Paper Monitor
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
There are days when reading the headlines gives a taste of what it must like to be a script editor on some grisly murder mystery like Messiah or Rebus or Miss Marple. The week is but partway through and already there have been all manner of ghoulish goings-on:
'Maniac' had sex with model’s corpse - Metro
'No killing' to be made in Rock deal - Financial Times
Annabel, 2, drinks acid in fruit juice - Sun
Writer beaten to death ‘like a seal pup’ - Monday's Times
Fashion victims apply the bandage dress - Monday's Daily Telegraph
Pensioner in parking row at Asda died after revenge attack - Tuesday's Daily Mail
Your winter nuts help birds breed - Times (oops, how did that last one sneak in there?)
Honestly, it's enough to make one long for quieter, gentler times, like the days when Ireland won back-to-back-to-back Eurovision song contests. Speaking of which, today's Times provides some light relief with a piece about the turkey puppet that's favourite to be Ireland's entry this year.
Now Paper Monitor regrets to admit that it has hitherto been ignorant of Dustin the Turkey's body of work. But the paper remedies such a failing with a wealth of biographical details - such as how Dustin's political party is called Fianna Fowl - as it assesses the celebrity puppet's chances of joining past Irish Eurovision luminaries.
Those who take Eurovision success seriously worry that such a development indicates that the contest is "going down the tubes". But the paper's pop guru Pete Paphides posits that ironic entries might just be the way to go. Well, Terry Wogan has always undertaken his own involvement with one eyebrow hiked firmly skyward. And where Tel leads...