Ten Reasons Why Thierry Henry Did It
WANT to know why France captain Thierry Henry used his hand to score a goal in game of FOOTball against Ireland? We bring you the Top Ten Theories:
1. C’est La France
He was shrugging. At the moment of impact (1). Henry was thinking about existentialism and the modern man. He asked himself a question and answered it in traditional fashion, with a Gallic shrug. Henry then responded to his own answer to his own question with a second shrug (2).
2. For Culture
Henry knew that Ireland would not win the World Cup. The likelihood of them being robbed in South Africa while literally high was on the field only a remote hope. Henry sought to give the Irish something to feel aggrieved and, therefore, inspired about for four years of drinking, poetry and song.
3. For England
Posted: 20th, November 2009 | In: Key Posts, Sports Comments (2) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Now Watch: Spotting Cases Of NOW… In The Tabloids
IN today’s edition of Now Watch - Anorak’s look at “NOW” in news headlines - the Daily Express shines a light on Ben Elton who dared to poke fun at our Queen and the Royal Mail - who may or may not have killed Princess Diana, as reported in the Daily Express for years and years and years …
Posted: 18th, November 2009 | In: Media Comment (1) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Madeleine McCann Is Every Parent’s Bogeyman
MADDIE WATCH - Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann: Michael White’s poppy pornography and Our Spanish Maddie keeps Shannon Kyle in work.
FIRST up, the Guardian’s Michael White tells us about how the “pornography of grief has devalued poignancy of the poppy” and how Madeleine McCann is implicated in it:
The Victorians made a lot of fuss over death too. Just look at those tombstones: exotic, even erotic, in old cemeteries. But at least it was the deaths of their own loved ones they were mourning. Death was everywhere all the time before the development of modern antibiotics.
Now death sits in rest homes, impatiently waiting for life to finish swirling round the plug hole.
We, who have so little experience of it by comparison, have forgotten how to handle the great unknown in a largely godless age. Hence the macabre fuss over Princess Di, over missing Madeleine McCann and over poor, abused Jade Goody too.
Jade Goody gets two adjectives; Our Maddie gets none.
After White, the Guardian gives space to Shannon Kyle to deliver yet another of those Odes To Parenting, in which Our Maddie is the parent’s bogeyman:
Posted: 13th, November 2009 | In: Madeleine McCann Comments (2) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here Sacks Katie Price
THE year is now divided into TV shows: And November means I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here!, staring Katie Price in the sack and out of a bikini.
While the BBC’s care home-focused non-dancing dance show Strictly Come Dancing – does anyone allowed to operate the remote control watch it? - ITV follows the X Factor with another hit.
The show features the following celebrities, who would once have been called “personalities” and before that “VIPs”:
George Hamilton – Does the Hollywood legends know the sun cannot reach the jungle floor? Big risk that his tan might suffer. Expects a deep mahogany giving way to light maple as the show progresses.
Posted: 12th, November 2009 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts Comments (14) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Madeleine McCann Is An Everton Mascot
MADELEINE McCann is now an official Everton FC mascot. The club has printed T-shirts.
Shirts, emblazoned with pictures of Madeleine McCann, are being handed out ahead of Everton FC’s Europa League tie with Portuguese team Benfica. They have been created to highlight the campaign to find the child, who was three when she vanished while on holiday in Portugal in May 2007.
Benfica play in Portugal. Win it for Maddie, Everton. Can Our Maddie inspire? It might catch on. What team did Ben Needham support? Keith Bennett?
Congratulations to the McCanns for keeping their daughter in the public eye. But who does not crave for them to find her; to be left alone? Right now, their hunt for their daughter exists as a public spectacle. You wear the T-shirt to show that you care. You display a shallow sentiment. Others join in. You all feel it. Only you don’t. Not really. You go through the motions, afraid to say, “No, I don’t feel much at all.”
