Wednesday, October 31, 2007

shome mishtake?

I've just got back from an event where I found myself talking to my boss Ian Hislop and Andrew Neil. At the same time. Stood next to each other.

And all I could think of was that I wished they were both wearing baseball caps...

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Could you repeat that?

JUST FANCY THAT!

"BBC TO SCREEN MORE REPEATS"
- Daily Mail, 18 October 2007

"BBC RESORT TO MORE REPEATS"
- Daily Mail, 4 July 2007

"£4 RISE IN BBC LICENSE FEE MEANS MORE REPEATS"
- Daily Mail, 19 January 2007

"BBC OWNS UP TO SHOWING 10% MORE REPEATS"
-Daily Mail, 14 July 2004

"BBC TO RUN EVEN MORE REPEATS"
-Daily Mail, 23 July 1992

One of a great many things I've got in this week's Private Eye...

Monday, October 22, 2007

I've redecorated.


D'you like it?

Sun Woman, you are spoiling us

Do you know, I thought the Sun's I'm a Tranny Llama Famer was a shoo-in as headline of the day. And then I scrolled down the page and found Two Vaginas Drove Pal To Death.

Long time no see



Would you look at that! It's a newspaper front page! With, like, news stories on it and everything! Not just a picture of a dolphin looking sad or a map or just some big writing saying "everything's STILL REALLY BAD in Iraq like we KEEP ON TELLING YOU and WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO REALISE that it's ACTUALLY YOUR FAULT".

Could this sudden change of style have anything to do with last week's revelation that Simon Kelner is quite happy to recycle government propaganda word for word as long as it gives him the excuse to put a pretty flag on his front page?

Or does it just mean that since he doesn't work sundays, it's only his deputies who actually have any scruples and a sense of shame?

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Bird bottles it

So, as I predicted back in March, my old boss John Bird has decided not to run for Mayor of London after all. He's decided to launch his "political movement" instead. Would that be related to the "street party" he's been threatening to set up for the last five years?

It's sad really. He's like that bloke in the pub who's always good for a tale, always got a big idea, always on the verge of a breakthrough, just about to change the world... and yet is always in that same pub the next time you go back there.

Still, at least one of his grand schemes once came to fruition, didn't it, even if it was 16 years ago? Oh no, hang on, The Big Issue was someone else's idea, wasn't it?

Unrivalled coverage

Look! My book! By me! With my name on and EVERYTHING!



My publishers have put the date back to May 2008 now, so you've only the six months to camp outside your local Waterstones, home-made fan-sign and thermos in sweaty paws, giving gap-toothed grins and thumbs-up gestures to local news reporters. Dress warmly.

Friday, October 19, 2007

A tribute to the BBC. On so many levels.

In honour of John Sweeney being apparently the only attendee at the BBC's "talent seminar" to have admitted that actually some people probably did deserve to be got rid of, lets trot out one of the youtube's finest moments, for those of you who haven't already seen it.

Man U star in shock sexy familial-greeting shocker



It looks like Heat, it sounds like Heat... and yet, because the new Iconz magazine is aimed at the Asian market, it has the most adorably demure cover lines ever:

"EXCLUSIVE - BIPASHA REVEALS ALL: 'CRISTIANO RONALDO INTRODUCED ME TO HIS MOTHER'"

(and is it just me, or is the "sexy new look" Shah Rukh Khan going for actually Iggy Pop after a hard day at t'pit head?)

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Scoop Macqueen strikes again

From this week's Popbitch mailout...

"Following our revelation that Christopher Lee
voices the audio guide to the Heritage Shipwreck
Museum in Hastings... thanks to the hundreds of you that wrote in"

Recognition at last...

Monday, October 08, 2007

Chap in flap over pap snap shock shocker

Leaving aside for the moment the fact that the only two papers that printed the paparazzi shots of prince william and kate middleton are the two whose publishers specifically banned paparazzi photos of her from their pages...


... doesn't she look absolutely bloody devastated by the invasion of her privacy?

photographer: Alessandro Copetti, sold via Matrix agency (but not to me)

Monday, October 01, 2007

Off the Bristol scale

A combination of a Sky+ box and a morbid fear stretchy-faced celebrity beauty editor Nadine Baggot means I don't often watch the adverts. But at some point over the weekend "I Could Be Happy" wafted out across my sitting room, and since every manifestation of Altered Images is to be savoured, I found myself watching an advert for soluble fibre with dozens of cheerful women swimming around in what was presumably meant to represent a giant lower intestine.

Now the last time I nearly fell off the sofa in surprise was when I first saw that deeply peculiar Sex and the City-style advert, in which four nicely-dressed ladies start blithely discussing the hardness of their stools in the middle of lunch. And then there's that Activia one where several apparently genuine women seem inexplicably happy to share the details of their intestinal gases - complete with impressions - with the entire world.

This is a new thing, isn't it? When I were a lad it was all woooooooahBodyform and "I get a lot of letters about thrush" round here. So at what point did the advertising industry unilaterally decide that, on top of all the other anxieties they've foisted upon them, the women of Britain can't even manage to poo properly?