Big Brother 2011: With Karima El Mahroug, Pippa Middleton And Emu

BIG Brother is on channel Five, and the broadcaster’s sister organ the Daily Star adds the name of Ruby The Heart Stealer, aka Pole dancer Karima El Mahroug, to the list of housemates.

Says insider Peter Dyke:

Pole dancer Karima El Mahroug, 18, became an overnight inter- national sensation after being named as one of the girls 74-year-old premier Silvio Berlusconi invited to his private parties.

Anorak

Posted: 7th, April 2011 | In: TV & Radio | Comment

Big Brother: Gary Glitter, The EDL And Princess Diana Fight For Golden Ticket

HAVING stopped just short of unveiling Princess Diana on the new look Big Brother, Channels Five leads with news that “YOU” could star on the show.

(Anorak reader Ashley delivers tomorrow’s news with: “Gary Glitter big brother 2011 channel 5 = RATINGS.” What if Glitter wins a ticket?)

Between Mondays and Saturday the paper will be handing out five golden tickets. Mouth breathers, members of the EDL and adolescent boys who can’t spell “porn” and have no access to the internet will in the hoping for a stab at stardom, a fauxmance with Amy Childs – and, who knows?  – maybe even a contract with Can Associates.

Anorak

Posted: 6th, April 2011 | In: TV & Radio | Comment (1)

Cheryl Cole To Front Big Brother On FIVE, Says Daily Star: Colonel Gaddafi Also In Running

CHERYL Cole is the “NEWS Big Brother BABE” announces the Daily Star on its front page. “Sexy star snubs X Factor.”

Only, hasn’t Big Brother finished? It has. And isn’t Channel Five, sister organ to the Daily Star, considering a move to reawaken the show? It is.

Now read on…

FED-UP Cheryl Cole could sensationally snub X Factor supremo Simon Cowell by accepting a £5million deal to host a new-look Big Brother.

Anorak

Posted: 31st, March 2011 | In: Key Posts, TV & Radio | Comments (16)

The Greatest Cheryl Cole Story Ever, As Told By The Daily Star

HAS the Daily Star Reporter delivered a story that sums up the world of celebrity and its relationship with Cheryl Cole, a woman who hyped abilities exceed her actual qualities by a factor of 36 to 1 (fact!)?

DEFIANT Cheryl Cole has again ended all contact with football star husband Ashley.

Anorak

Posted: 14th, March 2011 | In: Celebrities | Comment

The Strange Case Of The Daily Star And Richard Peppiatt’s Death Threats

WHEN Richard Peppiatt resigned from the Daily Star for, as he claims, the paper’s anti-Muslim bias and writing stories “simply plucked from my arse”, he achieved a kind of fame and surely gave a lift to his mooted new career as a writer of a TV show about life on a tabloid newspaper.

Angry Mob wondered if the Star would not dig up dirt on him:

“A personal attack on him – irrespective of what was dug up – would only increase the wider support for him – and increase his fame.”

Anorak

Posted: 9th, March 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment

Is Richard Peppiatt Flogging His Daily Star Stardom As A TV Show?

WHAT next for Daily Star rebel Richard Peppiatt, whose letter of resignation just happened to be leaked to the gentlemen of the press – they like nothing more than reading and writing about themselves? Well, rumours are that he’s writing a TV show about working for a tabloid. And a source tells us that he just happened to have left one of his scripts on top of a photo copier at the Daily Star.

Anorak

Posted: 7th, March 2011 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)

Has The Daily Star Turned The EDL Into A Political Party?

IS Daily Star and its rebel reporter Richard Peppiatt’s legacy the chance for citizens to vote for the English Defence League?

Peppiatt told us that the Star’s story that the EDL was looking at democracy was not based on fact. Beneath the headline “ENGLISH DEFENCE LEAGUE TO BECOME POLITICAL PARTY,”  we were told:

THE English Defence League is set to break into mainstream politics with a bid to get MPs in Parliament.