Every fan who bought a ticket can collect a T-shirt, which has the words “We’re Still Looking For You” on it.
And you thought Evertonians were just looking for a decent centre half.
A total of 6,000 shirts have been produced by the club - 3,000 in English and 3,000 bearing the message in Portuguese.
It’s all horribly mawkish. Anorak was there when Liverpool fans commemorated the 96 who died in Hillsborough. It was poignant and noisy. And it was relevant. This is something else:
Everton chairman Bill Kenwright said: “I will never, ever forget that image of a beautiful, smiling child in an Everton shirt.”
And you thought a missing child was painful enough; even though the media were turned on by her blue eyes and blonde hair. And you also might have thought fans were on there way to watch a game of football, excited at a chance to escape the pains of life for an hour and an a half, with a break for half time. But you should know different:
Fans with a match ticket can pick up a free T-shirt from Goodison Park or Liverpool Airport before embarking on their flight to Portugal.
Let us know if you got one and why you did; and why you didn’t. What, you didn’t get a T-shirt and wear it for Our Maddie? What’s the matter with you - don’t you care?
An anecdote: When Princess Diana was eulogised at Wesmintster Abbey, two Japanese people were laughing in Green Park, enjoying the sun. One began talking on a phone. A woman near to your writer moved across, hung up their phone call and asked them, rhetorically: “Don’t you have any shame?”
When we advertise our grief and care in public for someone we never met and never knew, we do so to reveal more about ourselves than the subject. We display signs of mourning sickness.
Spotter: Yampster
Madeleine McCann: The Story In Pictures
Posted: 22nd, October 2009 | In: Key Posts, Madeleine McCann Comments (20) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Indian BT Worker ‘Bombs’ British Customer’s House
BT’S India call centre operation is doing for the British stereotypes of fair play and the ability to patiently queue what Princess Diana did for our stiff upper lip: killing it.
The Mail spots one Allan Wardle, who rang BT after his internet connection crashed, got into row with call centre weoker and later had a technician tell hism that he;d blow up his house.
“Death threat,” says the Mail twice.
“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,’ said Mr Wardle, 24. ‘I was incensed. I was scared at first and then really angry. I called the police straight away.
“I’m disgusted that something like this can happen with such a respected company. The whole thing has been upsetting. It doesn’t get much worse than someone - a stranger - saying he is going to blow you up.”
It’s every BT caller’s worst nightmare. But what was that about BT being a respected company? Come, come, Mr Wardle, no-one who deals with BT likes BT. The thrill is in the confrontation. Anorak has long suspected BT’s telephony system, in which you press lots of buttons to have your call directed, exists as a challenge to see if you have the stamina for the long road ahead.
Indeed, one Anorak reader tells us that when when pessed in a certain order, the buttons on your keypad sound out the opening bars to “One Finger One Thumb Keep Moving”, the nursery staple and a fataslistic rendition of “Hanging On The Old Barbed Wire“.
Posted: 19th, October 2009 | In: The Consumer Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Five Ways Michael Jackson Was Like Hitler, By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
MICHAEL Jackson Watch: Having mutated from the King of Pop to the King of Propofol, Jackson is bing painted Bad once more (geddit?).
The Sun leads with news that Jackson thought Hitler was genius. To emphasise Jackson’s respect for the mono-tested great dictator, the Sun finds a picture of Jackson with his right hand raised in a salute to the enlightened.
Readers are forgiven for thinking they have read this before – and they have in August the News of The World told us:
He was obsessed with Adolf Hitler, collected Nazi medals and scoured books about evil experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz.
Posted: 25th, September 2009 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts Comments (15) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
LibDems Reclassify Knitting As Class B Drug
MORE developments from the LibDem conference, and news that knitting is to be recalssified as a gateway hobby.
