http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/ The Magazine's recommended daily allowance of news, culture and your letters. en Copyright 2009 Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:44:36 +0000 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=4.1 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss A service highlighting the riches of the daily press. Some Friday punning fun with a collection of good and bad headlines from the tabs: "IT'S PEACE IN OUR CHRISTMAS TIME" - postal strikes truce (Mirror) "AN INSPECTRE CALLS" - police investigating a murder acted on the advice of a mystic (Mirror) "CHEQUES FACTOR" - professional singers pay thousands to appear on the X Factor (Mirror) "MERRY CHRISLESS" - price wars at the supermarkets (Sun) "BOT A ROTTER" - Conservative MP Sir Nicholas Winterton says he may have slapped a woman's bottom (Mirror) The Sun also reported on the Winterton story and referred to a "girl MP", Natascha Engel. At what age does a girl become a woman? Ms Engel is 42. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/11/paper_monitor_812.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/11/paper_monitor_812.shtml Paper Monitor Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:44:36 +0000 A service highlighting the riches of the daily press. After a silence of almost two years, Paper Monitor warmly welcomes the return of the Financial Times' foremost corporate leader/strategist/member of the Jargonista, Martin Lukes. For the uninitiated, Lukes is the fictional author of a satirical column, relayed in e-mail and blog format. His conduit, if you like, is the real life FT columnist and sometime contributor to the Radio4/Magazine Point of View strand, Lucy Kellaway. A chief executive who wouldn't tend to underplay his significance in the world of big business, while being a little too eager to sidestep any blame when things go wrong, Lukes departed the FT's pages almost two years ago. His silence was enforced - the consequence of him being extradited to the US and "wrongly" banged up for some corporate misdemeanour or other, a la Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. But now he is back, rubbing shoulders with Conrad Black in the prison refectory and e-mailing from behind the cell walls (and an FT.com pay wall.) In a Jonathan Aitken style turn of events, he has also found God. Irrepressible as ever, Lukes is employing wife Sherill on the outside to post updates on his new blog, entitled ?InsideOut!™ (Tags: God, our Lord, innocent.) His missives are now littered with - characteristically crass - Biblical citations - "'Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might - Ecclesiastes 9:10'" he advises Sherill. And the man behind the Creovative™ philosophy has yet to repent his old ways. "'I am kick starting with the Word,'" he begins his first blog post. "Our Lord was the ultimate Creovative role model..." Away from the FT, the Times is adding to its stable of supplements with a new science glossy, called Eureka, which appears to be monthly. (Today is issue two.) It's an ambitious looking (read: expensive) venture - 60 pages thick, with the likes of Bill Bryson leading the by-line charge. As ever, Paper Monitor welcomes all efforts to further the cause of the newsprinted word. So good luck Eureka (and thanks for not putting an exclamation mark at the end.) http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/11/paper_monitor_811.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/11/paper_monitor_811.shtml Paper Monitor Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:29:55 +0000 A service highlighting the riches of the daily press. Forgive Paper Monitor. When you have so many publications to read telling them apart becomes difficult. Such is the case with the Independent which risks confusing itself with the Daily Mail. The homecoming of the mercenary Simon Mann who was jailed in Africa for plotting a coup is its page 3 lead. But rather than focusing on the intricacies of Mann's exploits which landed him in a prison cell in Equatorial Guinea, the paper appears more interested in his finances. "Last night he was on his way back to his £5m British country residence via a five-star hotel." Mann also stood to gain "£9m if the coup succeeded." And, after touching down on board a "private jet" he will face a barrage of questions. The Times by comparison treats the story with the awe of a boy-scout revelling in the adventures of his daring hero. It explores the "names in the frame" of the Wonga Coup and delves into the conspiracy theories behind their exploits. "For years a motley collection of adventurers, arm dealers, sanction busters, diamond smugglers and fighters traded on the continent's unfailing supply of civil wars, coups and counter coups. Their adventure has finally ended." However, it can't resist pointing out that Mann stands to make a "splodge of wonga" from his astounding story. Nice pun guys. It's not been easy trying to ignore the rise of TV hate objects Jedward, but coverage in recent days has reached such a feverish pitch that it's now