Paper Monitor
13:19 UK time, Thursday, 15 May 2008
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
La la la la fingers in ears too much information la la la.
All week Paper Monitor has been riveted by the serialisation of Cherie Blair's memoirs in the Times and the Sun. So many nuggets of life behind Number 10's doors:
• US secret service men clearing a Ralph Lauren store in order to buy replacement baby clothes for a stinky Leo.
• President Clinton cradling said baby as he bawls his eyes out (Leo, that is).
• Alastair Campbell's insistence that Princess Diana fancies him more than Tony Blair.
• George Bush popping on a DVD of Meet the Parents that first time the Blairs visited Camp David.
But today the Times goes a revelation too far, even further than the "contraceptive equipment" left out of the washbag on a trip to Balmoral. It's the night Cherie and Tony first made sweet love. It's like finding out that your parents still do it. And she already had two - count 'em - other boyfriends at the time.
After a boozy work lunch, a "decidedly amorous" Tony escorted her home on the Number 74 bus. "By the time we got off we knew each other better than when we'd got on. And even better the next morning." And later, on how she came to choose Tony over the other two men in her life: "I fancied him rotten, and still do".
Yet somehow, impossible not to read on. The Daily Mail, which always has something to say about a) Cherie and b) sex out of wedlock is silent. Perhaps it has taken to heart the adage that if you don't have something nice to say, say nothing at all. Or perhaps it's because it missed out on the serialisation rights.
Meanwhile, the Sun reproduces drawings by the children of "dungeon master Josef Fritzl". Elisabeth (his daughter) and Felix and Stefan (his sons and grandsons) write their hopes for the future on outlines of their hands.
"My daughter Kerstin's recovery... for people's understanding," writes Elisabeth, free after 24 years imprisoned by her own father.
"I miss my sister... [I] like the sun," is 18-year-old Stefan's take on their freedom.
"Going in the car... playing with other children... running in the meadow," writes Felix, age five.
Yes, hands can be very revealing, as close-ups on last night's ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News at Ten of Gordon Brown's bitten-to-the-quick nails show.
The 