Peppiatt wrote:

“…this incendiary tale was twisted and bent to fit an agenda seemingly decided before the EDL’s leader Tommy Robinson had even been interviewed… Asked if his group were to become a political party I was told the ex-BNP goon had replied: “Not for now”. But further up the newsprint chain it appears a story, too good to allow the mere spectre of reality to restrain, was spotted.”

Anorak

Posted: 6th, March 2011 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)

The EDL Hit Rochdale With Stories Of Peadophile Muslims: Richard Peppiatt’s Daily Star Might Like It

THE English Defence League were demonstrating against Muslims outside Rochdale Town Hall by the town’s cenotaph today. Unite Against Fascism were, as ever, there to counter the EDL. There were 35 arrests.

But why was  the EDL there? The local Rochdale paper tells us:

A speaker from the EDL spoke through a tannoy and said that the EDL were there because of recent reports about child sexual exploitation in Rochdale.

Anorak

Posted: 5th, March 2011 | In: Key Posts, Politicians | Comments (10)

Daily Star Reporter Resigns Over Story ‘I Simply Plucked From My Arse’

RICHARD Peppiatt’s resignation letter from his role as a Daily Star reporter is hereunder. It’s the one where he plucks Kelly Brook from his arse:

Dear Mr Desmond,

You probably don’t know me, but I know you. For the last two years I’ve been a reporter at the Daily Star, and for two years I’ve felt the weight of your ownership rest heavy on the shoulders of everyone, from the editor to the bloke who empties the bins.

Wait! I know you’re probably reaching for your phone to have me marched out of the building. But please, save on your bill. I quit.

The decision came inside my local newsstand, whilst picking up the morning papers. As I chatted with Mohammed, the Muslim owner, his blinking eyes settled on my pile of print, and then, slowly, rose to meet my face.

“English Defence League to become a political party” growled out from the countertop. Squirming, I abandoned the change in my pocket and flung a note in his direction, the clatter of the till a welcome relief from the silence that had engulfed us. I slunk off toward the tube.

If he was hurt that my 25p had funded such hate-mongering, he’d be rightly appalled that I’d sat in the war cabinet itself as this incendiary tale was twisted and bent to fit an agenda seemingly decided before the EDL’s leader Tommy Robinson had even been interviewed.

Asked if his group were to become a political party I was told the ex-BNP goon had replied: “Not for now.”

But further up the newsprint chain it appears a story, too good to allow the mere spectre of reality to restrain, was spotted. It almost never came to this. I nearly walked out last summer when the Daily Star got all flushed about taxpayer-funded Muslim-only loos.

A newsworthy tale were said toilets Muslim-only. Or taxpayer-funded. Undeterred by the nuisance of truth, we omitted a few facts, plucked a couple of quotes, and suddenly anyone would think a Rochdale shopping centre had hired Osama Bin Laden to stand by the taps, handing out paper towels.

I was personally tasked with writing a gloating follow-up declaring our postmodern victory in “blocking” the non-existent Islamic cisterns of evil.

Not that my involvement in stirring up a bit of light-hearted Islamaphobia stopped there. Many a morning I’ve hit my speed dial button to Muslim rent-a-rant Anjem Choudary to see if he fancied pulling together a few lines about whipping drunks or stoning homosexuals.

Our caustic “us and them” narrative needs nailing home every day or two, and when asked to wield the hammer I was too scared for my career, and my bank account, to refuse.
“If you won’t write it, we’ll get someone who will,” was the sneer du jour, my eyes directed toward a teetering pile of CVs. I won’t claim I’ve simply been coshed into submission; I’ve necked the celeb party champagne and pocketed all the freebies, relying on hangovers to block out the rest.

