Rob Blackhurst

Sunday May 19, 2002

A sideways look at seven days in the press. The big red-top price war news made for a week of navel-gazing nonsense.

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These were seven days of news with the lifespan of a mayfly as the mini-heatwave brought a stream of premature silly season nonsense. Pillar of the community and leading third way thinker Richard Desmond added to the frippery by helping to spark a three-way price war between the Express, Sun and Mirror. Experts filled many a media column decrying the suicidal economics of all this. But a closer inspection of the week's red-tops revealed that it was entirely sustainable: they had largely abandoned the expensive business of newsgathering in favour of stories about themselves.

You could pay only 20p to learn in detail about your own elation at paying only 20p. The Sun's Chief Reporter John Kay, eschewed the challenges of Bagram and the Gaza Strip to discover Britain "going balmy" over the new 20p Sun after the "amazing price-cut". Though the country didn't outwardly seem to have taken leave of its senses, there was plenty of excitement buried in the paper itself. "I really like the Sun, it's not all doom and gloom", opined estate agent Tim Newbury, 24: "I've never thought about buying the Mirror". Remarkably, hospital assistant Clare Allen, 49, made a similar unprompted remark: "We've never thought of getting the Mirror, to be quite honest".

Mad dogs and Englishmen

But if the Sun was playfully kicking down the sandcastles of its rivals, the Mail spent the week bristling like a colonel with sun-stroke. "Koreans eat dogs and I will not apologise for saying so" frothed Tuesday's masthead. David Jones was clearly intent on exposing the wicked truth: "The Koreans will tell you that only specially-bred yellow dogs are eaten. This is another blatant lie. I was offered all kinds of breeds including a collie and a sad-eyed old spaniel". "To the Koreans", we learned, "one dog tastes much like the next". Horror heaped on horror with the revelations that the World Cup co-hosts "are equally fond of cats" which are "rendered down for a tonic drink". What hope, though, for the Mail's civilizing mission when the case for domestic pet consumption was being championed by one Professor Yong-Geun Ahm who "rejoices in the sobriquet Dr Dogmeat".

Home from home

Such hazards on foreign shores made it reassuring to learn that a corner of the world was forever England. "It's the home of Ford Anglias, Tootal ties, Richola Shirts, Hovis and Brown Windsor soup", Simon Winchester hymned to plucky Gibraltar, the one place in the Mediterranean to buy whatever might constitute "a reliable kipper". Anyone with the temerity to think that Spain was a modern European Country was soon put right. The sturdy Gibraltarians "see Spaniards as people who are incapable of maintaining internal security (with bombs, threats of coup d'etat, a questionable system of justice, widespread corruption) and manifestly unlikeable". More importantly, their neighbours were biologically distinct: "There are two types of ape in these parts" our not unsympathetic Mail correspondent related, "The Rock's Barbary apes, and the Spanish".

John Prescott was also planning to pack his bucket and spade this week to "decide on strategy" for the forthcoming Earth Summit in Johannesburg. Rather than hiring a conference suite in some airless hotel in Luton, a bright spark in the Cabinet Office hit upon the idea of laying on a trip to Indonesia. Prezza's trip, complete with a retinue of 30 civil servants, was set to cost the tax-payer £300,000. The two-bedroom Imperial Suite at the Sheraton Hotel in Bali "boasts en-suite bathrooms and a private lagoon style swimming pool" claimed the Sun, "it's a tough job but someone's got to do it". Naturally, Britain's favourite 20p red-top mustered the resources to send their own man to Indonesia, even though he filed a piece that wouldn't have been overly different if he had read the brochure in his local branch of Thomas Cook. It did the job though, as poor old Prezza found he had a prior engagement in Hull and cried off.

Good advice of the week

Don't go to the new Queen musical if you aren't a Queen fan, Kevin O'Sullivan helpfully suggested in the Mirror: "If you don't like Freddie Mercury's brand of melodramatic camp - you're going to hate We Will Rock You with a passion. I know I did" he advises, having attended the first night. The critical consensus found little to please in Mercury's oeuvre. "Despite a life-time's addiction to pop-music and a CD collection that now numbers more than 2000 albums, I have never found it necessary to buy a single record by Queen", sniffed Charles Spencer in the Telegraph.

Celebrity Brawl of the week

The old journalistic adage of "man bites dog" could have been applied this week, as Jamiroquai's lead singer Jay Kay allegedly achieved the unlikely feat of being attacked by a press photographer. This reversal of the governing laws of celebrity, reportedly occurred after the Jazz-Funkster detected a dent in his Bentley. "I went up to him and asked why he done it" a chastened Kay told the Sun: "the next moment he gave me a nice, juicy headbutt and there was claret all over the gaff". But, he conceded, there were consolations to celebrity status: "At least I can afford a good nose-job".

Nonsense Survey of the Week

Winston Churchill, Mahatma Ghandi, Margaret Thatcher and their ghosts must have felt cheated by the gods, with the news that none could compete with Princess Diana for the title of "most effective leader in modern history". You'd have imagined that facing down the Nazi's, ridding India of imperial rule and vanquishing the trade unions were achievements that would impress the 1,100 media and business managers surveyed. But a greater surprise, the Mirror mused, was that Diana had been placed above Sven Goran Erikkson. Doubts about the survey's validity were heightened when a spokeswoman shared her theory that modern leaders can be divided into three types: pumas, dolphins and rottweilers.