Tabloids Category
The news as told by the UK’s tabloid press – The Sun, Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Daily Star and News of the World.
All About Heather
Heather Mills should be locked up
COME with us to the 52nd Evening Standard Theatre Awards.
It’s that time of year when the Mail’s sister publication bestows gongs on the great and good of the theatre world.
There’s a fizz in the firmament as the air kisses explode like so many miniature champagne bottles. Some of London’s leading players settle into the cheap seats and make ready to clap like they mean it when they miss out on the prize.
And such awards are not without meaning. At a time when actors on the BBC’s flagship soap EastEnders are out-performed by their cardigans, the plot of ITV dramas rises and falls on the power of Ross Kemp’s thousand-yard stare and Reality TV Contestant is a viable showbiz career, live theatre should be supported.
Sadly, Anorak’s musical based on the life and times of Simon Cowell, and set to the music of Michelle McManus and Hear’Say, was deemed to be ahead of its time, and the award for best musical went to Caroline, Or Change.
But what of the other gongs? Many Hollywood actors now tread the boards in London – Kevin Spacey is artistic director at London’s Old Vic, David Hasselhoff has played the lifeguard in Chicago and right now Patrick Duffy is reprising the role of Baron Hardup in Cinderella at the New Victoria Theatre in Woking, Surrey.
It was thus fitting that Kathleen Turner won the best actress award for her portrayal of Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
All very worthy. And all overseen by the words of Ned Sherrin. And here is Sherrin reaching for the stars as he introduces Frances O’Connor’s unsuccessful entry for best actress for her role as TS Eliot’s unstable wife Vivien Haigh-Wood.
That woman had severe mental illness. She was shut away in an asylum. Sherrin notes: “Paul McCartney is said to have seen it at least ten times.”
The Mail says the audience “exploded in laughter”. Mental illness is always good for a giggle.
And the result of so much jollity is that rather than hearing about the plays, readers get: “Another awards ceremony…another dig at Heather.”
As Mail readers are told, this slight follows Jonathan Ross’s quip at the Q Music Awards: “I wouldn’t be surprised if we found out she’s actually got two legs.”
As we said back then, if Ms Mills wants to be pitied, having the showbiz set make fun of her can only help her cause…
Lohan, Spears & Hilton Get In Gear
Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton & Britney Spears get in gear…
WHY the Mirror’s obsession with Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton? All three appear on the paper’s cover page. “THE BRIT PACK,” says the headline.
Do we not have enough home-grown stars to feature without focusing on an actress, a frumpy singer and a straight-to-internet porn star? What is the purpose of Celebrity X Factor, I’m A Celebrity and the House of Windsor if not to tap into the country’s rich vein of talent?
Just where are our own Billie Piper, Charlotte Church and Jordan when you need them?
While we look, the Mirror sees the three Americans “(IN A 210MPG SUPERCAR)”. Readers are invited to “FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED”.
Accepting the invitation we turn the page and find out that Lindsay, Britney and Paris (all clearly identifiable by the nametags the Mirror sticks on their chests), are sat in a car. And – get this – it can travel at 210MPH!
“Mind the gearstick Britney,” says the Mirror, noting how the singer is sat between her friends.
And while the Mirror gives way to sticky-fingered adolescence and snickers into it tissues, the Star uses its front page to announce: “Britney moves in with Paris…AND LINDSAY MAKES IT THREE IN A BED.”
Inside, the Star looks at Britney’s generous thighs and sees the trio clamber into a car together. There is no sign of a bed but our car expert assures us that the car’s seats recline almost to the horizontal and the boot is spacious and carpeted.
But it is a tight squeeze. And the Sun (“BRITKNEE SPEARS”) looks on as Paris strokes Britney’s thigh. Of course, to less trained eyes, Paris might just be pulling her chum’s leg inside the vehicle less a ripple of skin get caught in the door. But the Star knows about such things.
The racy trio then drive into the Los Angeles night. And… Well, anything could have happened…
What’s Your Poison?
Alexander Litvinenko
WHEN the TV film of the murder of Alexander Litvinenko comes to be made it will surely be major boon for school science classes.
What secrets the former KGB officer held, why he was murdered and what his killer could hope to gain from his death are stories far less interesting to the press than what killed him.
Last week, we were introduced to thallium. This is a heavy metal and when eaten on a slice of sushi, imbibed in a tincture of green tea or smeared on a rice cracker will cause the Russian diner about town to fall ill.
“Thall-ium,” says the voiceover on TV’s Livinenko: Something Fishy. “Symbol: Tl. Source: from the Greek thallos, meaning "a green shoot or twig". Atomic number: 81. Colour: silvery white: Classification: Metallic. Dangerous: Yes.”
“History: In June 2004, 25 Russian soldiers became ill from thallium exposure when they found a can of mysterious white powder in a rubbish dump added it to tobacco, and used it as a substitute for talcum powder on their feet. Thallium.”
So much for that. And in module 2, the Sun introduces its readers to Plolonium-210, alongside the now familiar picture of Litvinenko lying fatally ill in a hospital.
Readers learn that Polonium-210 is “harmful when ingested into the body by breathing or swallowing it or through a wound”.
Readers might know it by its alernative name Radium F. It is more harmful that crack cocaine and crystal meth.
Anyone approached by a burly man in a thin black leather jacket or a woman wearing heavy blue eyeshadow and a club boot offering white powders and other exotica should politely decline and tell the authorities.
You, along with three others who fear they have been contaminated by Polonium-210, will then be tested for the radioactive toxin.
The Mail says three people thought to have “had contact” with the sushi bar or London hotel Litvinenko visited on the day of his poisoning are being checked.
But we must not panic. Home Secretary John Reid tells us: “If anyone fears on rational grounds for their own safety then I would ask them to get in touch with the authorities.”