Neither can I erase that as a young hack keen to prove his worth I threw myself into working at the Daily Star with gusto. On order I dressed up as a John Lennon, a vampire, a Mexican, Noel Gallagher, Saint George (twice), Santa Claus, Aleksandr the Meerkat, the Stig, and a transvestite Alex Reid.

I’ve been spraytanned, waxed, and in a kilt clutching roses trawled a Glasgow council estate trying to propose to Susan Boyle (I did. She said no).

When I was ordered to wear a burkha in public for the day, I asked: “Just a head scarf or full veil?” Even after being ambushed by anti-terror cops when panicked Londoners reported “a bloke pretending to be a Muslim woman”, I didn’t complain.

Mercifully, I’d discovered some backbone by the time I was told to find some burkha-clad shoppers (spot the trend?) to pose with for a picture – dressed in just a pair of skintight M&S underpants.
Forget journalistic merit, I heard this was just an ill-conceived ploy to land an advertising contract with the chain. Admittedly, that was unusual. Often we hacks write vacuous puff pieces about things you own. Few would deny there’s one hell of an incestuous orgy of cross-promotion to leer at down at Northern & Shell HQ.

Never mind that it insults the intelligence of amoebas when your readers are breathlessly informed the week’s telly highlights include OK! TV and the Vanessa Feltz Show.

I suspect you see a perfect circle. I see a downward spiral. I see a cascade of shit pirouetting from your penthouse office, caking each layer of management, splattering all in between.

Daily Star favourite Kelly Brook recently said in an interview: “I do Google myself. Not that often, though, and the stories are always rubbish. “There was a story that I’d seen a hypnotherapist to help me cut down on the time I take to get ready to go out. Where do they get it from?”

Maybe I should answer that one. I made it up. Not that it was my choice; I was told to. At 6pm and staring at a blank page I simply plucked it from my arse. Not that it was all bad. I pocketed a £150 bonus. You may have read some of my other earth-shattering exclusives.

‘Michael Jackson to attend Jade Goody’s funeral’. (He didn’t.) ‘Robbie pops ‘pill at heroes concert’. (He didn’t either.) ‘Matt Lucas on suicide watch’. (He wasn’t.) ‘Jordan turns to Buddha.’ (She might have, but I doubt it.)

I know showbiz is the sand on which your readership is built. And while I didn’t write tittle-tattle dreaming of Pulitzers, I never knew I’d fear a Booker Prize nomination instead.
You own the Daily Star, and it’s your right to assign whatever news values to it you choose. On the awe-inspiring day millions took to the streets of Egypt to demand freedom, your paper splashed on “Jordan … the movie.”

A snub to history? Certainly. An affront to journalism? Most definitely. Your undeniable right? Yes, sir.

But what brings me here today is those times you dispense with those skewed news values entirely by printing stories which couldn’t stand up to a gnat’s fart.

It’s those times when you morph from being a newspaper owner into the inventor of a handy product for lining rabbit hutches. While the Daily Star isn’t the only paper with a case to answer, I reckon it’s certainly the ugliest duckling of an unsightly flock.
Its endemic lack of self-perception really is something to behold. It only takes a comedian to make an ironic gag about racism and your red top is on hand to whip up a storm, demanding the culprit commit hara-kiri beside Stephen Lawrence’s shrine.
Yet turn the page and Muslims are branded “beardies” or “fanatics”, and black-on-black killings (“Bob-slayings”, as I’ve cringingly heard them called in your newsroom) can be resigned to a handful of words, shoehorned beneath a garish advert.
Outraged, we brand other celebrities sexist, demanding such dinosaurs be castrated on the steps of the Natural History Museum.

Then with our anger sated it’s back to task, arranging the day’s news based on the size of the subjects’ breasts.
Were this the behaviour of an actual person they would be diagnosed schizophrenic and bundled into the nearest white van. But because the mouthpiece is a newspaper, it’s all supposed to be ok. Well, here’s some breaking news – it’s far, far worse. When looking for the source of this hypocritical behaviour, I didn’t have to go far.

