Paper Monitor
11:53 UK time, Thursday, 27 December 2007
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
With little else to fill their pages bar year-end quizzes (which somehow feel so last week), the papers fall with enthusiasm on Boxing Day blood sports. No, not what-was-once-fox-hunting, silly, but the start of the post-Christmas sales (although several, among them the Sun and the Daily Telegraph go for both forms of hunting).
For 'tis the season for camping outside a posh department store/electronics outlet/discount retailer/newsagents (delete as applicable) so as to be first through the doors once the inconvenience of 36 shopping-free hours is over and done with for another year.
The Sun's News in Briefs recounts how Page Three Stunna Becky has been out bagging bargains before dropping by Wapping to pose in her pants. "I love the sales almost as much as I love Christmas. There are some great deals." She's even sporting a pair of camouflage knickers, standard issue for those brave enough to go over the top and on to the High Street.
The Daily Telegraph, meanwhile, decks its front page with a large photo of a triumphant sales shopper clutching not just one but FOUR new handbags, each large enough to breach carry-on luggage restrictions, as is the fashion these days. She stands, in a suitably militaristic overcoat, at the head of a long queue. Every one of the queuers regards her haul with undisguised resentment.
But the paper also reflects on notable characters who shrugged off this mortal coil on Christmas Day. Page five is given over to Pat Kirkwood, the 1940s answer to "theatrical Viagra" who once danced the night away with the royal consort, the Duke of Edinburgh, to sour looks from his courtiers. A Telegraph woman through and through.
The other is the Telegraph's former obits editor, Hugh Massingberd, who reinvented the form in the 1980s, shaking obituaries free of mothballs to celebrate the eccentricities of even those who played life with the straightest of bats.
A full page is devoted to his obit, along with space on pages one and two. The obit alone is highly commended for its use of the marvellous - and very Massingberd - word of "squirearchical".
Aptly, as it was he who encouraged the judicious deployment of killer details in obituaries, his Telegraph chums pull out the stops. One anecdote recounts how he was a great trencherman. "After breakfasting at the Connaught Hotel in 1972, he was particularly proud when the head waiter shimmied up to inform him that he had eaten the biggest breakfast ever served, the previous record holder being King Farouk I of Egypt."
And once, when depressed, Massingberd was asked what would cheer him up. "To sing patriotic songs in drag before an appreciative audience," he replied.
The mere thought of which warms the cockles of Paper Monitor's heart. Now that might be the way to see in 2008 in style.
The 
