Did you see their headline today? Next to a photo of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Prime Minister Teresa May is the headline “Never mind Brexit…Who won Legs-it!”.
I can imagine the wheezing guffaws from Paul Dacre’s office…and I don’t mind a shit joke in a headline – but it doesn’t make sense. What is “Legs-it”? How could you “win” “Legs-it”?
I know we can see both women’s legs in the picture – but the play on words relies totally on “legs-it” almost rhyming with Brexit. If we had Aiex Salmond next to David Cameron, seated in an alpha male knees-apart position, would it have been “Never mind Scotland – more like Scrot-Land! “
I doubt it. But even that, weak as iit is, is a joke that makes more sense than today’s effort.
My theory is that Paul Dacre came up with the joke and everyone laughed, And they had to go through with it. Hell’s teeth.
The Guardian’s all over this. Surely the Mail is putting off younger readers with this kind of behaviour?
Younger readers? The Mail?
Edit Memo to self…read whole thread before jumping in.
Let me guess who they said won out of Nic and Tel. Let me guess!
The front page is here, and as the headline seems to be designed to make you read what Michael Gove’s wife has to say on this important matter I’m sure we can assume who won. Hang, on @leicester-bangs – did you just use the Mail and the words ‘younger readers’ in the same sentence?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39416554
Ha! Well, yes they will need them if they plan to continue in business.
All they need is a load of fleshy pap shots of celebrities on the beach for their delightful sidebar. That funds their spittle-flecked moral crusading in the paper itself. Much like the Express being run by a pornographer, or the Graun wringing its hands over inequality while most of its work is done by unpaid interns.
Pert derriere = yuuuge arse.
Yes our thought in the office this morning was that any sub who came up with that ‘pun’ in the eighties for Kelvin Mackenzie would have been told to eff off and come back in 10 mins with something that was a) an actual pun and b) made people laugh
yeah……and if at the next eu summit, may is having a tedious conversation with another minister (who happens to have elaborate facial hair), she can say “sorry…must dash”…..arf
FISH
(sorry)
Oh splendid!
My golden opportunity!
I was wondering how I could justify posting this news item into the blog.
http://southendnewsnetwork.com/news/isis-claims-responsibility-for-katie-hopkins/
I shared a flat with Tony Gallagher (ex Mail and Telegraph ed current Sun ed) when he was starting off in Bristol. He used to keep huge piles of newspapers in his bedroom. I thought it was a hoarding kinda OCD thing. One day when he was on holiday we had a leak in the radiator so I used all the papers to mop up the water. He wasn’t best pleased when he came back because they contained every by line he’d had as a reporter to date.
Served him right for not coming to see the Stone Roses at the Bierkeller.
You could have changed the world.
The Mail’s line this morning is that feminists have no sense of humour. Whereas…
http://eveningharold.com/2015/02/09/paul-dacre-leaves-house-wearing-unflattering-suit-sporting-high-forehead-haircut-and-no-make-up/
He has the look of a haunted man. Can it be that scraping the bottom of journalism’s barrel for so long is getting him down?
It’s tough at the top in tabloid land. Is he still up to it?
“They don’t like it up ’em.”
Something that interests me about Dacre is that, while he is undoubtedly a flawed human being, he is also a proper journalist of the old school. So how does he feel about the nonsense his paper publishes, particularly the tsunami of toxic drivel popularly known as the sidebar of shame? Is he completely unembarrassable?
Paul Dacre philosophy: “It doesn’t matter if they like us or hate us. So long as they are talking about us, that is success.”
That’s his business plan. I’m interested in what goes on inside his head, if anything.
Sorry to blow your theory out of the water, but I believe Dacre is rarely in the office on Mondays and his deputy editor Ted Verity is the guilty party in this case.
Ted Verity! You couldn’t make it up, etc.
But actually my random wonderings about Dacre were more general, not about this particular front page.
I was referring to the Paul-Dacre’s-office scenario in the OP old bean
Ah yes, sorry.