Paper Monitor
12:04 UK time, Friday, 5 September 2008
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Yesterday we highlighted our anticipation for Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw giving Guy Ritchie's Rocknrolla the kind of beating not seen since, er, the last movie by Madge's husband.
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The premise is a play on the title's misspelling. Here's a sample: "As so often in the oeuvra of the film's creata, each cipha sounds like he's a Groucho Club memba, a haunta of that exclusive London booza which contains many a bourgwa meeja [expletive deleted] who thinks he's a West Ham supporter after a night on the powda."
Lovely. Sadly, while Ritchie might expect a bit of sniping from the snide Guardian, the film also gets positively tepid reviews in the Daily Mirror, Sun and even the Daily Star.
Meanwhile it's over to the Times, for an insight into La Difference, as it applies to the press.
The story is the pregnancy of French cabinet minister Rachida Dati. But who is the daddy? She's not saying, and the French media famously believe that "news stops at the bedroom door".
There's a glorious quote from Renaud Revel, described as a commentator with France-Inter radio.
"The German or Anglo-Saxon press would have X-rayed Rachida Dati's pregnancy to the point of producing the father's ID papers and his DNA. The French media are kept at a distance. The father has been known to newsrooms for weeks. But not a line, not a name... not the slightest allusion has appeared."
You might be tempted to paraphrase Mandy Rice-Davies's famous utterance and suggest "he would say that, wouldn't he". Or you might accept that this is the difference between our tawdry press and its noble Gallic cousins.
It all reminds Paper Monitor of the times it has to ring one of its friends in a red-top newsroom to find out which celebrity is the unnamed subject in an injuncted news story.
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