Slapper Happy

‘THE week began with the Mail telling its readers that Celebrity Love Island would be all about sex.

The Mail’s readers clucked their marmalade-covered tongues in disapproval at the thought of Rebecca Loos putting into practice what she had done to a pig on a real life human celebrity.

And what she got wrong, Abi Titmuss could lend a hand with. And it was to the nurse-turned-slapper that the papers next turned.

Oops! It was a mistake that was all too easy to make, and Titmuss was at pains to tell the world, via the diary room, how she was nothing like a slapper.

“I have had to embrace being sexy and being a sexual person,” she explained. “But there is a big difference between being that and being a slapper. A big difference.”

Perhaps. Once the competition starts in earnest, the pressure to produce “love”, and the promise of £50,000, will soon establish how big the difference between the embracing of sexuality and slapperdom really is.

While Titmuss, slapper and non-slappers got to grips with reality TV, and each other, the world reeled in shock. Kylie Minogue – our Kylie – had breast cancer.

The Sun invited us to weep and wail. Not only was this our Kylie but she had fallen ill to one of those diseases that get a lot of coverage.

Not for Kylie a really bad case of piles, and damage to her famous derriere, but a dose of something a paper like the Sun can really sink its teeth into.

The paper offered wristbands, which cost a pound (via its own 60p-a-minute phoneline), with the proceeds going to Breast Cancer Care. “WEAR IT FOR KYLIE,” ordered the headline. “A £1 wristband will show you care.”

The following page contained a prominent box headed “Where to buy the band”. And you could always send your message to Kylie via the pages of the Sun, using a special email address set up for the purpose, or join “the world’s biggest online get-well card” on the Sun website.

It was all too, too much. Having feasted on Kylie’s backside for years, the shock of switching to her frontage was too much to bear.

Especially for the Sun, which, ever-mindful of its readers tastes, found a different bottom to flash – Saddam Hussein’s.

Forget talk about abusing a prisoner’s rights and the Geneva Convention, and know that in seeing the deposed tyrant in his pants, his legend would be no more.

And his studded leather thong the talk of the town…’

Posted: 20th, May 2005 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Your Number’s Up

‘IT is a mark of the yellowness of the American media that the chief opposition to President Bush’s virulently right-wing administration has come from the formerly apolitical editor of a formerly apolitical style magazine.

Most first-class passengers just get slippers

Where Michael Moore rants and raves about Bush and his cronies, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter tries to undermine the regime with a barrage of statistics.

And he has collected them in a new book, called What We’ve Lost, much of which is reprinted in this morning’s Independent.

Dubya last night appealed to the American electorate to give him four more years in which to roll back the frontiers of freedom, to build a safer world and a more hopeful America.

This more hopeful America is one in which, as the Indy records, 34.6 million people live below the poverty line, in which the richest 1% of the population own 40% of the country’s wealth.

It is an administration that has presided over the loss of 2.3m jobs in three years (compared with 22m created during Bill Clinton’s eight years in the White House).

This is a President whose tax cuts saved the average member of his cabinet $42,000 last year, while 49% of the country found their taxes had actually gone up.

And this is a leader who has spent a total of 500 days away from the White House, including a 28-day holiday in August 2001 and again in August 2003. The average American gets 13 days a year.

But it is not just in numbers that Bush’s appalling record as President is condemned.

The wife of one of George Snr’s former confidants revealed yesterday that George Jnr was transferred from the Texas National Guard to Alabama because his drunken behaviour was embarrassing his dad.

The Guardian hears Linda Allison reveal that she never saw Dubya in uniform and had no idea he was even supposed to be in the national guard.

“Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family,” she says, “and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston.”

And on Sunday, says the paper, a former lieutenant governor of Texas will admit that he pulled strings to get Bush in a unit of the national guard known as the Champagne Unit because it had so many sons of prominent politicians and businessmen.

Yet, it is Vietnam veteran John Kerry who is forced to defend his war record, while somehow Bush escapes scrutiny.

Go figure, as they say on the other side of the Atlantic…’

Posted: 3rd, September 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Road Sense

‘POLITICIANS spend a lot of time and waste a lot of energy debating issues that don’t really affect anyone’s lives.

‘Nah! Still can’t find the diamonds. Let’s try the Strand again’

Fox-hunting is a case in point. Yes, it’s probably cruel, but on the other hand the fox population has to be controlled and this is how it has traditionally been done.

There are decent arguments on both sides – as there are in the HP v Daddies debate.

As soon as politicians realise they’re not going to create a Utopia (which, anyway, would be another person’s idea of hell on earth) and get on with doing things that actually improve people’s day-to-day lives, the better.

For instance, the Times reports today that at last utility and telecoms companies wishing to dig up our roads will soon have to apply for a permit to do so.

