Words Dept.: archive

I see Andrew Gilligan is making the headlines again over a series of recent articles in the Evening Standard. I’ve spent the last hour reading his original claims in the Standard, numerous subsequent counter-claims and various blogs on the subject and it’s all rather complicated. Essentially, the key element of Gilligan’s latest investigation is that [...]

The outcome at 18.33 today – whereby the appointment of Fabio Capello as the new England manager was finally “approved” – was reached unpredictably speedily during the course of this week. And, rather as it does with Wimbledon and the Eurovision Song Contest, the BBC has taken ownership of the event. It’s been impossible to [...]

There was an interesting documentary about weekly lads mags on Channel 4 last night, which showed that if you launch two similar magazine products into the market place at the same time – as IPC and Emap did in 2004 with Nuts and Zoo – they will eventually morph into one another in order to [...]

In all seriousness, this story about a chicken nugget that supposedly resembles a dog is possibly the worst local newspaper story of all time. Seriously, it looks more like a monkey. Or possibly a chicken nugget. God bless the Hartlepool Mail. Thanks to Ben Hau for pointing it out. -

Finally, Morrissey has opened his gob about the NME interview on the Guardian blog (where else?) It’s delightfully long-winded but immensely pleasurable to read. Predictably, he denies wholeheartedly the trumped-up charge of racism and launches into a spectacularly single-minded tirade against the “new NME” and, most mercilessly, its writer, Tim Jonze. I do not mean [...]

I’ve had, for the first time, an e-mail from a PR promoting a magazine. She says that since I am a “keen online commentator in the media arena” (pffffft!), I may be interested in the decidedly pretentious sounding publication she is promoting, which includes a photo feature on “The new heirlooms”, shot by Mary McCartney [...]

Turns out Tim Jonze, the NME journalist who interviewed Morrissey, didn’t ask for his byline to be taken off the piece because it was an anti-Morrissey stitch-up by the NME – but because NME wanted to tone it down! Writing on Comment is Free last night, he says: …it’s been something of a PR coup [...]