A FEW months back, Anorak receied a call from Tiger Aspect, a TV production company.

The excited researcher wanted to know the contact details of Barry Richards, 16, a pupil at the Wat Tyler comprehensive in Grays, and a leading member of the Essex Young Conservatives. You can read about him here.

Now Anorak’s freind in the US, 14, writes from the US about how one of her satirical works - the Urban Satchel -  has been accepted as true by the mainstream press.

Much to my delight, an alert reader has informed me that the NY Edition of The Metro has used my Urban Satchel in a fluff article about women’s handbags.

(more…)

Share and Enjoy:

• 
• 
• 
• 

HEADLINE of the Day, in the Tabloid Telegraph: “Health and safety inspector falls off ladder.”

A health and safety inspector had to be rescued by firefighters after he fell from a ladder while he was carrying out a risk assessment.

Before we fail this under “Beyond Parody”, let’s investigate further.

(more…)

DUSTY Horwitt writes for the Washington Post. No, not Viz magazine. Horwitt is no f***wit as he writes in a newspaper (and on the web) about there being too much information.

He begins his piece: “Everybody jokes about “TMI” these days.”

TM?

“Too much information.” BP – Beyond Parody.

As we say Horwitt is no F***witt. Unless…

(more…)

Share and Enjoy:

• 
• 
• 
• 

SAYS Deputy leader of Oldham Council Jackie Stanton: “We expect Unity staff to share the same values and code of conduct as council colleagues and so are very concerned about these allegations.”

Two council contract staff have been suspended after they were seen having sex in an office. A crowd of 20 person gathered round to be appalled and outraged.

The venue? Why, the offices of Unity Partnership in Oldham town centre…

File under “Beyond Parody”…

BLOW up the balloons. Release the balloons. Make the orphans in Bristol smile…

Spotter: Fiona

“IT all started with a drama over peas. A very, very small portion of whatever vegetable the rest of us were eating was placed nonchalantly by me on my seven-year-old son Freddie’s plate.”

We join the action in the Telegraph, and in slummy mummy Charlotte Hume’s kitchen diner. She’s written a book (available via, er, Telegraph books) about the A to Z of vegetables and how Freddie (F for flageolet) is now eating and learning all at once.

He’d look up at me and the bargaining would begin. I am used to him starting the bids low. “If I eat two peas, is that enough?”

(more…)

Share and Enjoy:

• 
• 
• 
• 

DAVID Davis wants to make 42 days a big issue. And one Labour activist wonders:

Maybe instead of Labour fielding a candidate in Haltemprice & Howden we should find a Martin Bell type candidate - preferably a recently retired senior police officer, or a survivor or relative of a victim of a terrorist attack, to run under the following 5 word candidate description: “Independent - for detaining terrorism suspects”. 

- Luck Akehurst Location: Labour Party activist since 1988 - firmly on the moderate wing of the party. National Secretary of Labour Students 1995-6.

File under beyond parody

“KATE MOSS, SADIE, SIENNA And ME,” trails the front page of the Sunday Times.

The headline “ME” is a Sunday Times everyman, a nominal person who will place the three women in context and add historical perspective. She’s given the unlikely name Davinia Taylor, a moniker that blends the deliberately extraordinary with the plebeian

“Davinia Taylor: Secrets of the Primrose Hill set,” says the paper, in what proves to be skilful parody on modern life, and newspaper reporting.

“Davinia Taylor is at the heart of the group, which includes Sadie Frost and Kate Moss. She has never spoken, until now.”

A mute celebrity friend is surely what they all crave. No kiss and tells with a dumb person. But now Davinia is given a voice.

Davinia Taylor is in her downstairs loo. “That’s Kate and me just after we left Disneyland,” she says, pointing out photos. “And there she is in the country, washing the car with Lila. Oh, look, the Duch!” - the Duchess of York, on a night out with Princess Eugenie. Here is Davinia with her new baby, the now 11-month-old Grey, and her husband, David Gardner, the footballer turned agent and David Beckham’s best friend.

Were this not a clear parody, it would be beyond parody, and Anorak would hang up its coat and retire.