On a global scale, this may be of negligible importance, but it will make a huge difference to motorists frustrated at yet another seemingly inexplicable lane closure.

For instance, the paper reports that the Strand, one of London’s busiest thoroughfares, was dug up a mind-boggling 157 times last year – and that does not include the frequent roadworks done without informing the local council.

Most recently was for a gas leak, which was detected last week and repaired on Tuesday – but the road is still dug up because Transco’s contractor CLC failed to turn up to resurface the road.

In future, companies will be fined up to a pretty paltry £2,500 a day for such lapses. Poor resurfacing work will attract fines of up to £5,000.

Some of the worst offenders are telecoms companies who up to now have refused to lay their cables in the same trench.

“They claim that they want to keep their routes commercially confident,” says Peter Brown, of Transport for London, “but telecom companies manage to work together in New York.”

And, as the song (almost) says, if they can do it there, then they can do it anywhere…’

Posted: 3rd, September 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Still Life

‘THERE are a couple of different ways in which the death toll on Britain’s roads can be eradicated – one is to reduce the speed limit to zero, the other is to ban everyone from driving.

‘Ruddy tandems!’

The Government has already gone some way along the first path, with its 20mph zones and variable speed limits on motorways.

And judging by the forest of speed cameras that now litter the highways and byways of this country, it is only a matter of time before the latter is achieved.

But even that might not be enough for road safety campaigners, who are this morning up in arms over indications that Transport Secretary Alistair Darling is considering a review of penalties for speeding.

The Guardian says the Government is reacting to “the chorus of public complaints” that the present system (whereby anyone caught driving over the speed limit receives a fine and at least three penalty points) is arbitrary, inflexible and designed to raise money rather than make the roads safer.

The paper says that in future motorists who are caught marginally over the limit could be given lower penalties or sent on a speed awareness course.

In 2003, a staggering two million fines from speed cameras were recorded, while the death toll on Britain’s roads rose from 3,400 in 2002 to 3,508 last year.

But road safety campaigners will not rest until that figure is down to zero.

Brigitte Chaudry, of RoadPeace, complains: “These proposals could lead to more deaths.

“Our research shows that almost half of Britain’s motorists admit to speeding a little over the speed limit every day.”

All of which should, you think, be grist to Alistair Darling’s mill – but not a bit of it.

Mary Williams, chief executive of Brake, says she is “appalled at this proposal, which flies in the face of speed”.

“At just 35mph,” she says, “the risk of death on impact with someone on foot or on bicycle is far, far higher than at 20mph, which is a far safer limit in heavily built-up areas.”

And at 20 mph the risk of death on impact with someone on foot or on bicycle is far, far higher than at 10mph.

And at 10mph the risk of death on impact with someone on foot or on bicycle is far, far higher than when the car is stationary…’

Posted: 2nd, September 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Intelligent Life On Radio?

‘ALIENS listening into the Chris Moyles show on Radio 1 may have concluded that there is no intelligent life on Earth.

‘Are you sure you’re not Dave Lee Travis?’

But scientists on this planet believe they may have listened in to a radio broadcast of an intelligent alien civilisation.

According to the Times, the enigmatic signal has been picked up three times since last year by the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.

“It does not carry the signature of any known astronomical phenomenon,” the paper says, “and does not appear to be the result of natural interference or noise, according to researchers who have studied its frequency pattern.

“This means that it could have been transmitted deliberately by an extra-terrestrial species on a distant planet, though experts cautioned this remains unlikely.”

The signal – known by the snappy title, SHGbO2+14a – has now been listened to on three occasions adding up to about a minute.

This is apparently not enough to establish its source, although scientists say it definitely did not come from a terrestrial radio station.

It actually played some music during that time…’

Posted: 2nd, September 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Shingle File

‘WHEN in years to come academics ponder the wholesale disappearance of south Dorset, they’re likely to identify several scapegoats.

Charlie Dimmock illustrates the wheelbarrow position

Global warming will, of course, be first on the list, followed by things like coastal erosion, tide patterns, Vanessa Feltz taking her summer holiday in Bournemouth…

But the real culprit, we learn today from the Telegraph, is someone who has never been seen in an ill-fitting bra in her life – Charlie Dimmock.

Conservationists blame Dimmock, Alan Titchmarsh and other stalwarts of TV shows like Ground Force, Garden Invaders and My Sod, Your Sod for the destruction of the famous Chesil Bank.

Apparently, amateur gardeners are taking away pebbles by the sackload and in the process gradually destroying the beach which forms part of the Jurassic Coast world heritage site.

Warden of Chesil Bank Don Moxon says pebbles and shingle are vital to the area’s ecosystem, as well as being a natural bulwark against the sea.

“Too many,” he says, “are ending up in ponds or fountains. If people want stones for their gardens, they should go to garden centres.

“If people saw the storms and what was at risk, they would want every pebble to remain on the beech.”

