Paper Monitor
11:20 UK time, Tuesday, 27 November 2007
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
As the alleged inspiration for the bumbling, rather hapless star of Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, the late Bill Deedes is a shoo-in for the title of Paper Monitor's Most Heroic Figure in Journalism of All Time.
So the late Lord Deedes' death in August was a solemn moment for this column.
But yesterday was a chance to celebrate the life of the former Daily Telegraph editor at a memorial service in his honour and the paper gives over plenty of column inches in its coverage today.
A few observations, if you will permit, Lord Copper...
- Is that Boris Johnson arriving for the event (with bicycle) in what might loosely be called a Michael Foot-style donkey jacket?
- "…lashings of Champagne"?? Ginger beer perhaps, but the Blyton-esque term seems ill-suited to this particular amber nectar.
- How exactly can the word "no" be elongated to three-syllables, as former Telegraph editor Charles Moore noted was Deedes' way. Paper Monitor has been quietly mouthing it, but can only manage two syllables at best. Clearly there's more to "Mayfair cockney" - Moore's analysis of Deedes' accent - than one might suppose.
- Judging by the fact that half the Telegraph staff were in attendance yesterday (Court circular, p26) how did they manage to get the paper out as per normal?
The 