Says one addict:
“I started on booties for Princess Diana’s son William and before long I was knitting all the time. People began to stare and shops refused to let me in. I once knitted Noel Edmonds. The only place I knew I wouldn’t be seen was in Bournemouth, at the LibDem conference…”
The Liberal Democrat Conference In Pictures, Not Waltergate
Posted: 24th, September 2009 | In: Politicians Comments (3) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Alesha Dixon Is Strictly’s Ellen Degeneres
ALESHA Dixon, is not a real judge, just as Strictly Come Dancing is not a real dance contest. Dixon is the show’s totty, there to give better arms, breasts and neck than Arlene Phillips, the judge who dispensed wisdom with a wattle.
Dixon was meant to be the show’s answer to the X Factor’s weepy Cheryl Cole, who was added to that show’s magistrate’s panel not in place of the older Dannii Minogue but in addition, offering viewers an advertorial for before and after plastic surgery.
But things are not working out for Dixon, who has missed becoming the show’s Cheryl to be this season’s John Sergeant, or the X Factor’s Chico of any number of hampless but amusing acts that make these show’s bearable.
Posted: 21st, September 2009 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts Comments (2) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
WHILE Katie Price rapes the tabloid press, Sentimental Peter Andre is doing good works at an HMV store in Wales.
Peter kisses the baby and - lo! - it is turned a rich orangey-brown and gets to experience the lips that touched Jordan. It’s first words will be, “Guys, buy mai noo recurd.”
Says a source:
The public support him because he’s always acted with dignity.
That’s Peter Andre who accused Katie Price of being “cheap” and “disgusting” and wrote an album of trite songs about their life together.
POP star Peter Andre brought Cardiff to a standstill yesterday when the singer-turned-reality-TV-star came to the capital for a record signing.
Posted: 19th, September 2009 | In: Celebrities Comments (5) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Katie Price Rape: Prince Charles And Kinky Sex
KATIE Price Rape: Starring Princess Diana, Prince Charles, Jordan, Tony Parsons, Peter Andre’s kinky boots and a sex shop…
TONY Parsons would like to tell us “Why Jordan is our new Princess Diana.”
Is it because Peter Andre is shagging tampon-featured Camilla on the back seat of a 1978 Jensen Interceptor? Parsons has more questions of his own ask:
How did Jordan become the most despised woman in the country? Any other woman who revealed that she had been raped would be treated with a degree of human compassion.
Diana was raped? Parsons goes on:
She may go off the Ibiza rails every once in a while but she is no worse than the average binge-drinking young Brit.
Posted: 19th, September 2009 | In: Celebrities, Gallery, Key Posts Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Queen Mother Swore At Jimmy Carter And Fancied Princess Diana
NOT only is Princess Diana back, but so too is the Queen Mother, who one might suppose features on the Express’ cover to make Diana look even more radiant.
The Daily Express recognises that its readers are too old to learn anything news so continues to publish images and news from the past to reassure them that things are as they ever were and ever will be.
Tomorrow, there’s a look at Princess Diana’s wedding arrangements with go-ahead designer Mary Quant and the Queen Mum is due to visit London’s East End to tell Doodlebug victims that they shan’t be coming back to her palace because they have dirty feet and even in a time of much upheaval standards are all. There will be much cheering.
Reading on we learn that a new biography of the Queen Mum has been penned and it includes in its 1,096 pages, possibly:
Posted: 17th, September 2009 | In: Celebrities, Gallery, Key Posts Comments (9) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Daily Express: Princess Diana Still Dead
AT the Daily Express, the Journatron lifts its monkey paw finger and passes over the buttons marked “Maddie” and “Gypsies” and presses: “Diana”. The Summer of Death is at its end and Princess Diana emerges from the Fabled Six Floor of Harvey Nichols to remind us that when it comes to controversial celebrity deaths, she rules supreme.
The headlines:
“I have always believed crash was no accident”
“Diana was right to fear for her life, says top QC”
On the Express’s website, more intrigue:
The article you are looking for does not exist. It may have been deleted.
