Paper Monitor
12:09 UK time, Friday, 16 November 2007
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
It's a Friday, there are no more sleeps until the weekend and the papers are feeling funky (younger readers may wish to avert their eyes as Paper Monitor grooves to the internal beat of Fool's Gold).
Steve McClaren enjoys a rare moment of levity in the Daily Express as he channels the spirit of Travolta circa 1977, one arm aloft and head turned aside in the iconic disco move from Saturday Night Fever.
And Metro, which likes to think it can still kick it with "ver kids" (in its case, afternoon freesheets like thelondonpaper and London Lite), devotes page three to explaining the moves to Soulja Boy's Crank That, the synchronised dance craze of the moment. But it does rather show its age by explaining one step thus: "A brief jig ending in a Fonzi-style pose..." and by posting the exact same article on the website of its sister publication, the Daily Mail.
Paper Monitor is less than convinced that this is how the 17-year-old US rapper might describe the move. And sure enough, in his , he explains the step as: "You gotta lean wid it...one, two..."
Which just goes to show how vivid a picture original source material can paint. The Smoking Gun website knows this well, reproducing the backstage riders of pampered stars.
And now the Guardian is giving original court documents the same treatment, only in this case it's the backstage riders of Prince Mohammed bin Nawwaf, the Saudi ambassador to Britain. A former aide has listed 13 pages of items he claims he bought for the prince and was never reimbursed for, including:
• Beretta guns, gloves and knives
• two Arab karaoke machines
• six binoculars
• four Persian rugs
• magazines and an XL woollen cardigan
No sign of any Ferrero Rocher chocolates, though.
The 
