BIG news in the Star that Louise Redknapp, wife to footballer-turned-nodding head Jamie Redknapp, is expecting a baby.

Happy days, and what better time to remember a few of Jamie’s bon mots.

Today Jamie is considering the Premiership title race between Chelsea and Manchester United:

“It’s still in Chelsea’s hands because if they win today they have to hope that Man Utd slip up.”

Are you listening, junior? Can you hear daddy?

IS that Wayne Rooney sporting a massive pair of comedy breasts?

We will each of us react to news of Gazza’s death in our own way, and good on Wayne for invoking his formative footballing memories of 1990 and all that.

But the Sun says it’s not Wayne, rather Natalie Rooney, Wayne’s cousin launching her career as a glamour model.

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PAUL Gascoigne is “DEAD”.

It’s the Star’s front-page news.

And while the businessmen at White Hart Lane and St James’s Park set about creating their Gascoigne Bars and lauding the hero with commemorative shirts, cocktails and compilation DVDs, the tributes are flooding in.

Here are some entries in Anorak’s Book of Condolences:

King Harald V of Norway: We the people of Norway would like to thank Gascoigne for teaching us how to say “Fuck off”. It has proven most useful on trips to the UK and I myself have used on many occasions.

Colin Hendry: “When Gascoigne flicked the ball over my head in Euro ‘96 and scored for the bastard English little did I dream that his action would lead to me becoming the face of the Clydebank Ice-O-Rama and the body of Strachan’s Chest Freezers.

And now Bianca Gascoigne pays tribute, the reality TV starlet finally able to says that she is every bit as talented as her step-father.

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HAVE those pins really been placed in the collar of the Chinese soldier’s shirt deliberately?

The Mail says so.

Pictures taken at an army base in Shenyang, Liaoning province, show a paramilitary policeman with head erect. Should he move from the approved position his flesh will come into contact with the needles, causing some distress and blood to cascade over his white shirt.

Readers may well believe the Mail has erred and the pins have been left in by error, a mistake many man has made. Anorak suggests they are not needles but nails.

There’s another picture of the soldiers marching with a wooden cross tucked into the back of each of their shiny black belts.

Cover the peaked hats in thorns and we could be looking at China’s fledgling Jesus Army.

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“WHAT’s stopped you thrusting yourselves into the limelight, like the Beckhams?”

That question to Sheree Murphy and occasional Liverpool footballer Harry Kewell, who features on the front cover of OK! magazine.

“It’s their decision,” says Sheree, who says that she and her footballer got loads of offers but Harry “stayed private”.

Liverpool fans may well nod. They’ve seen little of Harry Kewell in this time at the club, and rumours abound that he not so much shuns the limelight as the light itself.

But here is Harry, at home in his wooden kitchen, with son Taylor dangling round his neck, daughter Ruby sat on the granite worktop and newborn baby Matilda in Sheree’s arms, which stay quite thin (“a lot of it was water”).

These are private moments with the Kewells.

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WHEN that photo was taken of Vinnie Jones massaging Paul Gascoigne’s tackle who would have predicted the men’s careers would develop as they have done?

Gascoigne was to don a pair of comedy breasts, tell Norway to f*** off and score a wonderful goal in Euro /96 just to get a drink.

Jones went on to star in a TV advert for the AA and become the one Wimbledon player to go to Hollywood for anything other than a holiday.

Had only some agent spotted Gascoigne’s comedic talents the man could now be fronting Paul Gascoigne’s TV Burp on the magic box.

Do we laugh when reading the Sun’s headline “Gazza was begging in street…he tried to buy a Ferrari then his trouser fell down”? Take care with your reaction. Gazza was wearing no underwear, says the car dealer.

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HEADLINE of the day: “Ronaldo: Trannies left stain that will never go away.”

Says Ronaldo of his dalliance with three transvestite prostitutes:

“I cried a lot afterwards…Behind the personality I carry, I’m a normal person and have my weaknesses. Now I have to reconstruct everything. It’s like a house knocked down by a hurricane.”

Or a nasty stain that needs a good scrub…

“FANS FACE RED SQUARE UP,” says the Star, kicking off the tabloids’ traditional jingoistic build up to every big match on foreign soil.

It’s Russian Chelsea v American Manchester United in Moscow and “supporters fear chaos could end in a riot”.

Fear or hope? It’s unclear.

“Violent mafia gangs rule the streets and crooked police ignore drug abuse and prostitution…so will Moscow welcome the 100,000 British football fans for this month’s prestigious Champions’ League final.”

Sounds like they’re well prepared.

Lonely Planet and travel writing comment:

Travel writing died the day Max Gogarty retired.

AT the time of writing there are three famous footballers called Ronaldo.

There’s the one with the pony tail, oiled Ian Botham-style finger perm and the buck teeth.

There’s the one who takes an holistic approach to tackling, clutching his entire body when touched by an opposition player.

And there’s Ronaldo, the original Ronaldo, the chubby one with the chipmunk grin who froze in the Paris World Cup final.