Luckily the dark forces have not got to the Times, which has the story, based on extracts taken from Michael Mansfield QC’s Memoirs of a Radical Lawyer.
Might this be the same Michael Mansfield who represented Mohamed Al Fayed at the Diana inquest, the Harrods owner, whose son Dodi was killed in the Paris car crash with the Princess?
Mohammed Al Fayed’s suggested that the UK was really run by Prince Philip and the security services. Any job with that theory? In his summing-up, Lord Justice Scott Baker told the jury:
“There is no evidence that the Duke of Edinburgh ordered Diana’s execution, and there is no evidence that the secret intelligence service or any other government agency organised it.”
Fayed’s position was “absurd” and “completely off the map“. What says Fayed’s brief, who did such a top job of representing him in court?
Mansfield says that it was “utterly reasonable for the Princess to suppose that Big Brother was looking over her shoulder, that her telephone communications were being tapped and her movements by car were being tracked”.
Well, yes. We’re all watched. Why should it be different for her? The world’s foremost celebrity princess was hardly low profile. And if she was so fearful of the paparazzi, why not wear a seatbelt when they give chase and holiday in more hard-top-reach places than a Paris hotel?
Says Mansfield, she had a “credible and understandable basis for her belief”.
Which means…? Well, it means whatever you want it to. It means that Mansfield has a book to plug.
And the Express has newspapers to sell, and a robot to feed…
Posted: 3rd, September 2009 | In: Celebrities Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Baby P’s Mum Tracey Connelly And Stephen Barker, In Pictures
BABY P’s mother is called Tracey Connelly. But, then, you all knew her name. Tracey Connelly, mother to Baby Peter, has been a hate figure on the web for months.
The 17-month-old boy’s mother pleaded guilty to causing or allowing Baby P’s death, but was cleared of murder on a judge’s directions.
On 11 November, 2008, Tracey Connelly’s 32-year-old boyfriend, Steven Barker, and another man, his brother Jason Barker (aka Jason Owen) were convicted at the Old Bailey in London on the same charge. Connelly and Steven Barker are jailed for a minimum of five years. Steven Barker raped a 2-year-old girl. The Barker brothers attcked their grandmother, Hilda Barker.
We can now legally name her. This is the trigger for other Tracey Connellys to steel themselves for when their namesake leaves jail one day, as surely she must.
Baby Peter was subjected to daily torture by the mother, Tracey Connelly, step father Steven Barker and lodger Jason Barker/Owen.
Baby Of Hearts
A revolting crime. Many crimes are. But did we need to see computer-generated images of baby P’s wounds? Any sentient being can imagine the pain and the wounds. Seeing them turns us into voyeurs. And Baby P was turned into the media’s Baby of Hearts.
Carole Malone told her readers of her horror at the horror:
I HAD to force myself to read it. And every sickening, gut-wrenching detail made me want to hunt down the monsters who’d hurt Baby P—or allowed him to be hurt—and hurt THEM.
Posted: 11th, August 2009 | In: Key Posts, Media Comments (13) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Claire Elisabeth Fields Cruise Is Paris Jackson’s Mother
MEET Claire Elisabeth Fields Cruise, a woman who has filed three guardianship petitions - one for each of Michel Jackson’s three children. Is she the fake Debbie Rowe?
Says “random loon” Claire Elisabeth Fields Cruise:
“I am the biological mother of Prince Michael Jackson II and all of his siblings.”
She is married to Michael Jackson - “who is now deceased” – and “engaged to Prince Michael Jackson II’s biological father.” And , alelgedly, shagged Mark Lester, or met him in a Petri Dish.
Posted: 10th, August 2009 | In: Celebrities Comments (2) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
PICTURES of the manufactured Madonna-Bette Midler-Phantom-of-the-Opera hybrid Lady Gaga singing at T in The Park confirm the impression that she goes to great lengths to hide her face.