The Daily Star seems to set out its editorial stall as a newspaper written for, and fighting for, the (preferably white) working class.
Yet as a proprietor you recently dropped out of the Press Complaints Commission, leaving those self-same people with no viable recourse if they find themselves libelled or defamed on your pages.

Your red top drones on about British jobs for British workers, yet your own reporters’ pay has been on ice so long it was last seen living in an igloo and hunting seals.

A great swathe of your readership lives in the north of England, yet you employ just one staff reporter outside London. One. I guess it makes the same sense to you up there in your ivory tower as it does to me down here on my high horse. I get it, I do.
Because no one has time for subtlety of language, of thought, when they’re scrabbling to pump out a national newspaper with fewer staff hacks than it takes to man a yacht.

When you assign budgets thinner than your employee-issue loo roll there’s little option but for Daily Star editors to build a newspaper from cut-and-paste-jobs off the Daily Mail website, all tied together with gormless press releases. But when that cheap-and-cheerful journalism gives the oxygen of publicity to corrosive groups like the EDL – safe in the knowledge it’s free news about which they’ll never complain – it’s time to lay down my pen.

You may have heard the phrase, “The flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil sets off a tornado in Texas.” Well, try this: “The lies of a newspaper in London can get a bloke’s head caved in down an alley in Bradford.”

If you can’t see that words matter, you should go back to running porn magazines. But if you do, yet still allow your editors to use inciteful over insightful language, then far from standing up for Britain, you’re a menace against all things that make it great.

I may have been just a lowly hack in your business empire, void of the power to make you change your ways, but there is still one thing that I can do; that I was trained to do; that I love to do: write about it.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Peppiatt

Anorak

Posted: 5th, March 2011 | In: Reviews | Comment

Reporter Richard Peppiatt Quits Daily Star For Anti-Muslim, Pro EDL Lies

RICHARD Peppiatt has resigned his job as a Daily Star reporter over its “sympathetic” coverage of the English Defence League and his presenting entirely fictional stories about celebrities as hard news. There goes the job at OK!.

Writes Peppiatt in a letter to the paper’s owner Richard Desmond:

“You may have heard the phrase ‘the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil sets off a tornado in Texas’. Well, try this: ‘The lies of a newspaper in London can get a bloke’s head caved in down an alley in Bradford.’ If you can’t see that words matter, you should go back to running porn magazines…

“The weight of your ownership rests heavy on the shoulders of everyone, from the editor to the bloke who empties the bins.”

Anorak

Posted: 5th, March 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (3)

The Big Fat Gypsy Weddings Fix And Other Daily Star Cons

THE Daily Star leads with news of a “TELLY CON”. It thunders from its front page that the hit telly show Big Fat Gypsy Weddings is a “FIX”:

By a photo of a bride and her neon bridesmaid, readers see the word “FIX”.

Cynics might think the Star was trying to pour cold water on Channel 4’s highest ratings since Big Brother in 2008 because it’s the sister organ to Channel FIVE.

But then you read:

A FORMER bareknuckle fighter from Big Fat Gypsy Weddings has been faking a TV tough guy image for years, he said yesterday. To viewers Paddy Doherty, 51, is a brawler who claimed he was “bred to fight”.

Anorak

Posted: 17th, February 2011 | In: Key Posts, TV & Radio | Comments (2)

London’s Non-Muslim Children ‘Forced’ To Eat Halal Meat And Swallow Daily Star News

THE Daily Star followed that news on ‘Muslim-only toilets’ with a front page story on “BRIT KIDS” being “FORCED TO EAT HALAL SCHOOL DINNERS”.

What about if you a British Muslim? Do they exist in the Star? The paper tells us:

FURIOUS parents last night hit out at plans to serve halal-only school dinners. Pupils will have no option but to eat meat slaughtered following Islamic teachings specifically for Muslims.