officially impossible. Over at the Daily Star, it's a case of too much information as the paper delves into the sex life of X-Factor's brothers grim. Apparently, twins John and Edward Grimes have a bombshell sex secret: The "Only squeeze they get is hair gel tube" reveals the headline (if you can call that a revelation.) It's not much of a secret to their "friends" back home in the Dublin suburb of Lucan. One kindly soul said: "Some people around here see them as village idiots." The Jedward Factor also hits page 7 of the Daily Mirror whose 3am girls followed the Addams Family-a-like collection of X-Factor finalists to a film premiere. Rather than seeking the twins' sex secrets, or lack thereof, they were after the key to their gravity-defying hair-dos. Despite their herculean efforts at the sharp end of investigative journalism, the 3ams didn't get far, the twins giving little away. "This attention is crazy. We're loving every minute. We've even got people copying our hair. Can you believe it." Rhetorical surely. And, what a difference a week makes. It's back to the biggest poppy debate. Last time we checked only two papers had pinned a red flower to its masthead - the Sun and the Daily Star. Now, the Daily Telegraph, The Times, the Daily Mail and the Independent are proudly displaying their foliage. There are two frontrunners for the coveted award of most sizeable masthead poppy: the Telegraph and the Mail, both of which could be mistaken for "actual-size" renditions. At the other end of the scale is the Times, which, calculated in accordance with Paper Monitor's unique SI unit for masthead poppy measurement is... about the size of the now defunct half-penny piece. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/11/paper_monitor_810.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/11/paper_monitor_810.shtml Paper Monitor Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:38:21 +0000 A belated - sorry! - service highlighting the riches of the daily press. It's been a while since the Daily Express had a Madeleine McCann cover. But with the release of two age-adjusted photos showing the missing girl as she may look at six-and-a-half, the Express devotes much of page one to a then and now picture spread. "MADDIE We believe she is alive. Help us to bring her home" runs its headline, using a quote from her parents (who, incidentally, call her Madeleine and never Maddie). But the paper is back on-message in its page five headline and article: "Tanned and smiling... a new image of Madeleine revealed in fresh appeal. Experts in the US have produced the two haunting pictures of how Madeleine would look now." Incidentally - again - on the Express's overly heavy website, Madeleine stories have the usual "have your say" request for comments disabled. In 2007, the Express reported a similar move on the Leicester Mercury newspaper's message boards in rather hysterical terms: "NOW HER PARENTS FACE HATE CAMPAIGN - Madeleine's home town turns against her parents". But there's no more of that sort of thing, since that round of apologies last year (Paper Monitor, March 07). Even for the Express, things have been rather quiet when it comes to Madeleine developments. The LexisNexis newspaper database shows the last time it touched on the case was 20 October, in which she is mentioned during an interview with a psychic who "helped police solve the murders of Holly and Jessica". So, what's his take on Madeleine's disappearance? "I would be keen to be involved," he said. "But it's completely against my principles to do anything of the sort without being expressly asked to do so by the parents." Any hopes of a scoop dashed then. And the second most recent Madeleine story from the Express stables was on Sunday, 18 October, on how the Home Secretary was poised to ask US spy chiefs for satellite images of Praia da Luz at the time the little girl vanished in May 2007. "The quality of pictures taken by satellites in space is now so good they can reputedly identify the colour of someone's eyes." No further news on that particular angle yet. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/11/paper_monitor_809.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/11/paper_monitor_809.shtml Paper Monitor Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:34:39 +0000 A service highlighting the riches of the daily press. We all like a weather story now and again, and several of the papers are singing from the same hymn sheet today with their take on the everyday minor fluctuations of a barometer needle which, in normal times, is simply called the weather forecast. The Scots certainly have good reason to be alarmed - heavy rain has brought havoc to areas of Scotland. But elsewhere in the UK, the story is largely that it's November and it's damp, windy and a bit chilly. Hardly front page fodder, unless you are the Daily Express, which last Tuesday had splashed with the story that we were in for a spot of mild weather, sorry, make that a "70F Indian summer". A point of order before we go further. Ever noticed how newspapers deploy two different scales to