He clearly hasn’t been to Poole…’

Posted: 2nd, September 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

In The Black

‘IT is a familiar sight on a Friday afternoon outside Anorak Towers – old Mr Anorak climbing into his chauffeur-driven Roller laden with suitcases full of cash.

‘Everything I have I owe to Anorak’

From there he is driven to his Mayfair pied-a-terre, where he and his 21-year-old wife Svetlana will normally dine with 20 of the great and good before flying off in the company jet to one of their many boltholes on the Continent.

It is an arrangement that has suited old Mr Anorak (and the various Mrs Anoraks) very well over the years, but the signs are the good times may be coming to an end.

A report in this morning’s Telegraph reports on how its former owner and Mr Anorak’s dear friend, Conrad Black, is in trouble for just such behaviour.

Like our esteemed proprietor, Lord Black (ennobled for services to corporate greed) looted his American publishing company to fund his extravagant lifestyle.

In just seven years, Black and his fellow cronies on the board of Hollinger International plundered a staggering $400m from the company – 95% of the company’s net income.

The Independent says the report by Richard Breeden, a former chairman of the powerful Securities & Exchange Commission, describes the “self-righteous and aggressive looting” of a company so extensive there are few parallels in history.

The money was used to fund the lifestyle of Black and his wife Barbara Amiel (aka Lady Black), including $1.4m for private staff at the Blacks’ residences, a $1.1m salary for Lady Black (even though she did minimal work), $90,000 to refurbish a Rolls-Royce for Black’s personal use, $43,000 for a birthday party for Lady B and $140 for a jogging suit for Lady B’s use.

Hollinger International is now suing Black and his fellow major shareholders (who include mass murderer and former US Secretary Of State Henry Kissinger and former US defence adviser Richard Perle) for $1.25bn.

Black meanwhile is countersuing, describing the investigating committee in July as “Breeden and his fascists…who are a menace to capitalism as any sane and civilised person would define it”.

We like to think of ourselves as sane and civilised people here at Anorak Towers, so here goes:

Capitalism (n): an economic and political system wherein the already rich and powerful make themselves richer and more powerful at the expense of everyone else.

Sounds fair to us. Eh, Mr Anorak?’

Posted: 1st, September 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Miller’s Crossing

‘NO-ONE knows more about the benefits of capitalism than Lord Black’s friends in the Republican Party.

‘What time does Bloomingdale’s open?’

After all, George Bush, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft et al have increased their already huge private fortunes by bankrupting America with their absurd tax cuts for the uber-rich.

And if they lie and cheat their way to victory in the US Presidential election again, we can expect that after four more years their bank balances will be still bigger.

And if they do, they will have people like Zell Miller, Democratic senator for Georgia, to thank.

The Guardian reports that Zigzag Zell, as he is known, will today become the first person to deliver a keynote address at two national conventions, each time for a different party.

Twelve years ago, he delivered a speech backing Bill Clinton. Only three years ago, he described John Kerry as “one of this nation’s authentic heroes, one of this party’s best-known and greatest leaders and a good friend”. Today, he will sing the praises of the most right-wing President in living memory.

Of course, Miller’s apostasy would have nothing to do with the fact that he was passed over as Al Gore’s running mate in 2000.

Nor would the fact that he refuses to leave the Democratic party have anything to do with the fact that – as the leader of a group called Zellout.com says – “as a Democrat, you’re a story in New York, but as a Republican you’re just another right-wing zealot”.

As a man of principle, Senator Miller makes the fur-wearing supermodel veterans of the “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” campaign look like paragons of virtue.’

Posted: 1st, September 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

The Eighth Deadly Sin

‘LUST, greed, pride, envy, anger, gluttony and sloth. It sounds like the Seven Dwarfs after a couple of years as Premiership footballers.

And who pulls his strings?

But they are of course the seven deadly sins – and to that we can now add an eighth. Apathy.

The Times reports that listeners to Radio 4’s Midsummer Sins have voted overwhelmingly to add the lack of interest in anything and everything as the new vice.

And, says the paper, it proves “that the dying art of getting steamed up about nothing in particular survives in quiet corners of Middle England”.

However, only 2,000 people bothered to vote in the poll – “not a lot for BBC Radio’s premier speech channel”.

As well as apathy, voters nominated hypocrisy, selfishness, intolerance, ignorance, deceit, cynicism and waste.

Sending young men and women to their death on the basis of a lie was not mentioned.’

Posted: 1st, September 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Old Hat, New Hat

‘REPUBLICANS are about as popular in New York as, say, Ann Robinson in Wales, a Durex salesman in the Vatican or, well, the Americans in Baghdad.

‘Four more years!’

But that hasn’t stopped them trying to take over the Big Apple for the party’s five-day convention, which they hope will propel George Bush to a second term as US president.

