Paper Monitor
13:20 UK time, Friday, 22 October 2010
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
It's Friday, the blessed relief of the weekend looms and, presumably, the British public must by now be as punch-drunk from the battery of Spending Review cuts case studies, statistics and ominous foretellings of doom as was Paper Monitor yesterday.
Fleet Street's editors understand this, and pre-empt their readership's wishes with a time-honoured course of action: send in the clowns.
Or, rather, the comedians. Hiring professional stand-ups to write columns as the week draws to a close is a relatively recent phenomenon, and one which papers hope will alleviate our moods even in the post-credit crunch era's grimmest moments.
Hence Frank Skinner in the Times avoids all talk of deficits and forecasts and, instead, concentrates on the news that he has [subscription required].
He continues:
I've never spoken publicly - or, come to think about it, privately - about this before, probably because I wanted to leave open the possibility that not cleaning one's ears is normal. I've considered discussing it in the context of observational stand-up comedy but I never knew whether it would get that glorious laughter of recognition or an uneasy silence. You may be reading this thinking: "What's he talking about? No one actually cleans their ears - well, not in a thorough, exhaustive way. Ears just basically clean themselves."But then again, you may not.
Frankie Boyle occupies a similar spot in the Sun.
"Apparently Wayne Rooney has refused to sign a new contract," the ex-Mock the Week panellist "Come on Sir Alex, is it really that hard to forge an 'X'?"
But Paper Monitor's biggest laugh of the day is not generated by a professional stand-up but by Marina Hyde in the Guardian, who constructs a of the oft-voiced suggestion that the "close friends" used to source stories in celebrity magazines may in fact be made up:
In fact, the reporters of Now magazine, and all others like it, spend months, often years, cultivating a network of high-level whistleblowers, who are met bi-weekly in underground parking garages, where they dispense history-altering investigative advice such as "follow the money" and "Kerry begs Mark: take me back".
Paper Monitor bids you a pleasant weekend.
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