Paper Monitor
13:43 UK time, Wednesday, 5 January 2011
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
There are details that are essential to a story, those that just serve as some fluff to pad them out and then those that are just plain weird.
The Times is the source of Paper Monitor's rather quizzical look today.
It runs the story of Deborah Cavendish, the 90-year-old Duchess of Devonshire, who has obtained a restraining order against an unwanted admirer, Michael Andrews, 75.
There are many details that need mentioning in this story of unrequited love, but it's one in the second paragraph that sticks out as being just plain bizarre.
Setting out the details of the restraining order, the paper also points out that Mr Andrews "bears a passing resemblance to the late Michael Foot".
None of the other papers seems to have noticed any such likeness. Nor has Paper Monitor after holding the paper at ever angle possibly.
So what is this incongruous detail really all about? Could it be part of a new editorial policy to point out whenever anyone in the paper has even the remotest look of Mr Foot about them?
The least puzzled by this inclusion is probably the Duchess herself. Being the last surviving of the six Mitford sisters, she is no stranger to the oddities of life.
The 