Helpfully, the Mail tells readers what to look out for. Symptoms of possible poisoning include: chest pains, headaches, anaemia, vomiting, diarrhoea and shortness of breath.
Of course, it might not be Polonium-210 lying at the root of your condition. It might be a form of barium. Thallium. Or alcohol…
Posted: 28th, November 2006 | In: Tabloids | Comment (1)
I’m A Celebrity…Let Me At ‘Er
Saint Myleene Klass
“SHE’S great isn’t she?” asks Tony Parsons in the Mirror.
But this is a rhetorical question and Parsons hasn’t finished speaking. “She makes me wish I’d bought Hear’Say records when I had the chance.”
Parsons, who once wrote for the NME (New Musical Express), should know that records never die they just end up buried in a house clearance sale
Hear’Say’s debut single Pure and Simple is available in many record shops. Although it might be that Parsons, born in 1955, thinks he is too old for this brand of pop, and will look foolish and a little pervy as he shoves the disc down his cardigan and slinks away.
Of course, in truth, time is on Parson’s and if challenged he can pass off his weakness for reality TV pop with an ironic “It’s for the Christmas party” shrug.
But Parsons doesn’t even want the whole of Hear’Say – he just wants the bits with Myleene Klass on them.
The Mirror’s man peering through the jungle foliage has been watching Myleene in the I’m A Celebrity… clearing.
Myleene has stood by her boyfriend who has just been served with an 18-month suspended jail sentence for being caught with £1,000 worth of heroin.
“The real question is: when Myleene gets out of the bush, should she be made a saint?”
And while Myleene signs Parson’s record collection, and if she can wear her saintly white bikini while so doing then all well and good, Parsons moves on still more pressing matters.
“I have always been a fan of Itsu,” says he, then reminding readers who may have overlooked the details that this is the London eatery where former KGB operative Alexander Litvinenko “probably” ate Polonion-210, “a substance 250billion times more deadly than cyanide”.
Parsons says the food at his eatery passes by on a conveyor belt like in a Bruce Forsythe gameshow – raw fish, rice, cuddly toy, radioactive poison (Didn’t they do well!).
Parson often eats at Itsu and is “disturbed to think I may have asked a KGB agent to pass the wasabi”.
Parsons adds: “So I find myself outraged about the murder of Alexander Litvinenko on a number of levels.”
It’s enough to put you off your dinner. Although not off Myleene, naturally…
Drugged & Disorderly
EVERY day of every week the Mail thinks up imaginative ways to remind you that life is cruel and you are going to experience pain and die. And if it can’t think any up, it looks at scientific research.
Here is a selection of things that will kill you and yours from last week’s paper of doom…
MONDAY
“Britons ignore heart attack pain” – Survey says two thirds of us wouldn’t call 99 is we experience chest pain – the other third would, presumably, be kicking the phone away
“The capital of cocaine” – Britain is biggest user among 29 European states –
TUESDAY
“Bird flu drug is ‘not enough to protect us’” – So suggests a report by the Royal Society and Academy of Medical Sciences
“Sex won’t cause a heart attack.. but mowing the lawn might” – Once you’ve finished the herbaceous borders, Maurice, come on up
“I needed a pillow for my leg – but the hospital said they couldn’t afford on. Then they sent me home in a delivery van. They are making my final days a nightmare” – The diary of Janet Street Porter’s sister
“Drugs for psychotic adults are being fed to our children” – Prozac flavour crisps
WEDNESDAY
“IN HOCK. Once debt was a four-letter word for the middle classes. Today, it’s their only means of survival” – David Seymour moans
“How Zara’s friend died under horse” – A friend of Zara Phillips was crushed by a horse. Really. She was
THURSDAY
“The true cost of sex under 16. As research shows twice as many girls as boys lose their virginity under 16, these young women reveal their profound regret – and paint a devastating picture of the modern culture of casual sex”
“Home market is on brink of collapse, says top economist” – David Miles, chief UK economist at investment bank Morgan Stanley says the end is nigh
FRIDAY
“Junk-food sneaks. Giants target youngsters via websites” – The evil food ads that lurk on the Internet
“Young Britons are Europe’s biggest cocaine users” – Mum and dad prefer booze, fags and Prozac
“Hurricane-force winds on their way” – Time to nail down the immigrants
“My wife, an officer’s daughter, drove buses. Harold Wilson’s son drives trains. What does this tell us about social mobility in Britain today?” – Tom Utley’s weekly family update
Britney Spears & Paris Hilton At Large
Britney Spears and Paris Hilton fall out
FOR reasons too esoteric to fathom, Britney Spears appears on the Mirror’s cover clad in a green dress.
“What HAS happened to Britney?” asks the front-page headline. We barely know how to answer. But keen to find out we turn to the paper’s double page spread on Britney and make ready to learn.
In “Britney bounces back (and front!)”, the Mirror says that since her split from Kevin Federline, the star has been on a “wild two-week party”.
“For two years she virtually disappeared from public life,” says the Mirror, a clear reference to Britney’s fly-on-the-wall TV show, baby juggling antics in New York and experiments with junk food and baby seats.
Now, after the TV interviews, magazine covers and children, Britney is back. And just as we see more of her, there is more of her she wants us to see.
Over seven pictures, readers see Britney’s cleavage and knickers escaping from a series of idiosyncratic evening wear.
In one shot, the Mirror’s long lens of investigative reporting notes Britney is “apparently going commando” as she steps out with Paris Hilton.
The Mail has a picture of Britney and Paris together in Hollywood. The couple are holding hands. They wear complimentary dresses, Britney’s green, Paris’s red. They each wear a single fishnet stocking on their right leg.
They could be any number of girls on a nightly stroll by a truck stop on the outskirts of Budapest. The Star puts on its trucker’s hat and yells: “GET BRITS OUT FOR THE LADS.”