News on the Star’s front page is that this Ronaldo has been caught in the company of three transvestites. No, not the AC Milan backline, but Andrea (Andre), Carla and a nameless other we’ll call Nesta.

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RONALDO - the other one; no, the other one - has invited three trannies back to his room, allegedly.

Buck-toothed Brazilian footballer Ronaldo got a little bit more than he bargained for when he invited three prostitutes back to his hotel room on Sunday night. And when we say a little bit more, we’re talking in the genitalia department…

That’s right: they were actually men.

The 3 Ronaldos…

MORE insights into Cristiano Ronaldo’s latest keepy-uppy lover Nereida Gallardo, Spain’s foremost Bobby Charlton tribute acts.

She’s Ron’s Bronze Goddess in the Sun, and in the sun, as Nereida poses in a pair of tan knickers, tan breasts and tan buttocks.

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SAYS Melanie Slade, girlfriend to footballer Theo Walcott, of her fellow Wags in FHM magazine:

“I hate the stereotype – the shopping all day long, the short dresses and massive sunglasses. I would never want to be associated with those women. The wannabes who are so desperate to sleep with a footballer have no respect for themselves, no ambition, nothing.”

“Bravo for Theo’s girl,” says the Sun as she poses in FHM, wearing a matching knickers and bra exposed thought a slipped-down and ridden-up grey T-shirt.

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RAINDROPS on roses and whiskers on kittens,
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens,
Brown paper packages tied up with strings,
These are a few of my favourite things…

Not if you’re Sam Bethell, they’re not. And neither are cream-coloured ponies and crisp apple streudels, let alone doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles.

No. When the dog bite, when the bee stings, when he’s feeling sad, Sam simply remembers nights on the beer and tear-ups on the terraces.

The Sun says that the 23-year-old Millwall supporter “lists drinking and books about hooliganism among his favourite things”.

All very informative. But who is Sam Bethall? He’s a supporter of “the best team in London, no, the best team of all” (as Millwall’s club song would have it). But that doesn’t stop him selling his soul every day by working on the ground staff at Stamford Bridge, home of the Lions’ arch-enemies Chelsea.

Not that the “tattooed mowerman” seems unduly bothered. “I sit on a mower watching some of the world’s greatest players play football,” he brags. And he is entitled to feel proud. This, let us not forget, at a ground where large numbers of fans hold “mowermen” in such high esteem that they sing “One Man Went To Mow” for hours on end.

So why is Sam Bethall in the news? Because he was involved in a fracas with Manchester United defender Patrice Evra after the match on Saturday.

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A PICTURE of Carly Zucker, Wag to Chelsea’s slack-jawed footballer Joe Cole.

Zucker is seen in the Star stepping from a car which is full of Mars branded footballs.

Zucker, dressed in red and black, is the face of the Mars campaign to “get more youngsters playing sport this summer”. And, one imagines, playing sport while fuelled by wholesome confectionary.

And rightly so. Mars bars, as with all fattening, queasy treats, should only be eaten by persons engaged in sporting activity. The wonder is that they don’t come with a free rowing machine or pair of trainers.

The only problem is that Paul Gascoigne and not Zucker should have got the nod to front the campaign. For a period in the 1980s and early 1990s, Gazza was country’s foremost Mars bar muncher.

Gascoigne was routinely pelted with Mars bars at football matches. It was Gazza who once paid £320 for a Mars Bar in a newsagent’s in his home town of Dunston.

It was Gascoigne who in 1989 put his name to the book Daft As A Brush, which featured a nutrition section entitled Keep Fat With Gazza, and “12 exciting ways to eat a Mars Bar” - Number four: “Eat it on a bus.”

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AS befitting any long-haired lover of a Liverpool footballer, mo-del Abbey Clancy has gone away to “calm down”.

So says the Star, which leads with news of goings on at London’s Valmont club.

Yes, as in Vicomte de Valmont, of Les Liaisons Dangereuses repute. In this modern version of the book, the part of Valmont is played by Big Brother star emeritus Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace (seen on the paper’s front cover in 18th Century knickers and bra).

She is said to have made a “desperate” move for Clancy’s (Marquise de Merteuil) footballer Peter Crouch (Madame de Tourvel or the virginal Cécile de Volanges?).

“I can’t believe Abbey Clancy was trying to f****** start with you,” says one onlooker in halting French.

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SKY WATCH- Anorak’s occasional look at plugs in Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers for Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV.

Ian Wright, former BBC football pundit and Sun columnists, is talking about the BBC:

“They put out these sinister adverts about what will happen if you don’t pay the licence fee, then serve up a load of rubbish… If reality dancing shows aren’t your thing then tough luck.

“It’s all right for me because I can pay the licence fee and still afford to pay for Sky”

Should the licence fee be abolished? Rupert..?

STEVE McClaren, English football’s wally with the brolly, will not be spending Euro 2008 on a sun lounger in the Med, sat beneath his umbrella (rain and sun, the brolly’s got the lot).

Well, not unless BBC Radio Five Live pundit’s can communicate via mobile phone?

New in the Sun is that McClaren has been snapped up by the national broadcaster to give invaluable insight and expert analysis on Euro 2008.

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