Paper Monitor
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Playwright Alan Bennett makes the news in the Daily Express, with the unhappy news that he was pickpocketed by two strangers pretending to be Good Samaritans.
They told him he had ice cream on the back of his jacket and offered to help him to clean it off, but stole an envelope containing £1,500.
Sounds familiar... Bennett, ice cream, thieves... Ah yes, six months ago, there was this report. And about how to avoid this and other tricks.
The Express doesn't say WHEN it happened, but Bennett was writing about the incident again this week, so it's an illustration of how news can get recycled.
Elsewhere, the Express is sticking to what it does best.
It ignores everything else going on in the world to use its front page to predict a white Christmas, bash the Germans and the EU and, finally, to pose an all-important question on behalf of its readership: "What's a posh bird like Liz doing with a barmaid-chasing Aussie?"
That's Liz Hurley and Shane Warne, just in case you didn't know.
And it's day two of the Daily Mail's war against scantily-clad females on The X Factor.
Yesterday, Paper Monitor highlighted the Daily Mail's horror at the "revealing outfits and racy content" in the performances of Christina Aguilera and Rihanna, with helpful illustrations.
Now it's front page news in the Mail, and the fallout involving MPs and Ofcom has even reached the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, so it's with great reluctance that the paper reproduces more images of the singers.
"We apologise to readers but you have to see these pictures to understand the fury they've stirred"