But Britney and Paris will do no such thing, at least not without the right motivation, or a home video camera…
Madonna Supposes
Madonna’s love guide
AMONG the advertorials for bunches of silk hankies, of all sizes and patterns, and small boys for sale, the Mirror spots Madonna touting her wares.
Christmas is fast approaching. And Madonna is on TV inducing the great, good and unwashed to buy her things as gifts and keepsakes.
You cannot spend all your money on handkerchiefs, boiled beef and chimney sweeps, and Madonna is extolling the virtues of buying a copy of her latest book.
Called The English Roses: Too Good To Be True, Madonna’s timeless homage to growing up tells the edifying story of four good girlfriends fighting over a boy.
Appearing on the Home Shopping Network in America, Madonna says: “I never would have thought about writing children’s books if I didn’t have children.”
Continuing the motif, it might be argued that Madonna would never have thought of writing about sex had she not partaken in some.
And we look forward to her forthcoming books on Malawi, African dancing and breathing…
Posted: 27th, November 2006 | In: Tabloids | Comment (1)
Borat’s Mis-Stake
Borat must die
LOOK out, Sacha Baron Cohen, the Rogarians are coming!
In the “Transylvanian gipsies threat to Sacha”, the Sun shines a candle on the villagers of Glod.
Struggling to overcome the shock that some Romanians remain in their native locale and are not right now massed at the border gates awaiting their January 1 release when they will invade our gardens, building sites and cashpoints, we read on.
And we learn that the village was used to depict Borat’s home town in Kazakhstan. Why Baron Cohen should not use his native Kazakhstan for such purposes or, indeed, a town in East Anglia is a debate for later.
That’s if there is a later because the locals are out for blood. “Borat is a son-of-a-bitch who made us look like savages,” says gipsy Gheorgie Pascu. “This is Transylvania, home of Dracula. If he ever returns we will stick a stake in his backside and impale him. Then I would cut his b***s off.”
That should teach Borat to portray the locals as a bunch of blood-thirsty loons.
And the Sun, which only recently afforded its readers the chance to play hangman with a cut-out of Saddam Hussein, mocks up a picture of what the moustachioed Borat would look like impaled like so much kebab meat.
As readers take in that delight, another villager, one Luca Tugaciu, says he never got the cash he was promised. “Borat came here with police to guard him when he was filming,” says he. “If he ever returns it would be the end for him.”
Indeed. Looking at the hole-in-the-ground toilet and pig kept close to the family front door, venturing into this part of Glod could spell the end for any one of us.
The locals are upset. And for his reason they have issued a £15million lawsuit claiming they were told the film was a documentary and not a comedy.
The Borat movie production team and Baron Cohen are each said to have donated a few thousand pounds to the village, paid a location fee and bought the local school computers and other supplies.
But what price hurt feelings and misrepresentation?
Marriage Is A Risky Business
Tom Cruise is walking on air, Britney’s into Paris, Heather Mills is good and Charles & Camilla’s theme park…
STANDING before a scene reminiscent of the Creation, the backdrop lit as if by the glowing afterburners of a departing spacecraft, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes stood cheek-to-cheek.
In normal circumstances the couple stand cheek-to-neck, what with Tom being two inches shorter than his 5ft 9in tall bride. But Tom was walking on air. Or was Katie kneeling?
The Express said many “experts” were “baffled” by the picture.
Was it a trick of the light, movie magic at work? Was Tom standing next to his flesh and silk bride or the marzipan figurine that sat atop his five-tier wedding cake? Beam me up, Tommy, we joked. Prepare for (platform) lift off.
But the laughter didn’t last long. This was “Cruise’s wedding STUNT”. This vision before us was no more real than Tom and Katie’s matching heights. The Sun said the couple had married the previous week. Tom’s agent Arnold Robinson told the Star that Tom and Katie had already “officialised” their marriage in Los Angeles.
This was all for show. We wanted our wedding gift returned – his ‘n’ hers adult dummies with matching pointed hat and the entire first series of Battlestar Galactica (on authentic VHS). But had we signed a prenuptial agreement to do so?
While we searched for the documentation, we learned of another Hollywood marriage: Britney Spears and Kevin Federline.
“Britney puts her kinky sex vid on the web,” threatened the Star’s front-page headline.
The move came in light of stories that K-Ferret might sell the tape to the highest bidder, earning himself as much as £120million, a rise on the £26million the Star priced the 45-minute recording at just last week.
At the current rate of inflation, Britney may care to hang onto the tape for a few weeks longer and agree to split the £5billion-plus fortune it will earn with her feckless husband.
Britney should seek advice. And who better to ask than Paris Hilton, a woman whose home sex movie earned her notoriety, fame and her own Paris Hilton Just Me perfume – sparkling top notes of used hotel laundry with an undertone of adolescent bedroom and tissues. Naturally, Britney and Paris had hooked up.
But it was not supposed to end like this? It’s all so very unpleasant. Why does anyone bother to get married any more? “Marriage?” asked Heather Mills on the Mirror’s front page. “I’d rather someone chopped off all my limbs.”
Heather had been on TV in America. Appearing on the US show Extra, Heather said: “When you’re vilified for doing nothing but falling in love with an icon – I’d rather have all my limbs cut off. That’s the God’s honest truth.”
She went on: “I’m a good mother. I’m a good person. I fell in love for the right reasons. I fell in love unconditionally.” This was Heather on the offensive, vying to rebuild her “tarnished reputation”. She fell in love for the right reasons. And, no, a right reason is not because your true love’s wealth is approaching £1bn. Truly, it is not.
Of course, not all marriages end in failure. For every Britney and Kevin, Paul and Heather, Charles and Diana, there’s a Charles and Camilla.
And we had the chance to peep within the royal sanctum. The couple’s holiday home is in Myddfai, Wales, might not be Buckingham Palace, and there is barely enough room to swing a cat, or, indeed a tampon, but you can rent it.
