Paper Monitor
10:26 UK time, Wednesday, 5 December 2007
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Let's kick things off today with a question that is really bugging Paper Monitor. Why does Amy Winehouse only seem to do things at 4am in the morning? Squabble with her husband, walk around the street in her jeans and bra and now move house.
If it's to avoid the paparazzi it's not working. The two dailies unofficially fighting it out for the title of Amy paper - the Sun and the Mirror - have also noticed it's Amy's get-things-done time. Their snappers are always there to get pics of her early-hour shenanigans. The songstress needs to learn there are ways to do things and ways not to do things. At 4am, and with the help of Pete Doherty, is not the way to move house.
Certain papers also need to learn the right way to do certain things, namely good cartoons. Part of the skill of newspaper cartoonists - as is magisterially demonstrated by the Daily Telegraph's Matt nearly every day - is to take one news item and relate it to amusing effect to another. Here's a how to, and a how-not-to, one from Brookes of the Times, one coincidentally from Brook of Metro.
HOW TO: Brookes, Times. Gordon Brown, paddling in a canoe down the Thames, saying: "I just want to forget everything."
HOW NOT TO: Brook, Metro. News billboard says Britain plummeting in education league tables. Man remarking says: "All our best teachers move to the Sudan."
And finally, the Independent scoops today's prize for the feature that leaves you asking what is that all about? The paper takes us inside the Sussex home of Gary Numan. The gothic red walls and huge black Louis XIV bed are pretty much what you'd expect from the abode of an 80s electro-pop star.
But it's the slightly odd tone of some of his comments that grab Paper Monitor's eye. Apparently he could never live in a city because he is "too vulnerable" and "at the mercy" of other people. His south coast refuge is the place he feels "safest". Is he trying to tell us something? Is the man in trouble? Is someone after him? Surely his back catalogue of songs isn't that offensive.
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