Even her name suggests a self-mocking, yakking reference to her looks. (The Lady is not a parody but a moniker based on years observing Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson.) Gaga is not so very hideous, far from it, but such the lust for the fanciability to go with the hits that she recognises her limitations.
Had Michael Jackson adopted the Gaga moves and look he would have surely saved himself a fortune on plastic surgery and masks.
Hereunder is a gallery of Lady Gaga, the Cyrano de Bergerac of performers. Or is she a pop star formed by committee, the proverbial camel’s hump to Madonna’s elephant? Or a camel’s face?
The gallery:
Posted: 11th, July 2009 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Pictures Of Paris Jackson’s Father
MICHAEL Jackson Watch: Paris and Prince Michael’s father revealed, sort of. Michael Jackson news:
Daily Star: “JACKO’S KIDS REAL MUM AND DAD”
Is it…
a) Debbie Rowe and Michael Jackson
b) Michael Jackson and Debbie Rowe
c) Princess Diana and Simon Cowell
d) Zasa Zsa Gabor and Todd Palin
Posted: 10th, July 2009 | In: Celebrities Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Kim Kardashian Sells The Michael Jackson Funeral
PRESS Release of the day comes from Kim Kardashian’s website handlers at Buzz Media who email Anorak to tell us that the internet porn star “took to her blog this morning to talk about Michael Jackson’s Memorial which she attended with her family”.
It was, like, totally, the best funeral ev-er!
The Michael Jackson memorial was the most touching memorial I have ever been to.
Posted: 9th, July 2009 | In: Celebrities Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Michael Jackson Is A Damned ‘Sicko Freak’
MICHAEL Jackson Watch: As macrabre and damning show, a living saint and all other views…
Andre Peyser (NY Post): EXCESS RITES ALL WRONG FOR SICKO FREAK!
You got two for the price of one if you attended Michael Jackson’s spectacular dog-and-pony show yesterday — a memorial as dignified as a Vegas lounge-lizard act combined with the entertainment value of a carnival freak show.
How soon one forgets, given the opportunity to participate in this mass hysteria. From the accolades, prayers and cries of grief, you’d think you were witnessing the death of a saint, not an accused serial pedophile who hated the skin in which he lived.
Gordon Smart (The Sun): “Read Bizarre editor’s damning verdict”
Tasteful stuff.
This wasn’t a memorial for a pop icon or the greatest entertainer the world has ever seen.
It was a reminder of why MICHAEL JACKSON became a deeply unhappy, lonely man living an utterly bizarre existence.
It was a macabre circus.
Paris didn’t look comfortable and more importantly, capable, of doing it… I just couldn’t believe my eyes… Having said that, her few words were deeply touching, bringing a tear to the eye.
So a deeply touching macabre circus featuring a grieving young girl who wasn’t capable but, er, was.
Andrew Gumbel (The Guardian): “Michael Jackson memorial: Showbiz, schmaltz and not a trace of Wacko”
They came not to lay Michael Jackson to rest so much as to ease him gently into a warm bath of adulation, hyperbole and showbiz razzle-dazzle tinged with more than a hint of religious symbolism.
The Jackson celebrated today at the downtown Los Angeles Staples Centre in a two-hour extravaganza of song, sermonising and tears was very far from the headline-grabbing, lawsuit-happy eccentric with the multiple plastic surgeries, the sporadic addiction to painkillers and the endless gossip about prepubescent boys.
Posted: 8th, July 2009 | In: Celebrities Comments (25) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Michael Jackson Stole Elizabeth Taylor’s Funeral
MICHAEL Jackson Watch: When Princess Diana died, the Queen Mother was reported to have opined: “She’s got my funeral.”
What price that Jackson would shuffle off before Elizabeth Taylor, a woman who is now saying she won’t attend. The is too mich “whoopla”.
And as any Hollywood legend knows, you can have too much Woopla.
Cue the pall beareres:
Posted: 7th, July 2009 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts Comments (2) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
