Paper Monitor
12:05 UK time, Monday, 17 December 2012
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
As we approach the shortest day of the year, Paper Monitor is in need of a few rays of sunlight. What do the papers have to offer?
The Daily Express has not one but two Daily Express Weatherâ„¢ headlines, and a cartoon based on the latter:
- "Weather to make the rich flee Britain"
- "Floods threat to Christmas"
It's wedding bells (again) for Silvio Berlusconi, who has proposed to his 27-year-old girlfriend, "a former TV showgirl who is almost half a century younger than him," notes the Times, adding that he "is not yet finally divorced from his second wife". (Cue appropriation of that Mrs Merton quote.)
It also makes a perhaps unexpected pairing of the words "saucily" and "Susan" in its report on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Sports Personality of the Year - as in Bradley Wiggins rocking up on stage in all his "double-breasted glory, handkerchief a-flutter like a Mod-era Rod Stewart and saucily addressing Sue Barker as 'Susan' throughout".
The Daily Mail, some will be unsurprised to learn, has a reliably bonkers take on the fashions at the awards.
After criticising the female athletes for looking "slightly butch and uncomfortable" and "chunky", with their boxy waists and muscular shoulders, Liz Jones then performs one of her trademark about-faces to declare:
But ultimately, who cares if they don't look like they've stepped off the pages of Vogue, or even read the magazine?
How about the fellas?
The men, bar Louis Smith, looked fine in their finery.
And finally, the Daily Telegraph has yet more praise for Wiggins:
In maintaining a knowing detachment from the entire gaudy spectacle before turning up at the end to win the whole thing, Wiggins achieved a high-wire balancing act at least the equal of anything he achieved on the bike. Beat that next year, Chris Foome.
The 