In case you are still not appalled, the Star reminds you how Halal animals are killed:

The controversial technique involves unstunned animals bleeding to death after having their throats cut.

Anorak

Posted: 10th, August 2010 | In: Reviews | Comments (39)

‘Muslim Toilets’ Blocked In Rochdale And Other Bullshit Daily Star News

THE Daily Star “blocked Muslim-only loos”. So says the Daily Star on its front page. How did it block those “Muslim” loos, readers? Perhaps with a rolled up copy of the Daily Star coated in a bullshit story?

“We get hole in the ground toilets banned”

Really?

PLANS for Muslim-only loos at a major shopping centre are going down the pan. Outraged council chiefs have demanded British-style toilets are used instead of Middle East-style squat holes.

Anorak

Posted: 22nd, July 2010 | In: Reviews | Comments (4)

Volcano Horror: Gatwick Hit By Massive Imploding Star

SCARE Story of The Week was the Star’s tale of how ash had almost brought down a 747. The story turned out to be old and the picture of the stricken jet just a computer mock up. Still, it did the job and scared the shit out of lost of people – although not those at Gatwick and Manchester airports which stopped selling the paper.

Gatwick airport’s director of communications, Andrew McCallum, tells us:

“We thought it was inappropriate at this point in time after six days of disruption and as people were anxious to get to their holiday destination or to return home to have these sort of computer-generated images on the front page.

“We had a discussion with other airports having seen the Daily Star’s front page today and decided to remove it. It was in our view not appropriate.”

Anorak

Posted: 22nd, April 2010 | In: Reviews | Comment

Headline Of The Week: Bankers – ‘They Deserve To Be Shot’

THE Daily Star Ireland delivers the headline of the week, and front page of the year as it says that Sean Fitzpatrick of Anglo-Irish and Michael Fingelton of Irish Nationwide: “”They Deserve To Be Shot.” Is this news?

No quotation marks. Just a statement.

The words were taken from a blogger.

Or the Provos.

Spotter: Index On Censorship

Anorak

Posted: 2nd, April 2010 | In: Reviews | Comments (4)

Girl Branded Britain’s ‘Laziest Teenager’ Says Tabloid Report Was ‘Rubbish’

HOW journalism works – I Am Britain’s Laziest Teenager: the story of Shereen Johnson, who claims to have responded to an adverts in a magazine and then found herself branded a feckless sponger in the national press:

“Single mum Shereen Johnson saw an advert posted on a website by a magazine asking for people who live on benefits to get in touch.”

Anorak

Posted: 3rd, December 2009 | In: Reviews | Comment

Manchester United Star Banned For Nine Months

THE Premier League football season is underway and reliable Sir Alex Feruson allows the Daily Star to sum up the coming nine months in a single succinct headline:

FERGIE IN RANT AT REF

Anorak

Posted: 10th, August 2009 | In: Sports | Comments (2)

Katie Price’s Lover In OK! Drugs Swoop

KATIE Price, aka Jordan, tells the latest issue of OK! magazine that there is no man in her life. OK! is sister publication to the Daily Star, which today leads with the front-page news:

JORDAN’S new lover Alex Reid was arrested and quizzed by police in a massive drugs ring bust centred on his gym, the Daily Star can reveal.

That would be the lover Katie Price is not in “a sex-filled fling” with?

Anorak

Posted: 30th, July 2009 | In: Celebrities | Comments (5)

Katie Price Threatens To Knife Daily Star Journalist

KATIE Price, aka Jordan, dressed in a tinfoil bikini and a straw cowboy hat full of holes, is illustrating the Star’s front-page screamer that she did threaten to knife a Daily Star journalist:

“JORDAN’S THREAT TO KNIFE ANDRE GIRL.”

It’s a story echoed by the Mirror’s front cover:

“JORDAN: I’LL CUT YOU UP.”

If anyone knows about being cut up it’s Jordan. Jordan won’t so much slice you as whittle you into something more like her. Scalpel! Pelican knife! Plane!

