Paper Monitor
10:41 UK time, Thursday, 24 January 2008
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
If the females of the nation collectively formed a hospital patient, Dr Daily Mail would never miss rounds. Taking the pulse, dispensing spoonfuls of sugar along with the necessary medications, all with a stern but soothing bedside demeanour. ("What do you mean you want to go back to work? Why, you could break a nail, and leaving those lovely children of yours to their own devices might mean that they fall in with a nasty crowd at nursery...")
So what's on Dr Dacre's prescription pad today? The front page headline: "We'll pay you to lose weight." Now, that's just the kind of incentive to wean Paper Monitor off the remaindered mince pies, still in the bargain bin at its local shop.
On page three is a story for all those who lie awake at night musing on what it might be like to kiss a genuine, A* grade Hollywood star. Like George Clooney. But he's not in the country, and, the Daily Mail being the paper that everyone's mum reads, its tale concerns a mother-in-law who gets up close and extremely personal with Jack Nicholson's "infamous shark grin".
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Sorry, Paper Monitor was just having a moment. "He lifted his sunglasses over his forehead and snogged her," recalls the website designer who spotted Nicholson in the West End and asked him to take his mother-in-law, please.
Below the Nicholson story is startling new research into what women want, what they really, really want. Or don't want: "Why Mr Average is not the man we'd love to date". Apparently women would most like to hook up with a well-groomed man who drives a silver Mercedes and has a nice house. But seeing as Richard Hammond is otherwise engaged (with his beautiful wife), and his imaginary - and taller - doppelganger is fully occupied painting rainbows in NeverNeverland, the Average British Boyfriend is revealed to be a Ford-driving, telly-watching, he-don't-bring-me-flowers type of guy.
Some of Paper Monitor's best friends are Ford-driving, telly-watching, don't-bring-me-flowers types. Lovely women, the lot of them.
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