Paper Monitor
11:22 UK time, Friday, 2 January 2009
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
As home-grown New Year festivities reached full frenzy too late for yesterday's papers, today's Daily Mail makes up for lost time with a double-page spread depicting worse-for-wear revellers.
While the blokes pictured are, to a man, bloodied, the laaaaydies are comatose with drink. And not a coat or scarf among them. Any could be a successor to Drunk Girl, whose image illustrates a thousand articles on binge drinking.
One in particular could be Drunk Girl's sister, and will no doubt be added to the Mail picture desk's stockpot. She sits on the pavement in her party frock, high heels and opaque tights (sensible choice). Her head rests in her hands, hair flopping forward, obscuring her face. And in the background, a discarded can of Carling gleams in the sulphuric light of a street lamp.
Meanwhile, the picture desk has been kept busy playing mix and match in a feature entitled "CELEBRITY HAIR SWOP". Incidentally, why do they spell "swap" that way?
Six "iconic" dos - Kate Winslet's blonde waves, Katie Holmes' dark bob, Agyness Deyn's peroxide crop etc - are spliced onto the faces of Britney, Nigella, Kylie, Madonna, Cheryl et al. And the results? Britney should go brunette. Again. And Catherine Zeta Jones should consider bleach-blonde and choppy - a huge departure from her usual look, but one which, strangely, works.
And finally, a mini-epic (is such a thing possible?) of a headline. "They're one of the countryside's most majestic sights - but ravenous, sexually voracious deer are laying waste to vast swathes of Britain. So is it time to start slaughtering these..."
Who, who? Can't be binge-drinkers again, as "majestic" doesn't really apply...
"... VANDALS WITH ANTLERS"
Yes, countless wild deer are munching their way through the vineyards, market gardens and woodlands of Britain - "more than at any time since Edward the Confessor sat on the throne in the 11th Century".
An extraordinary claim, perhaps the most extraordinary unit of measure used since, er, Edward the Confessor sat on the throne in the 11th Century.
The 