And in doing so they have ensured that they will leave the city even less popular there than they were when they arrived.

Many New Yorkers are openly resentful at what they see as Bush’s attempt to exploit 9/11 for electoral gain; others are just pissed off at the disruption the convention has caused.

According to the Telegraph, a TV station yesterday apologised for not having received a single e-mail welcoming the Republican delegates to town.

“Come of, folks,” the announcer pleaded, “let’s have some positive messages, please.”

And so to demonstrator Melissa Simon, who welcomed the Texan contingent with a little song.

“We are everything. We are rich. We are white and have all the money. We love shutting down farms and building baseball stadiums. Hooray.”

But the Texans were unabashed, wearing their cowboy hats with pride.

David Flynn, a member of the Texan legislature, told the Telegraph: “This is not a foreign country. It’s the USA. I wore my hat in London. I see no reason not to wear it here.”

And, says the Times, it was to a Brit that former New York mayor Rudi Giuliani appealed last night as he paid homage to President Bush’s steadfast post-9/11 leadership.

“Winston Churchill,” he said, “saw the dangers of Hitler when his opponents and much of the press characterised him as a warmongering gadfly.”

True, although it should be remembered that Winston Churchill’s response to Hitler wasn’t to invade Switzerland.

And, while we’re on comparisons with Churchill, we all know what happened to him in the election after the war.’

Posted: 31st, August 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Back To Basics

‘OF course, if you believe the papers, most British teenagers wouldn’t have any idea who Winston Churchill was. Or Adolf Hitler, for that matter.

‘Up yours, Mr Chips’

They are too busy learning about women’s issues in mediaeval Europe or the role of homosexuality in the textile industries to worry about World War II.

But, says the Guardian, right-wing think-tank Civitas is determined to put that right.

It is appealing for shareholders to back the New Model School it is planning to open in London in a fortnight.

As well as teaching maths, phonics-based reading and French, the Queen’s Park primary school (with fees of some £3,000 a year) will teach children “social skills and good character”.

Robert Whelan, the organisation’s deputy director, urges supporters to help fund the school, arguing that “our culture is in serious decline – one might almost say meltdown”.

But what Civitas means by “our culture” is a vexed question – it promotes pamphlets opposing immigration and lambasting asylum.

“Are schools going to be established that will attack our multiracial, multicultural society?” asks former Home Office minister Barbara Roche.

“Will the contributions of, for example, black and multiethnic servicemen and women during the Second World War be excluded from history teaching?”

Will children no longer have to draw a picture of their favourite pet and write about the Industrial Revolution from the point of view of a canary?’

Posted: 31st, August 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

The Young Fogeys

‘IF, by the sounds of it, white is the new black, then old is the new young.

Maggie wears suit, £49.99 by Doggie Style; bag by Funkaware…

Tweed skirts, sensible shoes and pussy-bow blouses are this autumn’s big fashion news; caravanning is cool and Scrabble is the ‘in’ pastime on both sides of the Atlantic.

And, says the Independent, “young fogeys” are the latest socio-cultural phenomenon.

It seems that we have been so overloaded with sexy, youthful imagery that we are now bored with it.

According to analysis by HeadlightVision, today’s young urban adults are more receptive to wholesome advertising campaigns.

And, says the paper, this mirrors the growth in popularity of what used to be considered blue-rinse pursuits, such as bingo and bridge.

Even Jordan and Peter Andre, those gurus of urban chic, admitted that they spent most of their recent holiday together on the Maldives playing Scrabble.

How many points for INSANIA on a double word score?’

Posted: 31st, August 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Sugaring The Pill

‘SHOULD a cleric dash up to you and offer you a bar of chocolate if you come back to his place, don’t scream for the police and call Esther Rantzen.

A chocolate a day helps you work, rest and pray

It’s most likely they work for the Bishop of Manchester, the Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch, who has hit upon a novel way of getting the punters in.

In a drive to swell the Church Of England’s congregations for the upcoming harvest festival, half the diocese’s 300 parishes have already signed up to scheme to give worshippers a ‘goody bag’.

Inside this gift from above contains the latest issue of the diocese newsletter, Crux, a glossy brochure about the Church and a bar of milk chocolate.

The Back To Church Sunday scheme also involves the distribution of thousands of what the Telegraph calls ‘credit-card-style invitations’ and a poster campaign depicting people standing around a puzzle-shaped hole containing the slogan ‘Missing You’.

That should be more than enough to have the churches busting at their seams, but there is even more.

For the September 26 service, clergy are being encouraged to stick to their congregations’ favourite hymns and to do something ‘completely different’ during the service.

A live sex show might be deemed inappropriate and messy, as too a game of pin the tale on Jesus’s donkey.