In “ROYALTY TOWERS”, the Sun said Charles (The Germans) and Camilla (Is a Hampster) were offering “FAWLTY Towers-style” breaks in their new farmhouse. Holidaymakers can “romp” in their bed, “use” their loo and “soak” in ye olde royale bath.
Who can fail to be excited by this rare opportunity to live like royalty? You and your significant other can be Charles and Camilla for a time. Even the local ghost, a flaxen-haired beauty abused by her husband, could pass for the late Princess Diana.
This is no simple holiday, rather the Charles & Camilla theme park.
And it is fun for all the family. See the boy smoking a spliff behind the stables. Look out as a housemate falls down the stairs. Tell the woman in your life how you’d like to live on as her tampon. Rehearse for the majesty of kingship with a colander and spatula.
The only proviso is that roles are interchanged, thereby ensuring that the role of Charles’ official “toothpaste squeezer” is distributed evenly and fairly.
And that everyone gets to sleep with everyone else…
Posted: 25th, November 2006 | In: Tabloids | Comments (2)
Flying In The Face Of Reason
Nadia Eweida fights Britsh airways
“LET Christians wear the cross,” decrees the front page of the Express.
And while we’re at it, let Sikhs wear turbans, Muslims sport veils and teenage girls called Armani carry about their person as much Argos gold jewellery as their necks, ears and nipples can support.
We should all be allowed to wear what we like. And if estranged British Airways check-in worker Nadia Eweida wants to wear her silver cross, the size of a 5p piece, on a necklace around her neck then so be it. The Express says we should let her.
But the airline says this cannot be. The Express say that BA has banned “visible Christian and Jewish symbols”.
The paper hears Commons Leader Jack Straw call the ban on wearing a cross or indeed a Star of David in private companies “wholly inexplicable”. He talks of “an issue of consistency”.
The Express agrees and notes that while Jews and Christians have their religious symbols banned Muslim are able to wear the headscarf. Indeed, the Mail has a picture of a colleague of Ms Eweida’s wearing a Muslim headdress as she checks in BA customers.
It is all so terrifically unfair, says the Mail. And the “chorus of outrage” is added to by thirteen Anglican bishops.
Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, says it “smacks of religious intolerance”. He continues: “This has turned into a very important and symbolic case and I think she is right to insist on the British tradition that we should be allowed to express ourselves visibly in public.” And that from a bearded man in a pink smock.
A moderator from the Church of Scotland has written to the chairman of BA requesting a meeting. The Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, says BA is guilty of “flawed nonsense”. And Drexel Wellington Gomez, Archbishop of the West Indies, says: “The right to wear religious symbols is a basic human right.”
As the Mail solicits comment from a bishop in any place BA operates a service to, Geoff Want, BA’s Director of ground operations, says his company “might” change its policy. Although for now it holds firm.
And what of this policy? While the Mail hears Keiran McCaffey, of something called the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, speak of Britain’s “multicultural mess” and “hostility towards Christians and a fawning over Islam”, know that the BA policy is that its employees should not wear jewellery outside their clothes.
And her lies the possible solution. It is our suggestion that Mrs Eweida complies with the company rules and shows her faith by having a small tattoo, no larger than 5p piece, inked into her forehead or neck. Jewish staff may care to sew a Star of David onto their clothes.
This way everyone will be happy. And we will all know where we stand…
Let There Be Energy Saving Light
“YOU COULDN’T MAKE IT UP,” say the words on the Sun’s bauble.
Only you could. Or at least if not make it up then turn to the Sun on any given day and read the story of how some killjoys are ruining Easter, the summer, Guy Fawke’s night and now Christmas.
In “CHRISTMAS COUNCILLED” the Sun tells its readers that staff at Tower Hamlets council, East London, have been told not to put up Christmas decoration lest they are injured in the process.
As one worker says: “It feels more like the Eastern Bloc than the East End round here now – except slightly less cheery.”
This worker makes a point, albeit in invalid one. The now disbanded Eastern Bloc was never all that strong on health and safety issues, peppering its celebrations, notably the May Day parade, with all manner of weaponry and danger.
This is something else. The Mail reports on the same story and brands it “HEATH AND SAFETY KILLJOYS”.
It hears from a council spokesman who voices concern that injuries will result from people standing on their desks and sticking a hopeful sprig of mistletoe above their work stations.
And then there is the environmental impact of turning on Christmas lights. Says the spokesman: “The lights use a relatively small amount of electricity but every effort counts in reducing energy waste.”
Santa Claus, who has shunned petrol engines for his reindeer-drawn sleigh, would surely agree. So too the baby Jesus who relied on solar energy from a guiding star and his mother’s halo for light and heat.
Where they lead, we follow…
Shooting Up Robbie Williams
Noel Gallagher on drugs and the death of Robbie Williams…
NOEL Gallagher had to stop taking drug when his teeth fell out.
That’s the Star’s front-page news. And to illustrate just what it means, the paper uses a black felt tip pen and no little graphic know how to knock some teeth from a picture of the Oasis singer’s mouth.
Readers may like to take up the challenge, and a pen, and work out what Noel would look like with glasses, a goatee beard or spots.
Inside the paper, Noel is promoting his band’s greatest hits album.
But rather than hearing about the music we get a potted tale of Noel’s drugs life. Readers learn that as a teenager Noel taught himself to play guitar and “also had his first brush with narcotics”.
“To start with we were off the rails before we got a record deal,” says Noel. “We kind of arrived in London hammered.”
Forget listening to the Oasis compilation and just put the mirrored CD on a table and chop up a line of cocaine on it. Roll the insert into a straw.
“I don’t want this to sound like ‘my drugs hell’ because it wasn’t hell is was fantastic and I had some the most monumental nights out and monumental nights in ever,” says Noel.
And while Noel tells the Star about how the way you take drugs is emblematic of your upbringing – “The middle class experiment with drugs and the working class just get stuck in”, unforgivably ignoring the vital role played by the upper classes in the consumption of drugs – the Sun has more news of Noel.