measure temperatures depending on whether it's hot or cold? Contrast last week's Express headline with the paper's headline from 5 January this year: "Sub-zero Britain - Temperatures plummet to -9 as longest freeze for a decade tightens its grip." The Times also pitches into the "it's autumn and the weather is a bit wet" story on its front, with an image of two men in rain gear driving a veteran car on the annual London-Brighton car rally. Delve inside the paper and you soon come across a picture of a boy wrestling with an inside out umbrella and another image which has been widely reproduced today, of a man surfing in Tyneside. Granted the waves look pretty fierce, but, IT'S NOVEMBER! But Times weatherman Paul Simons, who deserves a medal for his command of weather stats, raises the stakes by noting this year has seen the driest September and October combined for 53 years. Staying with the Times, a helping of kudos to the picture desk for forgoing the typical image that accompanies most stories on soft drugs. Its picture of two eyeballs - one heavily dilated from the effects of smoking dope - is hardly the most arresting of images, but at least it's not the same old crumpled cannabis joint that's in just about every other paper. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/11/paper_monitor_808.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/11/paper_monitor_808.shtml Paper Monitor Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:40:44 +0000 A service highlighting the riches of the daily press. Are the Times leader writers hankering after more creative outlets for their arguments? Paper Monitor wonders because twice this week a leader column in the esteemed paper has been penned in the style of a celebrated author. On Wednesday it was channelling spy writer John le Carre in recognition of the fact the veteran author has switched publishers after 38 years. Today, the ghost of Richmal Crompton (creator of the Just William books) has taken hold of the column - a nod to the fact that old style sweets are making a comeback apparently. (Once again, the Magazine doesn't like to blow its own trumpet, but...) The ravages of time are there to see - William "has less hair to tousle". His gang, the Outlaws, are getting about by on Zimmer frames and Violet Elizabeth is in a wheelchair. Nevertheless, they are off to the sweet shop to indulge in gobstoppers, sherbet lemons and the like - sidestepping the local supermarket and other totems of modern-day living. Actually, given that William was 11 years old when he first saw print, in 1922, the old boy isn't doing too badly. Paper Monitor calculates he's hovering around the four-score years and 18 at the moment. Only two more years to go until his telegram from the Queen. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/10/paper_monitor_807.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/10/paper_monitor_807.shtml Paper Monitor Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:50:23 +0000 A service highlighting the riches of the daily press. It was only a matter of time. From the moment Royal Mail announced it was going to be taking on 30,000 casual workers to relieve the effects of the strike, Paper Monitor was counting the days until the first undercover journalist surfaced with a tell-all account of life inside a sorting office. So well done to the Guardian's Steven Morris for being among the first to finish line. (On Saturday, the Daily Mail's Ryan Kisiel also filed from the sorting office.) Morris managed to fool Royal Mail chiefs into giving him a job in one of its temporary sorting offices, as did Kisiel in Bristol. In truth, there doesn't seem to have been much subterfuge involved on Morris' part. Had the post bosses simply Googled his name, their suspicions might have been roused by the second link. Steven Morris | guardian.co.uk Steven Morris is a reporter for the Guardian. ... 1-15 of 2355 for Steven Morris. Latest from global. Most viewed; Latest; Most commented. Last 24 hours ... [and so on] Another click and they would have been treated to a picture of this aspiring postal sorter. Ditto for Kisiel. Morris delivers some juicy nuggets of behind-the-scenes shenanigans - DVD Frisbee, courtesy of all those online movie rental outfits (though Morris omits to mention whether any of the frisbee'd discs were from the Guardian's own online rental offshoot, Sofa Cinema) and something called "no look basketball". For those who have recently entrusted a parcel with Her Majesty's postal service... you're better off not knowing. Paper Monitor can't help but wonder how many other hacks are, at this moment, desperately trying to disguise all signs of their Clerkenwell selves as they go through the motions of wanting to be a minimum wage temporary postal sorter. It keenly awaits a slew of revelations in other papers. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/10/paper_monitor_806.