Expect instead something like a rock band or a comedy video. Or a break to watch EastEnders…’

Posted: 27th, August 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

The Getaway

‘AS we read that before his arrest Mark Thatcher was planning to leave South Africa for a life in Dallas, we realise that so much in life is about timing.

That’s the way the cookie crumbles

Had Maggie’s boy managed to make it to the USA, he’d not now be at the centre of a police investigation and facing a possible 15 years in jail.

And what goes for the man accused of working to finance an alleged coup to topple the regime in Equatorial Guinea also goes for the thousands of us wanting to make the most of this Bank Holiday weekend.

We can see the Guardian’s map of where travel problems are likely to occur but, unless we headed off last June, chances are high that we’ll be spending many hours stuck in a hermetically sealed stationary train or an overstuffed Mondeo.

But today we can say that there is now one thing that will no longer be left to chance.

Thanks to Waitrose Food International, we know which biscuits last longest when dunked into a cup of hot tea.

No more need to dice with danger as we guess the optimum moment to remove our saturated Garibaldi from a brew.

Get it right and it’s delicious, melt-in-your mouth treat; get in wrong and your brownish cuppa looks like the product of a high velocity colonic irrigation.

But before the result is known, there’s time a few words from WFI’s William Sitwell, the boffin that has placed Britain once more at the vanguard of world science.

‘As well as relatively straightforward physical tests,’ says our man with a kettle, ‘we needed to establish the mean duration of the individual dunk episode of the average Briton.’

Before your head spins clean off its shoulders, just know that this test involves seeing how long it took for each biscuit type to wholly dissolve in tea.

And know too that the Waitrose team was ‘startled’ by the robustness of some biscuits, especially the Giant Finger, which lasted a full hour before falling apart.

But when taking flavour into account, the Giant Finger performed poorly. And the official best biscuit to dunk into your tea is…the…ginger nut.

‘The classic dunker, with the ginger becoming more gingery while the biscuit holds its crunch,’ says the paper. ‘Dunk for 2.92 seconds.’

With that cleared up, all that’s left is to work out how long it will take to get to the seaside at a rate of two miles per hour (or five yards per ginger nut).

The answer? A very long time if Mark Thatcher’s navigating…’

Posted: 27th, August 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

But Is It Rubbish?

‘ONE big concern for the doyens of modern art is that it’s so easy to forge.

‘A challenging and very moving piece’ – The Guardian

Anorak’s version of Tracey Emin’s unmade bed recently sold at auction for millions and our Damien Hirst-inspired ‘Half A Fish Finger’ has already attracted bids from excited art lovers in New York and Paris.

But modern art’s accessibility is a double-edged sword. And we are not overly concerned when we read the Independent’s news that a piece by Gustav Metzger is now on a slow boat to a landfill site in Tilbury.

We don’t blame the cleaner at the Tate Gallery for mistaking Metzger’s transparent bin liner filled with waste paper for a sack of worthless rubbish.

We are not here to judge, rather to lend our support and try to replicate German-born Metzger’s ‘Recreation Of First Public Demonstration Of Auto-Destructive Art’.

As the artist so rightly says in the Guardian, the form ‘re-enacts the obsession with destruction, the pummelling to which individuals and masses are subjected’.

Up to that point, we had been making good progress, but Metzger’s words have placed an entirely new slant on our efforts.

Until we heard the great artist speak, our version had contained some red waste paper, which, as you just heard, would be utterly out of keeping with the artist’s vision.

But luckily, while we fish out the aesthetically unpleasing old KitKat wrapper from our work, Metzger has spotted another already filled bag of rubbish and replaced the discarded original object d’art in a flash of his genius.

And it will do just fine…until the art world sees ours. It’s not overly boastful to say that, next to Anorak’s version, Metzger’s work will look like a bag of crap…’

Posted: 27th, August 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Guinea Foul

‘FOR the thousands of holidaymakers stuck in airports, train stations and their cars as they try to get away for the Bank Holiday weekend, the Independent has a tale to while away a few hours.

‘Mark, Mark, Mark, In, In, In!’

This ‘implausible thriller’ involves Margaret Thatcher’s charmless son Mark, a pile of money, an alleged plot to overthrow the head of an oil-rich African state…and guns.

And it begins with Mark Thatcher being arrested and charged in his South African home over his part in an alleged plot to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea.

After being released from jail, where he was robbed of his shoes, jacket and mobile phone (all later returned), ‘3 O-levels Mark’ defended his honour.

‘I have no involvement in an alleged coup in Equatorial Guinea and I reject any suggestion to the contrary,’ says he.

Someone as arrogant as Thatcher would most likely expect his words to be taken on face value and the matter to rest there.

But South Africa’s elite police squad, the Scorpions, frown on tales of mercenaries and fomenting political unrest and claim to have ‘credible evidence, and information that he [Thatcher] was involved in the attempted coup’.