In an article entitled “Robbie will top himself”, Gallagher responds to question as to who he would aim at if he had a gun and only one bullet.
Osama bin Laden? Noel Edmonds? Phil Collins? “I don’t give a f*** about Phil Collins,” says Gallagher. “I wouldn’t shoot him. I do think he’s a bit of a knob though.”
So if not Collins, a former public school boys and, therefore, a lightweight drugs taker, then who?
Robbie Williams? “As for Robbie, I’d put the bullet in his gun as he’s eventually going to do it himself as he is a grossly unhappy person.”
So Robbie gets shot. And Oasis get bombed…
Swan Bake
“HUNGER drove fasting Muslim to kill swan and bite into it raw.”
So says the headline in the Mail, an enticing prelude to a story which, on the face it, unites the paper’s triumvirate of pet themes – mad Muslims, bird flu and iffy food.
Reading on we learn of Shamshu Miah. It is the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan and shortly after midnight on September 26 this year hungry Miah is near the boating lake in Llandudno. So too was a swan.
A man observes the goings on. He calls the police. And they apprehend Miah in the company of a dead swan in a carrier bag. The Sun spots white feathers in Miah’s beard.
The postmortem fails to conclude whether the swan has been bitten to death or stabbed with a knife.
Miah does not understand. “I’ve done nothing wrong,” says he. “It was just a bird to eat.”
And while he is sentenced to two months having admitted possession of a knife in public and wilfully killing a wild bird, we should consider what it is Miah has done wrong.
Judge Andrew Shaw tells Miah that killing the swan is a “taboo act”. The offing of the swan contravenes a strong social prohibition. Bangladesh-born Miah is being told: “We don’t do that sort of thing here.”
No we do not, at least not since the Queen took ownership of all swans and we started farming turkeys.
But swans are eaten. Anorak recalls the case of composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Master of the Queen’s Music, who on finding a dead swan on his Scottish property turned it into a “delicious terrine”.
Police took the carcass from non-Muslim Mr Davies’s freezer as well as the wings, which he had kept for a Sunday primary school to use as the Angel Gabriel’s wings in the annual nativity play.
Or Jibril, as a swan-eating Muslim driven half-mad by starvation would have it…
Elton John Needs A Westlife
CAN anyone remember what Elton John was like before his gig at Princess Diana’s funeral?
Elton’s performance that day transformed him into the nation’s favourite therapist, the Godhead of requiem rock. As Diana’s candle flickered and died in the wind, Elton’s own flames burned brightly. The Princess was dead, long live the Princess.
And here is Elton on the front page of the Sun. When Elton speaks, the press listen, and today he tells us that he is “so glad” Westlife are ahead of Oasis.
Elton speaks not of some race to see who will support him on any forthcoming tour of funeral parlours and embalmists but of the “battle” to be top of the album chart this Sunday.
Be in no doubt that this is the race that could shape the future of British music. Will Westlife and their musical version of denture fudge take the top spot, or will the plaudits go to Oasis, who gamely continue to make music long after John Lennon’s death?
“I’m so glad Westlife are ahead of Oasis,” says Elton. “After what f****** Noel Gallagher said about me I couldn’t give a s*** about Oasis. I go into f****** shops all the time myself, he’s just such a tosser.”
And: “He’s an absolute tosser and he looks like Parker from the Thunderbirds.”
This much we know, and it is undeniable. The elder Gallagher does have the same slack jaw, blank expression and google-eyed demeanour of the 1960s TV puppet.
But the tosser position demands more consideration. And it is rooted in a comment made by Noel that Elton is too precious to go out for a pint of milk.
It might be argued that this slight on Elton’s dairy-buying capabilities has touched a raw nerve. But Elton will not truly refute the claim until he is seen at large buying milk or, say, a yoghurt at a shop or record store…
The Kipper and The Corpse
Live like Prince Charles & Camilla
THERE is much unsaid about the property advertised on the Sun’s front page.
One has no desire to cast aspersions on the estate agency business but it is often what is left unsaid that proves crucial when selecting a suitable residence.
This featured home boasts three bedrooms. It is, as a local estate agent tells readers, “very, very nice, but small if you rent it for a week”. The place features an organic farm, a ruined mansion and the “ghost of a beautiful blonde said to have been mistreated by her husband”. In other words, it’s a pokey, haunted cottage that smells of raw pig. Any takers?
And surely there will be. The home is in Myddfai, Wales, might not be Buckingham Palace, and there is barely enough room to swing a cat, or, indeed a tampon, but this is the holiday home of Prince Charles and the fragrant Camilla. And you can rent it.
In “ROYALTY TOWERS”, the Sun says Charles (The Germans) and Camilla (Is a Hampster) are offering “FAWLTY Towers-style” breaks in their new farmhouse. Holidaymakers can “romp” in their bed, “use” their loo and “soak” in ye olde royale bath.
“Wish you were heir?” asks the Mirror, producing a delightful picture of the 19th century coach house.
The Mail eyes the “lovenest” and estimates its market rate at £300 to £400 a week, although given the royal angle it might go for as much as £600.
But surely it will go for far more. Who is not excited by this rare opportunity to live like Charles, to partake of a themed holiday? You and your significant other can be Charles and Camilla for a time. Even the ghost, the flaxen-haired beauty could pass for the late Princess Diana.
This is no simple holiday, rather the Charles & Camilla theme park.
And it is fun for all the family. See the boy smoking a spliff behind the stables. Look out as a housemate falls down the stairs. Tell the women in your life how you’d like to live on as her tampon. Rehearse for the majesty of kingship with a colander and spatula.
The only proviso is that roles are interchanged, thereby ensuring that the role of Charles’ official “toothpaste squeezer” is distributed evenly.
