Paper Monitor
12:13 UK time, Friday, 29 December 2006
Let’s be honest, it’s Christmas week, everyone else has their feet up, possibly glass in hand, just about lively enough to operate the remote control.
And in news terms, it’s a kind of mid-winter silly season, becalmed between the Christmas rush and the starting gun being fired for the new year.
This opens the door to all kinds of news that otherwise might have struggled to make it into the national press. A story about a bloke who made a Lego model of an aircraft carrier? Yep, that’ll make a big colour picture in the Sun.
Red kite numbers falling in Scotland? You mean great big pictures of birds? Yep, full page in the Guardian.
Shoes that can be used as mini vacuum cleaners and Norman Cook giving a lift to a couple of stranded motorists… both figure prominently in the Daily Express.
Mind you, the Express goes the extra mile with a classic trio of female faces on its front page. Diana, natch. Then Kate Middleton, as a sort of Diana noveau. Then Eva Longoria, the Desperate Housewives star. Why Ms Longoria (who appears not just once, but in three photographs)? She was opening the Harrods sale… and wasn’t the owner of that establishment somehow connected to the Diana story?
At least the Express remembers the importance of tradition at this time of year.
The 