And so began what the Times calls ‘Sir Mark’s awful day’, a day when the man who inherited his baronetcy when his father died and has amassed a reputed £60m fortune was arrested at home…in his pyjamas.

Police sources say Thatcher behaved nervously, but no more so than anyone having his house searched for seven hours by thick-necked South African police would have.

And that he was not handcuffed when those same police took him to the station.

A different character to the chinless, law-abiding Thatcher might have even tried to overpower the cops and seized control of the vehicle.

But this is Mark Thatcher, the man whose claims to fame include getting lost on the Paris-Dakar rally in 1982 – he could have end up anywhere, perhaps even in Equatorial Guinea.

But if this story is not enough – and for us and the papers, which salivate over it for many pages, it’s almost too much – the Times places a cherry up Thatcher’s cooking goose.

Know that: ‘Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare also faces being drawn into the legal aftermath if the High Court in London finds that he was involved.’

Whether he was or wasn’t, what’s the betting that Archer will rewrite this sensational summer blockbuster in his own style, with Thatcher as the motor racing champion-turned oil magnate and Archer as the popular, fearless and athletic African king…’

Posted: 26th, August 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Chin Chin

‘WHILE large amounts of alcohol make others appear far more attractive, it turns your complexion as grey as fag ash.

‘But I only had one vodka Red Bull’

So the Portman group, a body run by the drinks industry, has come up with novel way to trying to curtail the rise in binge drinking among women.

The new message is a simple one: drinking makes you ugly.

Only, it’s not put in quite such blunt terms, and the Guardian says that women drinkers will be challenged by a more subtle message, delivered in poster form.

These pictures capture the style of beauty products, with alluring female faces staring out above vials of creams and messages like: ‘Put sickening regrets and gruesome skin behind you by allowing your natural moderation to shine through…’

The potion that prevents the ravages of an alcohol-based diet taking hold of your face is called ‘masq crème de regret’.

And the women seeing it in the 250 pubs and clubs that will showcase the posters next month will surely stop their drinking and stick to the recommended intake of no more than two to three units a day.

Or they won’t, and the masq de regret will prove to be no potion of fine liquid silk, exotic plant extracts and desiccated baby otters but a combination of dried sick, smeared lipstick and curry sauce…’

Posted: 26th, August 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Off The Rails

‘TOO often when we let the train take the strain, it pulls a muscle and lies prostrate on the track for hours until paramedics with hammers and drills arrive to kick it back into action.

A new invention – it’s called a bus

We at Anorak have always considered this to be less a matter of failures in train design, planning and investment and more a matter of branding.

Try not to think of the train as means of getting from A to B, rather consider it as moving toilet with picture windows.

But the Times says that a new improved mobile lav is on the way, and this one’s able to get stuck on the roads.

Make way for the Blade Runner, which has retractable steel wheels between rubber tyres, so allowing it to ride on road and rail at the flick of a button.

Part-funded by the Department Of Trade And Industry and being built by a Yorkshire engineering firm in conjunction with Lancaster and Northumbria universities, the new vehicle will open up underused branch lines.

The Times says that over 60 branch lines are unpopular with passengers because they are punctuated by stations that are too far from desired destinations.

This new hybrid vehicle will be able to pick up passengers from villages and then drive them on the rail track towards the main train line or town centre.

And as long as the conditions remain favourable, it sounds like a sure-fire hit.

Until it gets stuck on drowned roads in the summer, slips on leaves in the autumn, skids on ice in the winter and runs over new-born lambs in the spring…’

Posted: 26th, August 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Reign On Their Parade

‘PERHAPS when Kelly Holmes and her fellow glorious Olympians return for their Downing Street reception, Jamie Oliver can do something with their garlands.

The British gymnastics team

But before Tony, Cherie and their invited guests can applaud Oliver’s Pukka Olympic Pie in front of the flashing cameras, there is – according to the Times – the parade.

Such is the Prime Minister’s desire to be personally associated with every national success, that you half expect him to pull on one of the five free Team GB tracksuits his wife blagged in Athens and join the champions for the jaunt in an open-topped bus round London’s West End.

What odds Tony, Cherie, Euan, Nicky and Kathryn passing themselves off as some coxed fives boat crew with the pint-sized Leo calling the strokes?

But let’s not be churlish, because if the Government is genuine about wanting to bring the Games to London in 2012, raising the Olympic profile among the masses cannot hurt.

And if the bid is successful, perhaps the powers that be will do as the bigwigs behind the China 2008 Games are doing and issue a phrasebook to help visitors understand the local lingo.

According to the Times, the booklet – Basic Chinese 100 for Beijing 2008 Olympic Games – advises wannabe Mandarin speakers how to say things like, ‘The sports facilities are very good, everything is exceptionally well organised and the service is great’.