And that everyone gets to sleep with everyone else…
Gordon Brown’s Gruffalo
Gordon Brown’s early Chrismas
HAPPY Christmas!
But not so happy for the average mother who spends 13 whole days preparing for the seasonal binge.
According to a survey seen by the Mail, the average woman, let’s call her Cherie, spends 288 hours shopping, 4.19 hours wrapping presents, 3.03 hours decorating the house, 4.27 hours preparing the Christmas meal and 4.38 hours cooking it. And that’s a meal that lasts two hours and 13 minutes.
It’s amazing these average housewives have any time left to take their anti-depressants and drive to Kentucky Fried Turkey, let alone respond to a survey.
But here is something to cheer them up. It’s lying on the doormat. It’s card from Gordon Brown. The Star says this is “a very PC card from Gord”. It invites us to have a “happy multi-ethnic Christmas”.
It return for giving Gordon loads of your money over the past year, you receive a colourful card designed by Axel Scheffler, illustrator of the Gruffalo children’s books.
The Mail sees the card and the images of children from different ethnic backgrounds sat around a Christmas tree reading books.
The image complies with Brown’s children’s Christmas party at No 11. This year it is being hosted by the Booktrust charity, which aims to promote reading schemes.
Sadly what with budgets and so forth, Gordon will only be dispatching 10,000 cards this year. The advice is to pass the cards on until everyone has had ago.
And not to use it as bookmark for your copy of a Christmas Carol. Bah, humbug!
President Nazarbayez Meets Borat
Kazakhstan’s funniest moments
LET’S talk about comedy with Sacha Baron Cohen, a Jewish comedian in the mould of Lenny Bruce, The Marx Brothers and the great Jerry Sadowitz.
There are few things more awful than discussing comedy – a night with Hale & Pace being one.
And the chance to listen to Cohen talking about the motivation for his Borat character and what makes a good joke is like listening to the nodding heads that pepper such show as 100 Greatest TV Funny Moments and An Audience With Freddie Starr.
“Borat essentially works as a tool,” says Cohen in the Sun. “By himself being anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudice.”
That and the galgenhumor are what make the Borat show watchable and laughable for many. Although anti-Semites, not known for their grip on irony, may view Borat’s song Throw The Jew Down The Well as a musical how-to guide.
Of course, Cohen’s remarks coincide with the arrival in the UK of Kazakhstan’s President Nazarbayez, the country’s leader since 1991 and re-elected last year for seven more years of fun and laughter with an impressive 90 per cent of the vote.
And having met the Queen and Tony Blair, President Nazarbayev found time to comment on Sacha Cohen’s film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
It cannot be denied that Cohen has raised the profile of this vast central Asian land. And as Nazarbayev says: “There is a saying that any publicity is good publicity.”
There is also saying about Kazakstan having loads of oil and gas reserves. Tony Blair might have heard it…
Mindbend It Like Beckham II
When Beckham Met Cruise
“WHY does everybody hate Tom Cruise?”
The Sun’ Jane Moore asks the questions. And before we can cite his failed marriages, spacey beliefs and height-adjusted wedding photos, we quickly we learn that not everyone does hate Tom Cruise. The question is misleading.
Jane Moore does not hate Tom Cruise. She lists Tom’s attributes – two adopted children, good relationships with two ex-wives, no anti-Semitic rants and so forth
And neither does David Beckham hate Cruise. Dave was unable to attend Tom’s wedding, but he did, nonetheless, get a gift.
The Star says Posh and Becks spent weeks trying to find the perfect gift for Tom and his blushing bride Katie Holmes. A source talks of his ‘n’ hr watches and home décor nicknacks.”
But after reviewing the full Swatch range, adult dummy display rack and a TrampoCouch, Posh ‘n’ Becks finally settled on giving Tom a David Beckham. As the paper says, and the Sun confirms, David will give Tom’s children Connor, 11, and Isabella, 13, a football lesson.
Given the alternative – a singing and dancing lesson from Posh – this is a brilliant prize. What young football fan would not relish the chance to learn a few tricks from Becks, and wow their friends with their bending freekicks and knowledge of image rights?
Heather Mills In Pieces
Heather Mills Uncovered
“MARRIAGE?” asks Heather Mills. “I’d rather someone chopped off all my limbs.”
Lest readers forget Heather Mills, the Mirror positions the woman on its front page.
Our divorce from the estranged Mrs Paul McCartney is not yet finalised and we still have to endure her presence at our breakfast table.
And that’s when she’s not popping up on the telly. As the Mirror tells us in “MAD MAC”, Heather has been on TV in America.
Appearing on the US show Extra, Heather says she’d rather someone came up and chopped off all her limbs than go through what she’d gone through with Paul.
And in case you still do not get the picture, Heather returns to her favourite theme: “When you’re vilified for doing nothing but falling in love with an icon – I’d rather have all my limbs cut off. That’s the God’s honest truth.”
Two mention of missing limbs in one interview is impressive even for Heather, who once removed her prosthetic leg and showed it on air to US chat show host Larry King.
And as we begin to reappraise Heather and see her as the damaged girl who dared to love, the Mail’s front page shows a picture of this tanned, smiling blonde and asks: “A gold digger? I was in love.”
“I didn’t marry for money. I was just madly in love with Paul, says Heather,” comes a second Mail headline.
The Mail has also seen Heather’s latest interview. It hears Heather say: “I’m a good mother. I’m a good person. I fell in love for the right reasons. I fell in love unconditionally.”
This is Heather on the offensive, vying to rebuild her “tarnished reputation”. She’s telling us what’s what. She fell in love for the right reasons, whatever they are.
“Eight-five per cent of my income goes to charity,” says she. “The word ‘gold-digger’ doesn’t go with that. If I was a gold digger, I would have a lot of money in my bank account. I’d be worth millions.”
And is this not Heather’s chance to redeem herself? Why not donate 85 per cent of any divorce settlement to charity? Come on, Paul, your heartless swine, have a heart. Give her the money.
