Paper Monitor
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
The heavy rain has prompted a serious case of Daily Express Weather© (expl: climatic conditions so extreme they break some sort of standing record or other). "TODAY IS WETTEST DAY FOR 50 YEARS" runs the front page headline. The story makes unsettling reading with "experts" predicting that conditions will be, among other things, "exceptional" and "horrendous".
Blimey, with that sort of threat in the offing presumably all the papers must be leading on this story. The Daily Mirror, nope. Times, nope. Sun, nope.
What better way of Gordon Brown showing that he's going back to Labour's roots than granting an exclusive interview with that old stalwart of the Labour movement, the Daily Mirror?
In tabloid terms, Tony Blair tended to be a Sun man. Brown's choice of the Mirror drips with political calculation… and that's before turning to pages eight and nine – where Gordon is pictured with the Mirror interviewer in a greasy spoon with strategically placed bacon sarnies, bottle of brown sauce and mugs of milky tea.
But hold on… look a little closer. While milky tea emanates a certain Clause Four-ness, Gordon actually appears to be nursing a milky coffee… aka a latte. And that blackboard menu that's also in shot. No sign of a full English breakfast there – rather "salt beef with gherkin in ciabatta" and "chilli con carne with rice and salad".
Political significance aside, Paper Monitor's tummy is rumbling.