And if you get stuck for conversation with your Chinese cab driver as the car becomes entrenched in another toxic-filled mega-traffic jam, simply lean forwards, tap him on the shoulder and say: ‘These Olympic mascots and Chinese knots look very nice.’

The emphasis is very much on emphasising the positive.

So in readiness for 2012, let’s put pen to paper and create the language of the London Olympics.

‘President Blair and Prime Minister Livingstone are wonderful men with hearts of gold, blessed with the speed of a gazelle, the grace of a swan and the opportunism of two Oxford Street pickpockets…”

Posted: 25th, August 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Giving For Gold

‘HERE’S your chance to back the Government’s drive towards securing the right to host the 2012 London Olympics and get the chance to win your very own gold medal!

‘Do I hear £200,000..?’

And it gets even better when you hear that you need not train, inject your stomach with performance-enhancing drugs or even own a pair of shorts to enter.

To be considered for Olympic glory, simply put a donation in a brown paper envelope and sent it to ‘T Blair, Gold Fund’ by 2012.

The letter containing the fittest offer that hasn’t been intercepted, lost or stolen by Royal Mail workers will win the day.

As the Guardian reports on its front page, biotechnology entrepreneur Paul Drayson sent £100,000 to Tony’s Labour party while bidding for a £32m contract to supply the Department of Health with smallpox vaccine – and he won the deal.

Of course that was just coincidence. The National Audit Office and the Commons’ Science And Technology Committee looked into the matter and cleared all parties of fixing the contract.

But a mere two years after that deal, the Independent delivers the latest news that Drayson gave the Labour party a further £505,000 just after he was made a life peer.

Once more the level of coincidence is astonishing.

And this as Drayson takes his seat in the Lords ‘as a champion of the kind of bioscientific enterprise Tony Blair is eager to foster in Britain’ (Guardian).

So if you want to be a winner at Tony’s Olympics in 2012, don’t hang about. Get earning. And get donating.’

Posted: 25th, August 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

All The President’s Men

‘I LIKED Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity, so I’m going to vote for John Kerry.

‘Four More Years!’

So goes the thinking in America, where the race to be president is a made-for-TV event.

Just yesterday, we noticed that many Democrats were appalled by the adverts casting aspersions on John Kerry’s Vietnam War record.

In Hollywood, showbiz Democrats were no less aghast. The shoddy camera work, the poor make-up and the lack of special effects were an affront to their artistic temperament.

So, the Telegraph says, some of the big names in entertainment have set about making their own campaign movies.

And last night, these adverts were showcased in New York in an event called ’10 Weeks: Don’t Get Mad, Get Even’, a reference to the time between now and the November 2 election.

Once a week, one of the ten 30-second adverts will be screened on American TV.

Rob Reiner will employ all the skills learnt from his hit movie When Harry Met Sally to show how a vote for Kerry will lead to better orgasms.

His fellow director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) is reunited with Matt Damon in a film that will show that Americans always have nice teeth and win the day.

And all this on top of the Vote For Change tour in which such notables as Bruce Springsteen will extol the virtues of being born in the USA.

And the Hip-Hop Summit, where rappers will tell you mutha-fuckas how they ain’t gonna be no ho bitch ho for no-one, no how, no ever.

So much for the Kerry gang show.

Over in the Bush camp, Mel Gibson is getting behind his man – it’s what Jesus would have wanted.

And Britney Spears is showing how life under Bush has made her stomach flatter and her hair blonder.

And so it goes on, as the actors, singers and entertainers get behind their man.

And the rest of the world gets into a nuclear bunker…’

Posted: 25th, August 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Drawing Blood

‘IF Americans were known as masters of irony, attacks by George Bush’s supporters on Presidential hopeful John Kerry’s war record would be cause for no little smirking and knowing laughter.

George Bush singlehandedly won the Vietnam war

But Americans have no such reputation on this side of the Atlantic.

The adverts running on US telly, where a group calling itself the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT) questions Kerry’s Vietnam record, are delivered and taken with no hint of salt.

Such attacks are in themselves no new event, and the Times is right when it reports that, ever since Kerry formerly accepted the role as the Democrat Party’s Presidential candidate, his record in the Vietnam War has come under intense scrutiny.

The news is that such negative campaigning appears to be working with the Times reporting that a poll commissioned by the US broadcaster CBS shows support for Kerry among veterans down by ten points.

His lead over Texas/Alabama National Guard veteran Bush has been cut back from five points to just one.

But just as things are turning in Bush’s favour, the Independent hears him say that Kerry ‘ought to be proud of his record’.

He also called on such commercials as that produced by the SBVT and financed by ‘soft money’ to be banned.

And that’s noteworthy since, as the Times says, although the Bush campaign has not funded the adverts, they have been financed by Texans linked to the White House and the Bush clan.

