another ten months, the length of the Amazing Popazovs contract.
For added danger, and a new finale, Anton will take to wearing a Paul McCartney mask and bobbling his mop top, while Nataliya stands on one leg and attempts to knock the golden apple from his head……
Amy Winehouse Wakes And Blakes
AMY Winehouse has a new friend called Blake, Or BLAAAAAAKKKKE, as the singer pronounces it in the manner of an over-tired crow.
The Sun’s Gordon Smart says this Blake Wood went with Winehouse to visit Blake Fielder-Civil in jail.
Fielder-Civil is not the name of an out-of-town chartered surveyor’s practice, rather the title of Winehouse’s husband.
“Complicated, I know,” says Smart.
While Smart belies his name and works out how two people can be called Blake -crazy name, crazy world – the Sun tells us that Blake Wood is a “teetotal, drug-free American vegetarian”.
We wonder if this Blake is a substitute for the incarcerated Blake? Is listening to Blake II talk about being drug-free, meat free and American as dull as an audience with a drugged-up Blake eating a burger?
Over to you, Mr Smart…
Posted: 12th, February 2008 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids | Comments (8)