Then a snap of Jake Chapman’s daughter in a highchair, the word ‘F***’ artistically picked out in raisins in front of her. “She didn’t do that herself, obviously.”

(more…)

WHO is Tyra Banks? Well…

Tyra Banks has 275 smiles. Like a star athlete who has perfected a jump shot or a curveball, Banks has studied, honed and mastered the smile. In her arsenal are the “surprise smile,” the “angry but still smiling” smile, the “flirting with boyfriend” smile and the “commercial” smile, which, like the rest of Tyra’s smiles, was designed and perfected when Banks, who is now 34, began modeling at 15.

The engmatic smile may still allude her:

“Smiles come naturally to me, but I started thinking of them as an art form at my command,” Banks told me.

Tyra Banks has presents US TV’s The Tyra Show - think Jeremy Kyle meets Being Anthea Turner:

When she was 20, she wrote in one of her notebooks: “If Michael Jordan can sell tennis shoes and Magic Johnson can sell cars, I can sell cornflakes. I can and I will. So just sit back and relax because here I come. . . . I’m going to hurt and abuse.” Banks looked pleased when she read that passage aloud. “It was a moment,” she said now. “When I showed that to my mom the other day, she said, ‘You didn’t just happen overnight.’ ”

(more…)

QUOTE of the day: Menu-oir writer John Prescott to Briton’s former ambassador to the US Sir Christopher Mayer, author of DC Confidential:

“I am alarmed that you are perfectly happy to profit from tittle-tattle, betraying confidences and by character assassination…”

File under: Beyond Irony…

WASN’T BBC TV’s ‘exclusive’ interview with Austrian kidnap victim Austrian kidnap victim Natasha Kampusch, 20, a non-event?” asks the Mail semi-rhetorically.

Before we go on, note that in the same issue the Mail’s feature “In the shadow of the swastika” tells us:

“Natasha Kampusch, who for eight years was held in a similar dungeon to the one where Josef Fritzl imprisoned his daughter, opened a Pandora’s box when she linked both horror stories to the country’s ‘authoritarian education’ and ‘the suppression of women’ under the Nazis. Her implication was that Fritzl, at 73 a child of the Nazi era, belongs to a generation that thought it could get away with anything.”

The Mail continues:

“Invited by Robin Denslow to comment on the latest Austrian kidnap scandal, Natascha… suggested it might be connected to the exploitation of women by Nazis during the Second World War.

“Isn’t this the kind of airy-fairy theory she might have heard from social workers.”

Or else she read it in the Mail…

BEYOND parody - and irony of ironies… (more…)

UPDATE: Rescuers have found a cluster of brightly coloured party balloons floating in the ocean.

“Given his physical condition and the equipment he was carrying, I would say there is an 80 percent chance that he is still alive,” said Johnny Coelho, commander of the Penha Fire Department, which is searching for the priest.BEYOND Parody: “A Roman Catholic priest who floated off under hundreds of helium party balloons is missing off the southern coast of Brazil.”

We know. There are time when the parodist needs to sit back and clap a higher talent. Reports the Daily Mail:

Rescuers in helicopters and small fishing boats were searching off the coast of Santa Catarina state, where pieces of balloons were found.

The Rev Adelir Antonio de Carli lifted off from the port city of Paranagua on Sunday afternoon, wearing a helmet, thermal suit and a parachute.

The smiling 41-year-old priest was strapped to a seat attached to a huge column green, red, white and yellow balloons, and soared into the air to the cheers of a crowd. He was reported missing about eight hours later after losing contact with port authority officials.

(more…)

Share and Enjoy:

• 
• 
• 
• 

AND then a vengeful Gaia did make it rain on the Al Goreans Earth Day.

Reports the Washington Post: “The Earth Day Festival, a free concert on the National Mall, was suspended just before 2:30 p.m. today when the skies cracked open with a rainstorm.”

When it rains you should cut the power, lest someone get electrocuted. Fortunately:

“I’m little, and it’s hard to see over everybody’s umbrella, but it’s fun,” 7-year-old Maya Friedson said as she tried to watch former American Idol finalist Blake Lewis sing a beat-box version of “America the Beautiful.” Maya and her family came from New York City for the festivities.

