Paper Monitor
11:42 UK time, Friday, 30 May 2008
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Just one more month in the tenure of Paper Monitor's favourite diarist, Hugo Rifkind of People in the Times. At the end of April, Media Guardian announced his imminent-ish switch from the column to writing features for the paper (the Times, that is, not the Guardian).
So there are just four more weeks of People with Rifkind at the helm, the man behind gems such as daily calls to the Iranian Embassy in London, asking it to perform the duties of a business exactly 1.7 nautical miles away. Such as deliver a pizza.
Now, with the finish line in Rifkind's sights, People is on fire. Its latest news wheeze is also connected to an ongoing hostilities situation, as it acts as go-between for Hay-on-Wye Festival organisers and a disgruntled comic novel author.
Julian Gough, shortlisted for the Wodehouse Prize, claims a complicated stitch-up and has stolen the prize - a pig.
Now a Hay spokesman uses People to point out (very politely, being a literary type) that Gough might have made off with the wrong pig and yada yada yada "it could be perceived as grossly offensive".
Oh, and in other items that please Paper Monitor's eye, People muses on one face for seven Osmonds, how a union rep might do for Woody Allen, and the NHS pledge to cut its carbon footprint: "Sounds sinister when you think about it carefully."
Meanwhile, last Friday's Paper Monitor carried the Daily Telegraph's boast that its website was the most popular of any UK newspaper. But it turns out that it is in second place behind the Guardian - and it is the Sun that keeps its users online longest. It must be for the articles.
The 