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/10/paper_monitor_806.shtml Paper Monitor Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:37:01 +0000 A service highlighting the riches of the daily press. We're used to things being so clever that they qualify as genius - Stephen Hawking, for instance, and those gun corkscrews that suck the thing out of the bottle in one motion. But what about things that are so stupid they can be categorised as genius? Big Mouth Billy Bass and burglars who leave their wallet at the scene of the crime among them. Well prepare for a towering example of the latter category on page 37 of today's Sun. It's a four paragraph story about a survey that suggests men with high testosterone levels don't like sharing. Headline? "Divide 'n bonk her" Epic. Magnificent. Gloriously naff. This headline is everything tabloid newspapers aspire to. Elsewhere, in the Daily Mirror, they're battling to make a coinage stick. Sometimes a bit of journalese takes root immediately and passes into the wider lexicon. WAGs being one example. Blair babes was another. The Mirror is following the latter example with its pushing of "Cameron's cuties" in reference to the Conservative leader's battle to get more women MPs. The Daily Mail is also in on the act. From a quick search of the LexisNexis newspaper database, it seems Matthew Norman coined the term in 2006 in the London Evening Standard to apply more generally to any photogenic candidate. Paper Monitor prediction: This won't stick. Something has gone wrong over at the Daily Star. The famous Text Maniacs section usually provides a refreshing break from such concepts as "correct spelling", "coherent thought" and "the news". But among all the X Factor rumination, bad jokes and requests for Abi Titmuss pictures, a rogue serious comment seems to have escaped the net. "u rightly said prostate cancer kills 10,000 men a year, but u didn't mention that it gets little or no government funding - unlike breast cancer," texts James from Lancashire. What's going on? http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/10/paper_monitor_805.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/10/paper_monitor_805.shtml Paper Monitor Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:24:32 +0000 A service highlighting the riches of the daily press. As you read this, Paper Monitor has just finished digesting page three of the Sun through the fingers of hands that were hurriedly put over eyes in horror. It's not a good way to start the day, but it's Gordon Ramsay's description of how he sometimes starts his day that is the problem. Talking about his "year from hell", he mentions his wife and how they have coped after he was accused of having an affair behind her back - something he denies. It starts off sweetly enough. "She's brilliant. That hurricane made us incredibly closer." But quickly enters the "too-much-information" stage. "Her buttocks are so firm it's like clinging to a six-pack. She has the bum of an 18-year-old. I woke up the other day and she was doing buttock-clenching exercises." Note to Gordon, please don't follow the route of telling us about how great your sex life is at every opportunity to try and convince us you are happy together. We're not interested, even if the Sun thinks we are. Another thing we're not going to dwell too long on is Amy Winehouse's new boobs, but they are in most papers today - making the front page of the Daily Mail. It says she turned up late for the Q Awards in London, slurred her words and was rude. Sounds as if she could have made it into the Sun's "Binge Britain" series. Day Two and the focus is still firmly on young women. The newest member of the "drunk girl" club is a young student in Sheffield, pictured being arrested for stealing a policeman's hat. But just as Paper Monitor predicted, Drunker Girl is now the official face of female debauchery in the UK. After her debut in the papers last week, she returns today. Get used to those pants, they're here to stay. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/10/paper_monitor_804.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/10/paper_monitor_804.shtml Paper Monitor Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:30:11 +0000 A service highlighting the riches of the daily press. Monsieur Mohan, you are spoiling us with your drunk girls. Last week, Paper Monitor noted how the icon de jour of licentiousness, Drunk Girl - for the uninitiated, a picture of a woman lying prostrate on a city-centre bench with a couple of empty alcopop bottles at her feet - had potentially been usurped by a new rival to the throne... let's call her Drunker Girl. The latter was snapped in a short skirt staggering through a city centre, her underwear down at her ankles. Now, the Sun, under the stewardship of relatively new editor Dominic Mohan, has literally and figuratively gone to town(s) with the idea. "Carnage on the streets as girls go wild" is the headline, set against pictures of inebriated young women in town centres from Plymouth to Newcastle. The main picture could almost be a study of 21st Century binge culture. A woman in Cardiff is pictured leaning forward as she steadies herself with one hand, and clutches her handbag with the other. She is, in the vernacular of her age group, parking a pavement pizza. There's another picture of her slumped next to a wall, talking into her mobile phone as police officers tend to her. But the good people of Cheltenham might feel a little aggrieved at their town being featured in this gallery of shame. While Drunk Girl Newcastle is snapped being led away by police and Drunk Girl Windsor is pictured being wrestled to the ground by officers of the law, in Cheltenham the women pictured are doing nothing more than, er, wearing short skirts. That's a pretty minor infringement of sartorial norms compared with the woman from Daventry, pictured four pages earlier, who is named as Kelly, is aged 19 and is, of course, the main draw on page 3. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/10/paper_monitor_803.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/10/paper_monitor_803.shtml Paper Monitor Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:29:37 +0000 A service highlighting the riches of the daily press. Forgive Paper Monitor for not getting into the BNP-Question Time story that gets blanket coverage on the front page of today's papers. It's an emotionally charged issue, not least because Paper Monitor found itself prevented from leaving the office yesterday evening because of the demonstrations outside TV Centre. It's not often one's workplace is "locked down" - to employ the official language of yesterday's communiqués - so readers should forgive any signs of siege mentality in the ensuing paragraphs. OK, who's wearing the biggest poppy? (No, not a Question Time observation, although commentators concur that Baroness Warsi won that particular battle.) With the annual poppy appeal underway, so far only two papers pin a red flower to the masthead - the Sun and the Daily Star. The Sun's - including foliage - is about the size of a 5p piece. It's dwarfed by the Star's - the leaf alone is bigger than the Sun's entire poppy. The inhabitants of Monitor Towers, having previously addressed the question of the right time to start wearing a poppy, will keep you posted as to when the rest of the papers follow suit. Meanwhile, the Daily Mail has an intriguing call and response headline: "Q: How do civil servants track down missing illegal migrants? A: Hold a tug of war, of course". But that is but a brief pause on the way to Mail columnist Jan Moir's weekly offering. Her last effort mobilised the forces of Twitter and was the subject of a question on Question Time - that Question Time - so she could hardly just witter on about X-Factor and biscuits. Well, not only X-Factor and biscuits. "The truth about my views on the tragic death of Stephen Gately" runs the headline this week. Moir apologises for distressing Gately's loved ones by the "insensitive timing of the column, published so close to the funeral", but defends her use of the word "sleazy" to describe his death. She also writes: "I can't help wondering: is there a compulsion today to see bigotry and social intolerance where none exists by people who are determined to be outraged? Or was it a failure of communication on my part? Certainly, something terrible went wrong as my column ricocheted through cyberspace, unread by many who complained, yet somehow generally and gleefully accepted into folklore as a homophobic rant." The Guardian's Media Monkey column compares and contrasts what a difference a week - and a record 25,000 complains to the press watchdog - can make to Moir's opinion: "Last week, Stephen Gately... 'could barely carry a tune in a Louis Vuitton trunk'.... but this week he was 'a talented young man [who] died before his time'." For the record, Moir thinks those singing twins in X-Factor are "the stuff of nightmares" but "so entertaining". http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/10/paper_monitor_802.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/10/paper_monitor_802.shtml Paper Monitor Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:07:34 +0000 A service highlighting the riches of the daily press. It's not every day a star is born, but today is one of those days. She's in most of the papers. In fact, it's hard to avoid the almost full-page pictures of her in the Sun and the Daily Mail. But will she be opening the newspapers this morning with smile on her face. Erm, probably not. Forget Cheryl Cole being the new face of L'Oreal or Lily Allen the new face of Chanel, this young woman has just become the latest pin up for female binge drinking. Arms aloft, short dress on and knickers round her ankles, the young women is dancing in the street after a night out in Cardiff. The Sun and the Daily Mail are equally outraged by her antics. "Safe drinking levels for women? KNICKERS TO THAT!" is the headline in the Sun and "The streets of no shame" is what the Mail uses. It continues with: Maybe she thinks it's the drink that is preventing her from putting one foot in front of the other. Or perhaps she knows the vulgar truth and is merely trying to impress her friends. Either way, the sight is certainly not an edifying one. This shrieking ladette was photographed staggering through Cardiff city centre late on Friday night. If she thought she had a headache when she woke up the next day, boy, has she got an even bigger one now. For years to come her picture will probably accompany every story about the fall of civilised society as we know it. Dedicated Monitor letter readers will know this was the fate of the girl known only as Drunk Girl. Just look at the Indepedent website today. But maybe she can now rest easy, as of today she is so five minutes ago. Drunk Girl II has arrived. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/10/paper_monitor_801.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/10/paper_monitor_801.shtml Paper Monitor Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:54:04 +0000 A service highlighting the riches of the daily press. Aptly, the Sun dives in for a second serving of the story of the 70-stone Ipswich man. Yesterday it called him "THE WORLD'S FATTEST BLOKE" (see Tuesday's Paper Monitor). It's back-pedalled since then, and today reports that it's long been his ambition to be the fattest man in the world. The front page is dominated by a photo of a fish supper and his lunch menu as a headline: "4 large cod, 2 pies, 4 battered sausages, 6 large chips, mushy peas, curry sauce". Inside there's more from a "health care insider" who treated him in hospital three years ago: "'He was often seen going through the McDonald's drive-thru section for cars in his special wheelchair. No one could stop him eating.' In his bid to become a record-breaker, [he] scoffed whole boxes of Sugar Puffs in one go." For readers for whom even the most personal of details is not too much information, there is even an annotated photo of his home, explaining a day in the life: "Water tank: To keep him hydrated. He is banned from all fizzy drinks as they could expand his stomach still further""Hoist: This lifts [his] bed up so he can change the position of his head and see the television clearly""S.A.D. lightbox: Helps to combat depression and seasonal affective disorder caused by lack of sun" Meanwhile, News in Briefs addresses the question of positive discrimination. On David Cameron's plans to use all-women shortlists to pick prospective MPs, Poppy, 18, from Somerset, says: "It's only right that women should be represented properly in Parliament." Is the Sun having yet another dig at anti-Page Three Girl Harriet Harman? Meanwhile, the Times addresses one of those questions that you never knew you wanted an answer to until seeing it in print: "Ever wondered why we drive on the left but stand on the right?" (Online the headline is revised to "Mystery over Tube escalator etiquette cleared up by restored film".) After missing the story about hoax showbiz stories thrown up by the very film festival that it sponsors (Thursday's Paper Monitor), the Times gets a full page article out of a restored silent film showing at the festival. "Escalator etiquette in most countries tends to match the rules of the road... So why do passengers on the London Underground stand on the right-hand side of escalators when the rules of the road dictate that we drive on the left? A visual joke in [the film] Underground... shows how the design of early escalators meant that it was important to step off with the right foot. Unlike modern 'comb' escalators, where the end of the moving stairway is at right angles to the direction of travel, older 'shunt' escalators ended with a diagonal so that the stairway finished sooner for the right foot than for the left." So does escalator etiquette match the rules of the road where you live? http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/10/paper_monitor_800.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/10/paper_monitor_800.shtml Paper Monitor Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:42:44 +0000 A service highlighting the riches of the daily press. It can be hard doing the same job day in and day out. Things can get a little samey. But then there are days when it's obvious that one has the best job in the world. Well people, today Paper Monitor feels the latter (as always) and it's all thanks to one paper - the Sun. It's vintage stuff from the off, with a front page consisting of a tale of the fattest man in the world, a large picture of a scantily-clad woman and a smaller one of Winston Churchill giving a rather different V sign than he's normally associated with. "WORLD'S FATTEST BLOKE LIVES IN IPSWICH" screams the headline in capitals. Ah, it makes one proud to be British. It's a headline that's so big it barely leaves room for the all-important picture of 70-stone Paul Mason. Of course, enough space has been spared on page one for a large picture of Jenson Button's lingerie-model girlfriend in her - erm - lingerie. Winston and his gesture are squeezed into the bottom left. On page five the story of the world's fattest man is pretty much told in the headline, which encompasses the three facts its readers need to know - he eats 20,000 calories a day, has been stuck in bed for eight years and costs the taxpayer £100,000 a year. There's a bigger picture of him