And there is always stuff to buy:

Perhaps the busiest booth promoted a product called Blade, a device that attaches to the tailpipe of a car or light truck and, its developers said, will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases while increasing fuel efficiency.

No, not a hose to kill the carbon exhalers inside the car. At least we think not. 

Happily:

(more…)

AFTER the best film ever, Anorak in New York brings you the world’s best book - ever!

Bringing Home The Birkin is a spoof, that much is certain, and were we not to know better we’d be certain it was taken from the manuscript of our own Ed Barrett.

His work still awaits publicatisn on accont of it being not half as funny as this obvious-yet-subtle parody:

Bringing Home the Birkin: My Life in Hot Pursuit of the World’s Most Coveted Handbag by Michael Tonello

Pitched as, “An insider’s hilarious, whirlwind account of his years spent globe-trotting in search of the holy grail of handbags: the Birkin….. Flirting with danger, Michael recounts the heady rush of hand delivering his first big score to famed songwriter Carole Bayer Sager in Paris….

(more…)

Share and Enjoy:

• 
• 
• 
• 

GORDON Brown is on American Idol. Really…

Really…

Really…
(more…)

THIS is an extract form Liberal DEmoctrat leader nick Clegg’s interview in GQ amgazine. It is beyond parody:

Piers Morgan: Was the invasion of Iraq illegal?
Nick Clegg: There’s a strong case to suggest it was in breach of UN resolutions, yes.

PM: So, assuming it was illegal, would it be justified for Iraqis to exact revenge on Britain?
NC: I don’t think you remedy an act of violence like that.

PM: If Iraq had invaded Britain illegally, you would have said it was morally justified for us to attack them back, wouldn’t you?
NC: Yes, I probably would.

PM: So why is it not morally justified for them to attack us back?
NC: I wish it was that simple.

(more…)

Share and Enjoy:

• 
• 
• 
• 

BRITNEY Spears has only limited access to her two children.

Cue the Sun: “Britney Spears is set to make a small guest appearance on US show How I Met Your Mother.”

In a lawyer’s office between 2:30 and 3:30 every other Wednesday…

Pic: 14

DAVID Rees has a question: “What’s the maximum number of exclamation points you can post to your blog in one day?”

In Fleet Street the exclamation mark was known as “The Screamer!” It now lacks any power. Overused! And undervalued! LOL!!

The blog exclamation mark is the grammatical emoticon, those symbols that reveal the writer to be the sort of person who quotes scenes from films, eats their own bogies and has a Crazy Frog ringtone (and not just as one Anorak writer reserves for his wife).

Says Rees:

Between this and this and this, blogging could get insane this weekend. So I’m stockpiling exclamation points now.

[! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !]

I’d advise other bloggers to do the same, before the government makes it a crime to hoard punctuation marks.

The exclamation mark is used in place of humour (!), to alert the reader to the news that Pete! and Joan!!! are coming for dinner!!!! and they are bringing a lemon cake!!!!!

The effect is to dull the already duller than dull. The one useful purpose of the exclamation mark is to alert the reader to the fact that the person exclaiming is a pillock.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Paul Sorene

BEYOND Parody: Sue Carroll on Prince Harry and the War On Terror:

“Without wishing to demean in any way the amazing job out boys (and girls) are doing out there, I trust they won’t mind if we women back home refer to Helmland province as a ‘phwoar zone’”…

PRESS release of the day: RICK WAKEMAN will moan for you.

Recorded from his very successful tour of the same name, this hilarious one-man show see Rick Wakeman reprise his very popular role from the BBC hit series, ‘Grumpy Old Men’.  Identifying with the masses, watch him moan and rant his way through the frustrations and irritations of modern life! Delivered in a highly amusing fashion, Rick creates a riotous pastiche of his extraordinary life and escapades.

There are day when everything Anorak reads is “Beyond Parody”

The Real Mr Pooter Reviews The Thai Restaurant, Poole…

As told to Compass South Magazine March 2008.

Send your cuttings from the local press to editor [@] anorak.co.uk…