Is it any wonder Heather reportedly turned down Paul’s insensitive offer of £30million? We appeal to his better nature. Give Heather £200million, Paul. Do the right thing.
Heather will surely give 85 per cent of this income to her pet Adopt-A-Minefield charity. Her generosity will prevent many people from stepping a landmine and losing a limb or four.
How will you feel, Paul, when they who you could have helped knock on your door…with their false leg…
OJ’s Simpson’s Kill Fee”
OJ Simpson’s crafty Fox
RUPERT Murdoch is a very forgiving boss.
He’ll shrug off scandal. He’ll laugh off journalistic crimes. He’ll ignore breaches in social etiquette. He considers “ethics” to be a county outside London. But he does not like to be embarrassed in front of his friends or become a mockery to his colleagues on that Mister Burnsian level of power.
The fact that he gave up all those ratings and all those book sales from Judith Regan’s brainstorm, If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened, means that Regan embarrassed him greatly with her scheme to have OJ Simpson “confess” to the hypothetical murders of his children’s mother and her friend.
Her disturbed and disturbingly cynical screed in the Drudge Report in which the very savvy woman claimed she was on the side of Righteousness and that she did not pay OJ Simpson for the work was a laughable embarrassment.
Yesterday’s supposition that she may indeed have concocted the book with her ex-lover the “ghostwriter” may also have led to Murdoch’s decision to yank the book and proposed two-night television specials.
We’re sure OJ Simpson will get his “kill fee.”
But it doesn’t look good for Judith Regan.
And on the surface, it doesn’t look good for Geraldo Rivera, whose syndicated television show is hanging on by a thread or two, and whose loud preenings of outrage about the book and infomercial certainly embarrassed his Boss and exposed a hypocrisy that only begins with his (Geraldo’s) blood-spattered exploitation of the Simpson murders and survivors that kept him in moustache wax for so long (Bill O’Reilly, the other loudmouth within Fox, is a success; as in his perverted sex scandal, he gets a pass).
We say on the surface, because Fox insiders tell us to look at Roger Ailes – who leads the Fox News and Fox TV stations, but does not run the Fox Network (not yet) – as the one stirring up rebellion within the organization (some of his Fox stations were refusing to air the murder specials) and may have given Geraldo and O’Reilly the greenlight to attack their own corporation and very understanding Boss.
Madonna’s Double
Madonna’s Baby No.2…
ANOTHER week and another baby for Madonna.
Toddle forward and look cute, Jessica Kondanani, an 18-month old orphan living in Malawi.
The Sun says Madonna met Jessica in an orphanage earlier in the year and thinks she would make a great sister to her new son David Banda.
Penstone Kilembe, Malawi’s minister of child welfare, says: “Her [Madonna’s] first choice, before David, was a baby girl called Jessica Kondanani.”
Madonna was smitten. Says the singer: “I saw this child from the village with questioning dark eyes and the saddest smile. I thought, ‘She looks just like me’. I told Guy, ‘We must give this child a home, too’.”
Looking first at Madonna and then at Jessica we too see the undeniable and uncanny similarities. Like Jessica, Madonna wears a jumper; like Jessica, Madonna has black eyes, or sunglasses as we in the West call them; and like Jessica Madonna has a song in her heart.
But, as ever, things may not run smoothly. The Mail hears that Jessica is wanted by another couple, doubtless keen to live with an African child who looks so much like an international megastar.
An Australian couple known as the Wilmots want to give Jessica a home. Mrs Wilmot says: “We heard Madonna was interested in a child, who we now hear is Jessica – but we are quite far down the line with our adoption.”
It would appear that the Wilmots have a head start on Madonna. But the singer does have access to mountains of cash and a private jet and can soon catch up.
Video Nasty
Britney Spears does Paris…
“BRITNEY puts her kinky sex vid on the web,” promises the Star’s front-page headline.
The move comes in light of stories that Kevin Federline, Britney’s estranged husband, could sell the tape to the highest bidder, earning himself as much as £120million, a rise on the £26million the Star priced the 45-minute recording at just last week.
At the current rate of inflation, Britney may care to hang onto the tape for a few weeks longer and agree to split the £5billion fortune it will earn with the feckless husband.
Britney should seek advice. And who better to ask than Paris Hilton, a woman whose home sex movie earned her notoriety, fame and her own Paris Hilton Just Me perfume – sparkling top notes of used hotel laundry with an undertone of adolescent bedroom and tissues.
The movie of Paris’s bedroom audition – entitled One Night In Paris – has reportedly earned £30million.
David Hans Schmidt, who bought the Hilton sex tape to the greater porn surfing fraternity, says the Spears work could be the biggest thing to come out the porn business since Long Dong met Melody Mountains.
Says he: “This tape would smash Paris Hilton’s sex tape sales like an Oreo cookie.”
So here are Britney and Paris collaborating in Las Vegas. The Sun (“DIVAS LAS VEGAS”) sees Britney “a parade around the city’s Tryst club.
The singer is dressed in fishnet stockings and a white silk blouse. This homage to 1980s horror fashion includes a black neck tie.
Looking at the ensemble, we only hope Britney looks better naked than she does clothed…
Plodski
DO you know the Polish for “Evening wing commander. In a hurry are we?”
If you do you could be a policeman. As the Express says: “NOW BRITAIN TO USE POLISH POLICE”. Britain’s thin blue line is to get a reddish tint.
Or it will do if Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom gets his way.
As Anorak readers know, Brunstrom of the Speed Camera writes a blog (“I’m sitting writing this on Sunday, after another whirlwind week. I was out every night last week except Friday. Luckily my wife is away sailing, because I wouldn’t see her even if she was here!).
And when he’s not writing about his wife and his evening out at the Wales Wildlife Crime Conference dinner in Swansea, Brunstrom is telling us that his North Wales police force is in need of Polish-speaking officers.
