GOTCHA! Tabloids find comedian guilty before he’s even charged
I Comedian Chris Langham was propelled into red-top notoriety when. after not showing up to collect his Best TV Comedy Actor prize at the British Comedy Awards. it was revealed that he had been arrested on suspicion of downloading child pornography. The Sun was soon employing familiar one-Syllable jargon in the headline 'Comic nicked “on kid pcrn'", in which inverted commas are an admission of sensationalism as opposed to quotation. It also flagged up Langham's ‘unshaven' appearance when he was approached by the press. The Mirror‘s front page story added that he was ‘dressed in a scruffy jumper and jeans'.
The following day‘s Independent criticised “a national paper' which had had the incident ‘splashed over the front page' even though the actor was not charged. It also rebuked the police. saying ‘such is the hysteria surrounding paedophilia that the police have no business confirming or denying anything to do with such investigations'. Guardian columnist Marcel Berlins explained that Langham was one of many ‘victims of a virulent form of “leaked celebrity arrest”. Need this really be the price of fame and a free press?
ANDREW NEIL GETS LIPPY
Johnston Press buys The Scotsman and Neil goes dot.com.
I ‘Where did it all go wrong for The Scotsman?’ asked Matt Wells in The Guardian, following news of the sale of the paper to Johnston Press. Congratulating his own paper on its prediction the previous week that publishing twins the Barclay brothers were going to sell the title, Wells went on to say the sale
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DIET AND FITNESS MAGAZI'ES
Cutting a fine figure on the newsstands
‘I paid £20 for a Matt Lucas doll, and it turned out it was Gail Porter.’
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‘I know what the press wants. The story of our- three-in-a-bed sex romp with Cilla from the Singing Kettle.’
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‘l’ve had the longest pregnancy in the history of mankind.’
I For Slimming subscribers. losing weight is not just a new year’s resolution. it is a lifestyle. The godmother of dieting magazines launched in 1969, when most of its current readership had a figure like Twiggy, and no need for such guidance. Now. like daytime TV cover-star, Lorraine Kelly, they're fighting a battle against middle-aged spread and turn to Slimming as their ‘Bible and best friend’. A friend who is bursting its seams. like them, and always on hand to dispense palatable advice on the health benefits of baked beans, for example: ‘Iow in calories, high in fibre and great on toast’. If the diet fails it has fashion tips to hide a multitude of sins — ‘shrugs and capelets cover batwings and look ultra-sophisticated,’ says best friend, soothingly.
I Personal Trainer for Women is not for the hopeful couch potatoes who turn the pages of Slimming magazine for exercise. For PTFW readers, dumbbells, yoga mats and gym balls - not low-calorie deserts - are the stuff of fetish. Lycra-clad models lunge and stomach-crunch their way through its exercise pages and its features pose probing questions like ‘are you confused about whether to do your CV work at a high or low intensity?’ That’s cardiovascular to you.
I Health & Fitness is Cosmo for dieters with its holistic approach to mind and body. Mantras like ‘work out with your man’ and ‘ditch poisonous people’ show that detox doesn’t have to be skin deep. Exercise is an elegant affair for its readers as they plie with the English National Ballet in the exclusive workout feature. (Leah Milner)
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confirmed The Scotsman’s ‘slow slide back into regional newspaper obscurity’. It was not the paper’s anti-devolutionary stance that was its downfall, rather a loss of identity rooted in its switch to tabloid form, and, he argued nostalgically, its change of premises from the iconic North Bridge office.
The Evening Standard had a different outlook, seeing The Scotsman’s £160 million price tag as confounding the popular view that newspaper publishing is ‘suffering
death by a thousand websites’. Yet Andrew Neil, the former Scotsman publisher, has already announced his outfit will be launching two women’s websites, lippy.com and mama.com. The domain names of both, The Guardian’s Media Monkey cheekin pointed out, have already been bought up by others. But if this is the way forward for Neil, maybe The Scotsman should go one step further than the other ex- broadsheets and become handbag— sized like Glamour magazine.