But while we mull over that – and wonder why it is that while battles are ongoing in the Middle East, Americans are still debating the whys and wherefores of Vietnam – another prominent American politician has stepped up to add his voice to the debate.

The Times says that Bob Dole, the uncharismatic 1996 Republican presidential candidate, whose arm was made useless by an injury sustained in combat in World War II, is unimpressed by tales of Kerry’s heroics.

Speaking of how Kerry was wounded three times in action, Dole says that it’s no big deal because he ‘never bled’.

However painful and annoying, what Kerry suffered – ankle sprains, cricked necks and split ends – are not what Dole classes as genuine war wounds.

‘I mean, they’re all superficial wounds,’ says Dole. ‘And boasting about three Purple Hearts when you think of some of the people who really got shot up in Vietnam is not on.’

Which suggests that to impress Dole and veterans like him, Kerry should have returned from active service with a few missing limbs, a disfigured face or perhaps even in a box.

That way he would have been just perfect for office.

But, as we said earlier, Americans are not renowned for their sense of irony…’

Posted: 24th, August 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

The Mother Tongue

‘LOVE might be an international language but, when it comes to David Blunkett’s approach to UK citizenship, only English will do.

‘Tie me kangaroo down, sport’

The Home Secretary’s American lover, Kimberley Fournier, may be able to impress her paramour with her repartee, wit and pillow talk, but Yorkshireman Dave has noticed key differences.

So, the Telegraph says, Blunkett has decreed that under new Home Office regulations Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians and any Americans seeking British citizenship must pass a language test even if English is their mother tongue.

Unsurprisingly, this has not gone too well with the thousands of future bar workers, au pairs and actress/singers/presenters in the land Down Under.

‘The poms no longer take for granted that we antipodean colonials speak anything they recognise as English,’ says The Age, Melbourne’s daily read (as translated by Anorak).

‘Who are they to stand in judgement on us?’

But this is a matter not without some substance, and the paper hears from Margaret Maclagan, a lecturer in communication disorders at Canterbury University, New Zealand.

She says that her fellow Kiwis are often speaking a different language to the British mother tongue.

‘Young New Zealanders fail to distinguish between cheer and chair, beer and bear, ear and air,’ says she.

The advice is for any wannabe Brits to drop the colloquialisms and learn to speak English the way Blunkett intended it to be spoken.

So for any non-English speaking English speakers tuning in, repeat after us: ‘Do you think the papers will ever find out about our affair?”

Posted: 24th, August 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Marathon Mouse

‘IN the world of science, where mice lead, human beings follow.

‘Sniff! I feel like I’ve let everyone down’

And we’d best get a wiggle on because the Times brings news of the mighty mouse.

Researchers in South Korea and America had planned to create a genetically modified mouse with less fat tissue than normal.

Why they wanted to do this is totally unclear to all but the finest mouse connoisseurs.

But in trying for a leaner mouseburger, the lab rats hit upon what the paper terms the ‘marathon mouse’.

In enhancing the activity of the PPAR-delta gene, researchers found that the mice grow more ‘slow twitch’ muscle fibres needed for endurance at the expense of ‘fast-twitch’ fibres used for the sprints.

The result is a mouse that can run twice the 900 meters a normal mouse can muster without panting for breath.

This is bad news for cats, but terrific news for the Paula Radcliffes of the mouse world that, unlike their human counterpart, will stop at nothing to reach their goal…’

Posted: 24th, August 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment

Faking It

‘PSST! Wanna buy a genuine Giorgio Ferrari suit, hand-stitched by the Albanian fashion master himself?

The genuine article

Of course you do, but what you don’t want is to go home and find that placing anything heavier than a feather in the jacket pocket causes the suit to fall apart.

What you – and the millions like you who have invested in Anorak’s own brand Comfi-Slax range of leisure wear – want is quality at affordable prices.

But, as the Independent says in its lead story, many of us are still substituting build for label, so supporting the £10bn trade in counterfeit goods.

But no more, because the Government are embarking on a campaign to force the fakers out of business.

In the language of the courts, selling fake goods is known as ‘intellectual property theft’, and it just won’t do.

So the Government are building a crack team of police, Customs officials and trading standards officers to stop this dastardly crime.

And if you with the fly pitch selling such goods aren’t worried by that, you will surely tremble in your boots when you learn how the entire operation is to be coordinated by…the Patent Office.

We have no beef with the Patent Office, but when you need help, when your brand is being diluted by street hustlers, do you really call the men with rubber stamps?

Better simply to remind those customers on whom the industry relies that when buying shirts, jewellery and DVDs from the man with the suitcase in the gents’ lav to keep your money in your pocket and walk away.

You do not want to be supporting an illegal industry – even if it does often supply you with goods indistinguishable from the original item at a fraction of the price…’

Posted: 23rd, August 2004 | In: Broadsheets | Comment