Everyone shall have a cookie, I've baked extra for the Wookie

Right. Christmas edition of Private Eye went to bed at lunchtime yesterday, so I'm clocking off and hitting the eggnog. Don't expect any more posts until 2009. Thanks to everyone who's dropped by this year, a special shout-out to the recent influx of visitors redirected from David Icke's website (you've made me the happiest lizard on earth), and I'll leave you with your Festive Friday Treat and wish you all a very very happy Life Day (New Liarbore political correctness gone mad etc...)



*note for passing geeks: not only do I know the quote comes from the Christmas in the Stars LP and the video's from the Star Wars Holiday Special, I feel the need to point out my knowledge here. Get over it and go back to searching for unofficial Watchmen trailers...

A source confirmed: "Mooo"

Sky News only quotes impeccable sources:

Mad Cow: 'Hundreds More May Die'

The Telegraph o'er the water

From Media Guardian: Ex-Telegraph journalists Craig Brown and Sam Leith join Reader's Digest.

Sarah Sands is quite plainly setting up the Telegraph-in-exile, isn't she?

NO SURRENDER! DOWN WITH THE PUPPET VICHYTORIA REGIME!

And on the fifteenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...

... the traditional load of made-up bollocks about political correctness gone mad...

Can anyone spot any evidence anywhere in the Daily Mail's story "Mother told to take down her Christmas lights in case they offend her non-Christian neighbours" that Dorothy Glenn was ever told by anyone to take her Christmas lights down?

A plump plum pudding to the first enterprising hack who manages a festive recycling of the old "Hot Cross Buns without crosses" bit of nonsense as "Now they won't let us call them Mince Pies in case it offends the gays"...

But it's traditional!

Joined-up Government

Last week: government insists police were right to arrest public sector worker Christopher Galley for leaking information (to Damian Green) on his bosses at the Home Office who he thought were not doing their job properly.

This week: government launches special whistleblower hotline for public sector workers to leak information on their bosses if they think they're not doing their job properly.

Into the dark night that is very, very long...

Oliver Postgate once emailed me when I was working at The Big Issue. It was by quite some measure the most exciting and impressive communication I had ever had with someone famous.

He wanted to know more about a reference to an 'e-book' that had been included in an article, because he was researching ways of transferring lots of his animation, illustrations and behind-the-scene photos into easily-accessible forms for the sort of technology that hadn't even been dreamed of in the Clangers' time. He would have been in his mid-70s. He was working on his brilliant autobiography Seeing Things, which you could still order in time for Christmas if you're feeling flush.

A lot of it ended up on this website, where I should imagine a lot of people will be spending some time this morning, telling their colleagues they must have caught that cold that's going round and that's why they're sniffing so much and their eyes have gone a bit streamy.

I was going to close with an appropriate quote from the first saga of Noggin the Nog, but someone else got there first:

Then, one day, the king rose from his seat as if to go down to his castle. The people watching him saw him shake and stagger and fall to the ground. The king was dead. Great was the sadness and loud the wailing. The flags on the houses were pulled to half mast and the great bell rang.

First they came for the obituarists, and I said nothing. Then they came for the literary editor...

Bloody hell.

The Media Guardian tells me that

Columnists Craig Brown and AN Wilson have become the latest and most high profile departures from Telegraph Media Group.

Satirist Brown, who was on contract to write two pieces a week for the Daily Telegraph – which were published on Saturday and Tuesday – was informed last week that his services would no longer be required.

They must have some kind of really clever plan that's just too clever for anyone in the outside world to see, mustn't they. Mustn't they? Because the alternative is that when Chang and Eng Barclay took over they wrote out two lists, one of everything that was distinctive and had value to the Telegraph brand, and the other of the stuff no one was that bothered about, and then put the wrong one in the internal post...

Friday frights

No treats for you this week - you've been bad. Instead, in tribute to the anonymous lurker down there who accused me of being envious of Liz Jones's lifestyle and thus gave me the best laugh I've had in weeks: be afraid, be very afraid...

Things that happen when the Popbitch mailout links to your website...

1) You suddenly get 6,500 more visitors than usual

2) Arts correspondents from the dailies phone you up saying they've 'just come across a really good story' they think you might be able to help them out with in return for a tip fee.

The edition of Private Eye featuring the Damien Hirst story has now been on sale for eleven days...

Today's lesson for headline writers: how prepositions work

I can't help feeling the Mirror's front page is being a little bit harsh on poor Shannon and her brothers and sisters...

Featuring David Mitchell, as 10% of all broadcast material must by law

So I saved up my tokens from PG Tips and got a cuddly Monkey.

I bought a pair of Levis just so I could get a Flat Eric.

But how much cocaine do I have to take to get my free Pablo the Drug Mule Dog?

Now you don't see it

You know the best thing about the Mail's reaction to what everyone's calling John-Barrowman's-winky-gate?

While Mail editor Paul Dacre was putting this front page together in the office, he actually had his cock out.

Or perhaps he didn't. Maybe he just said he did. Or I said he did to get a cheap laugh. No one knows. No one saw anything.

What we can say with some certainty that he was swearing his head off, because he generally does. Dacre throws around the C-word with such regularity that editorial conferences at the Mail are known as "the Vagina Monlogues".

So will he now offer an unreserved apology to the British public for something that happened during the production of a newspaper they could have (though most of them didn't) read, despite the fact none of them saw (or indeed had any means by which to see) it? And their children? And those children who were only spared the ordeal due to the fact they haven't been born yet?*

It's not often you can invoke the Scissor Sisters to make a valid point about the day's news, but has no-one at the Mail noticed that YOU CAN'T SEE TITS ON THE RADIO?





*(c) Fry and Laurie, circa 1987.