in his special 3ft-wide wheelchair and a map showing his journey to hospital in a specially-built five ton ambulance. He's lucky to be alive, says the Sun GP Dr Carol Cooper. Bish bosh. Job done. Turn the page and the next big front page question is answered. Jenson Button will be having sex with his girlfriend on Friday, everyone. Jenson is "still not in pole position" - as the paper puts it - because Jessica Michibata is currently modelling in Japan. But she's back in three days so drama over. Turn the page again and the third big question is answered. Who is on the receiving end of Churchill's V sign? It's the BNP. And it's a doctored picture, which reverses his V for Victory into, you know, the other one. The paper says Army chiefs are giving the BNP the "two fingers" for using Britian's proud military history for propoganda. But the real Sun magic comes on page 22. Bananas are good for you and very cheap at the moment, so how do you make that into an interesting story? Make a journalist live on them, and nothing else, for a week. We get a day-by-day diary from Nick Francis, who ate 109 bananas in all and spent just £6.54 for his week's food. Just in case you can't quite picture how many bananas that is, the article is bordered with 109 banana photos. The piece also responsibly has medical advice from Dr Cooper - busy day for her - just in case any readers are tempted to try this at home. Her conclusion? This diet will give you wind and could lead to impotence and infertility, so don't do the diet "if you want to impress in the sack". Jensen Button, take note. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/10/paper_monitor_799.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/10/paper_monitor_799.shtml Paper Monitor Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:11:44 +0000 A service highlighting the riches of the daily press. Laydees and gentlemen, welcome to the main event. It the red corner, weighing in with "There's nothing natural about Stephen Gately's death" (a headline later amended to "A strange, lonely and troubling death...") is Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir. And in the blue corner, fighting fit and champing at the bit, Janet "I found Stephen Gately delightful" Street Porter. Also in the Mail. On Friday, Moir claimed that the Boyzone singer's death "strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships". She wrote: "The sugar coating on this fatality is so saccharine-thick that it obscures whatever bitter truth lies beneath. Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again."* Today - after a weekend in which the Mail and the Press Complaints Commission have been blitzed with complaints, and the offending article no longer crops up in searches on the Mail site - it's Street Porter's turn. "What exactly was bothering Jan? The fact Stephen was gay, the fact he was in a civil partnership, or the fact that he or his partner might have enjoyed sex with someone they had just met?" The Guardian's media editor likens the public online response to the Trafigura super-injunction: "Moir, or her editors, or both, misjudged the speed and breadth of the real-time web and social media in their power to highlight and pressurise at speed and with force. To see the Daily Mail taught a lesson about public outrage in the electronic age would no doubt have raised a weak, battered smile at the BBC." *There's no "weak, battered" smile from on-off BBC man Charlie Brooker in his own Guardian column as he takes issue with Moir's contention that there must have been something in Gately's lifestyle that led to his death: "I dare to challenge the renowned international forensic pathologist Jan Moir, because I personally know of two other men (one in his 20s, one in his early 30s), who died in precisely this way. According to the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young (c-r-y.org.uk), 'Twelve apparently fit and healthy young people die in the UK from undiagnosed heart conditions' every single week." Meanwhile, on to another matter entirely. Remember SamCam's spotty dress that spoke a thousand words (Paper Monitor, 9 Oct)? More than one commentator wondered how she'd got her hands on a dress that sold out within days of going on sale back in spring. Well, the Mail has not let it rest. "How SamCam pulled strings with M&S boss to achieve her 'off-the-peg' look" runs its headline. "Sir Stuart [Rose], who bumped into David Cameron's wife at a social event, was only too pleased to oblige and ordered his staff to comb the company's 600 stores to find the dress... After some days of searching, a sample size was located in a size 14 - two sizes too big for Mrs Cameron. So one of the store's dressmakers was enlisted to tailor it." Erm, Sir Stuart, Paper Monitor has an M&S swimsuit that doesn't fit quite right. Fetch that seamstress, there's a good chap. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/10/paper_monitor_798.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2009/10/paper_monitor_798.shtml Paper Monitor Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:06:14 +0000