Paper Monitor
10:37 UK time, Monday, 1 October 2007
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Great minds think alike, do they? Not according to the great Keith Waterhouse (Daily Mail columnist and author of the best guide for journalists in avoiding stupid mistakes and cliches), who pointed out that great minds do exactly the opposite.
So you hear Anne Robinson's splitting from her husband. You might have seen the news on this website yesterday, with the pleasingly utilitarian headline . So do you run the story straight? Or... perhaps... yes, that's it! Why not use a WEAKEST LINK pun??? Genius.
Daily Mirror: This is the weakest marriage.. GOODBYE
The Sun: You are the Weakest Link... GOODBYE!
Daily Express: £60m divorce deal as TV's Anne tells husband: Goodbye
Daily Mail: ANNE ROBINSON TELLS HER HUSBAND: YOU ARE BEING DIVORCED, GOODBYE
Guardian: Severed link
Daily Telegraph: Robinson severs marriage link
Take a bow the Times. "Anne Robinson to divorce her second husband after 27 years." That's more like it.
And meanwhile if we are celebrating independent thinking, hats off to the Mail on Sunday yesterday, which did an opinion poll of people's attitudes towards the party leaders, but with this original twist: they asked interesting questions.
They included: who would you most like to sit next to at a dinner party? If you were to lend them £20 who would pay it back last? Who would you want on your pub quiz team? Who would iron his own shirt? Who would you want to babysit your child?
Paper Monitor would have happily linked to the story so that you could find out what the answers were. Unfortunately, with it being omitted from the Mail's website, any such association would have been a very weak link indeed. Goodbye.
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