Anorak

Posted: 18th, June 2009 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts | Comments (4)

Spurs Get New Ice Rink Stadium

APRIL FOOL! Which of these stories is true and which is not:

The Top Ten Failed April Fool’s Jokes

The Guardain:

Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink

• Newspaper to be available only on messaging service
• Experts say any story can be told in 140 characters

Anorak

Posted: 1st, April 2009 | In: Reviews | Comment

Daily Star Produced By Big Brother Gnome

ONLY a few months to go until Big Brother and the Daily Star brings news that the show is a fix.

Such a fix is Big Brother that five years ago the Daily Star’s editorial staff formed a betting consortium and placed a hefty sum on the eventual winner.

Team Star won. Big.

Anorak

Posted: 2nd, February 2009 | In: Reviews | Comments (6)

How TO Wreck The X Factor Final, With Britney Spears

HAVE you heard of the “PLOT TO WRECK X FACTOR FINAL”?

The Star brings news of the daring conspiracy to turn the X Factor TV talent show into a sham contest in which the most complaint singer can win.

The story is illustrated by picture of Britney Spears, the mime artiste who has done more than any other to encourage half-talented, vapid wannabes that they really can make it all the way to the top.

Anorak

Posted: 11th, December 2008 | In: Celebrities | Comment (1)

Tongue Fisting The I’m A Celebrity Wannabes

A TONGUE twister to limber up your lips on the cover of today’s Daily Star: “I’M A CELEB WAG WAR.”

Take it away I’m A Celeb agonist Esther Rantzen… “I’m A Stheleb Tonth Tvisther.”

Go, go, failed London mayor and ex-gay copper Brian Paddick: “I am a celebratty tonguey fister.”

Now you EastEnders Joe Swash: “OimashlebtungtwistersthOiAmOiIam.”

And so it goes, all the way to Robert Kilory Silk: “I am a tongue shitter.”

No lie: the Star really is 10p cheaper than the Sun and “10 times more fun.”

The Sun can only go on about “Baby P” who died in the care of its “vile” mum and stepdad.

If the Daily Star got its hand on the story, it would be a game of spot the difference between Baby P and Baby M.

So funsters, we turn back to the Star, and learn that miniature Wag Carly Zucker, former Muppet Dani Behr and Friend-Of-Anorak Nicola McLean will be providing more tongue twisters should they and any of the aforesaid Swash, former Blue singer Simon Webbe or Martina Navratilova gel in the dell.

Anorak will be rooting for Our Nicola, who used to play with our patron Old Mr Anorak’s youngest at the Corum Fields drop-in centre, London.

You go, Nicola. And if you see fit to win and want to do good deeds, how’s about returning that pencil your little sister took…

Anorak

Posted: 12th, November 2008 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts | Comments (12)

MI5 Fight To Keep Abu Qatada In UK As Tory MP Foments Fear

“THOUSANDS of fanatics in Britain are planning a series of massacres, it was claimed last night,” writes the Star.

The news from an MI5 leaked paper is chilling:

Read the rest of this entry »

Anorak

Posted: 10th, November 2008 | In: Reviews | Comments (8)

Poppy Cocks: Gaunt and Choudary Need To Remember

“VILE HATE PREACHER INSULTS OUT POPPIES,” screams the Star.

The Sun cocks an ear to the West. It picks up its hotline to Omar Bakri. The Sun’s dial-a-loon denies all knowledge.

“Not, me, guv,” chimes Bakri, Beirut Hackney Cab Driver 5641b. “But I wish I’d have thought of it. While you’re on the blower can I wish death on Pudsey Bear instead?” Save it, Bakri.

Back to the Star, and Anjem Choudary says our poppies are crap. Our poppies aren’t even real poppies. Our Great British poppies smell of NOTHING.

Anorak

Posted: 7th, November 2008 | In: Reviews | Comment