The thinking is that with so many Polish workers in the country, many of whom cannot speak English nor understand our customs, Polish officers can help to keep the peace.
This might seem like an entirely sensible move to many of us. But to Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migration Watch, it is “further indication of the huge strain on public resources that is being caused by mass migration into many areas of the country.”
Conservative MP Mike Penning talks of “common sense” giving way to “political correctness”. He says: “I know people who are desperate to get into the force and can’t even get an interview.”
We humbly suggest that Mr Penning’s associates learn to converse in Polish and thereby give themselves an edge.
But sure this is all about a county getting the police force it deserves. If, as the Express says, up to 10,000 Poles are working in factories in Wrexham alone then why not get their countrymen to help them settle in and stay on the right side of the law?
Something Fishy
Alexander Litvinenko’s red herring…
THAT’S not Richard Hammond pictured lying in a hospital bed on the Mirror’s cover page.
The man looking deathly pale, “with dark, sunken eyes, yellowing skin and a bald head” and not looking at all well is Alexander Litvinenko.
Litvinenko is achieving no little fame as the only Russian émigré in London who isn’t an oligarch and doesn’t live in Mayfair.
He is also the 41-year-old former lieutenant-colonel in Russia’s Federal Security Service, formerly better known as the KGB. It is claimed that Litvinenko has been poisoned by President Putin’s KGB.
The Mail says Litvinenko faces a bone marrow transplant. We read that his body is producing so few of the white blood cells that maintain the immune system that any infection could kill him.
What dastardly force could have done such a thing? The Sun looks into the matter and says Litvinenko fell ill after eating sushi in a London restaurant. Is Litvinenko the victim of a rogue prawn, a bad slice of tuna sashimi, a vengeful pork gyouza? Did he overindulge on raw fish? Or is the sushi a, er, red herring?
That would be bad enough. But then where would the story be? This can be no simple tale of food poisoning. British man eats bad food is no big story. (Litvinenko claimed political asylum in 2000 and was granted British citizenship last month.) This is the story of secret agents at work.
“From Russia with Lunch,” says the Sun’s front-page headline. “From Russia With Loathe”, trills the Mirror, both adaptations on James Bond’s From Russia With Love.
So did the KGB poison their man with thallium? Viktor Ilyukhin, deputy chairman of the Russian parliament’s security committee tells the Sun: “I can’t exclude that possibility.”
He goes on: “That former KGB officer has been irritating the Russian authorities for a long time and possibly knew some state secrets. So when our special services got the chance to operate not only inside but outside the country, they decided to get rid of him.”
For their part, the Kremlin has called such talk “sheer nonsense”.
Is it? The Star looks back at other case of victims of “shadowy forces”.
Remember Georgi Markov, the Bulgarian dissident who was killed in 1978 with a poison-tipped umbrella on Waterloo Bridge in London.
There was the poisoned knitting needle shoved into Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s leg; the poisoned letter sent to Chechen warlord Khattab; the thallium-laced burger that did for East German Wolfgang Welsch; and the poison that affected Ukrainian President Viktor Yushenko, who looked as orange as his revolution.
Whatever the cause, looking at Litvinenko, the effect is hard to miss, not least of all for other Russian defectors who have fallen foul of Moscow…
Posted: 21st, November 2006 | In: Tabloids | Comment (1)
It’s Us Or The Birds
EVERY day of every week the Mail thinks up imaginative ways to remind you that life is cruel and you are going to experience pain and die. And if it can’t think any up, it looks at scientific research.
Here is a selection of things that will kill you and yours from last week’s paper of doom…
MONDAY
Rain and 60mph gales will blow away the mild autumn
“Student, 17, died from brain tumour after junior doctor said she had a virus”
TUESDAY
“How Bulgarians can stroll into a British job” – What? Like Prime Minister or somefink?
“Al Qaeda ‘could be plotting a chemical attack in Britain’” – It could
“Why bother, Ma’am? Tomorrow the Queen opens Parliament. But with such gutless and gormless MPs – why are anyway denuded of their powers – the Mail’s sketchwriter asks: What’s the point of the House of Commons?” – Well, it’s warm and it is dry, and the tourists like it
Thee Numbers:
“140,000 – the number of people who attempt suicide each year”
“As nurses take over from GPs at new high-tech health centres, some doctors argue that patients are being put at risk…WARNING: NURSES AT WORK”
“I thought only women got osteoporosis – until my back imploded on the dance floor” – Robert Reese tells all
WEDNESDAY
“Thieves, vandals and hoax callers to be let off if they say Sorry” – Although they might be lying
“Birds could take flight for good” – Global warming could do for birdkind – and bird flu. Hurrah!
“Disturbing research shows that soon almost half of us will live alone. Here, a leading agony aunt – drawing on her own painful experience – says this denial of basic human nature will cost society dear…LONELY BRITIAN” – You’re always alone with the Mail
THURSDAY
“She married an ex-alcoholic and cocaine addict in the hope she could change him. Now he’s back in rehab. So… WHO IS NICOLE KIDDING” – Nicole Kidman. Tsk! What a loser
“The British are dreadful cooks. Best-seller cookbooks. Celebrity chefs. Our food has never been better. Tosh, says one man…” Digby Anderson has a nasty taste in his mouth
FRIDAY
“THE PROZAC GENERATION” – According to survey by Norwich Union Healthcare, middle-class parents are asking their GPS to give their pressurised nippers the happy drug. Dear-oh-dear. Why can’t they just borrow mum and dad’s?
“With so much gloom, how I was cheered by the long-suffering, good-humoured, common-sense voice of the England I love” – Miserabilist Tom Utley salutes Richard Fitzmaurice, the old soldier who refused to pay his council tax and went to jail.
“How Labour’s cynical targets put lives at risk, by top doctors” – So says consultant general surgeon David Flook
