´óÏó´«Ã½

Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.

1. There's a town in Uruguay called Fray Bentos.

2. The final day - or half-day - of World War I produced about 11,000 casualties.

3. Ian Fleming's wife administered a rap over the knuckles with a spoon to a reviewer who didn't like Dr No.

4. About 90% of pumpkins grown worldwide are not eaten - instead they are carved for Halloween and the innards discarded.

5. Men like women in red. And not just red clothing - even those in photos with a red frame are rated as more attractive than any other colour.

6. The word "euthanasia means easeful death.

7. Tomatoes can be purple.

8. There are about 200 earthquakes a year in Britain.

9. The United Arab Emirates, along with the US, has the largest ecological footprint per person.

10. "Charlie's dead" means that someone's slip is showing.

Seen 10 things? to use next week. Thanks to Jan Riordan for this week's picture of 10 marble columns in Fontfroide Abbey, France.

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Not being sarky, honest, but "whiskery" dinosaurs? Surely the whisker is a mammalian characteristic rather than saurian?
Vicky, East London

Allow me to note, if not a typo, then at least a minor inconsistency in today's Paper Monitor. It's not quite right to say "a class of person called a sub". The person may be called a sub, but what's described here is the class, which presumably would be better described as "subs" (at least in days gone by, if not today). I realise I was supposed to note this sarcastically, but I'm afraid I don't think I know how to be sarcastic.
Adam, London, UK

Re: Polly Toynbee in the Guardian. Did you notice that she wrote "Imagined in a bygone era of bubble and boom, the gigantic Westfield shopping centre... yesterday launched itself defiantly into a gigantic bust"? That would have been worth watching, I think - but whose bust?
Chris, Enfield

After seeing the story of the , I did a quick Google of the phrase written on it, "No Real Than You Are". Sure enough, I found the page of a Dutch performance artist known as. Is the ´óÏó´«Ã½ so underfunded that the journalist who wrote the article didn't have the time for a quick and rather obvious Googling?
Barny, London

Re the - is it really any coincidence that he was mysteriously found by an employee of a "digital marketing company"? I smell a red herring. Made of lego, of course.
Aimee, St. Andrews, Scotland

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Winning entries in the caption competition.

You won't believe who I had in my cab this week... only that Iron Man from the movies. But what's being said?

The competition is now closed.

Thanks to all who entered. The prize of a small amount of kudos to the following:

6. youngWillz
Whoever ordered the stripper for the hen party was in for a LONG night...

5. LaurenceLane
Harriet Harman leaves for another walkabout in Peckham.

4. Fauconnier
"Blame the Hackney Cab Regulations of 1822, Guv. Every taxi must carry a bale of hay and a superhero."

3. SteeleHawker
"I aint going south of the Universe this time of night, Guv."

2. Guineapigpaul
"You're not going to believe this, but I think I left my wallet in the Mk II suit."

1. Jon_M_P
Ferrous Bueller's Day Off.

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

A long time ago there used to exist a class of person called a sub.

These people were easily identified. Glasses on string, stubble, tattered cardigan, irascible look. They were not sweet and joyous presences in the office, but they were a necessary evil.

They were the people who stopped youthful, thrusting reporters from making fools of themselves. They trampled on mixed metaphors, throttled tautology and remembered the difference between "phased" and "fazed". But most of all they worked to tackle the typo.

But one day along came "radical thinkers" who decided these whiskery dinosaurs were unnecessary in the Web 2.0 age and they unceremoniously applied the axe.

The result is everywhere in today's newspapers. Page 15 of the Independent, or The Inependent as it is tragically referred to, shows why.

Word also comes to our ears that the Daily Telegraph plans to run stories on its website that are not checked before publication, instead being "post-moderated" afterwards.

Soon the last bastion of typo-free text journalism will be the Daily Mail. Paper Monitor does remember seeing a mistake in it last year, but is reassured to think that the sub responsible was probably thrashed with birch twigs.

Away from editorial standards, you have to applaud Polly Toynbee's dogged determination in the Guardian. She's not a fan of Westfield, the nation's biggest inner-city shopping centre, but she braves the mobs to tour the retail labyrinth, describing it as "more Gatwick village than Liberty".

And she goes up to the toilet cleaners and security guards to check they are being paid a "London living wage". Turns out they are.

Typos in this edition of Paper Monitor should be sarcastically noted using the letters form on the right.

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See the Quote of the Day every morning on the index.

"Sometimes when I am really fed up, I Google the essay title, copy everything onto a blank word document and jiggle the order a bit" - A Cambridge student explains the dark art of plagiarism

Cambridge University stands accused by its own student newspaper of being full of cheaters, and this is how they do it. Perhaps a career in print journalism might beckon for some though.

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(which had the potential to be very interesting) didn't really say anything at all. It was just warming to a point and then stopped without any discussion of changing social attitudes or statistics or anything actually relevant to this extremely complicated, emotive and violent act. it was rather disappointing.
SL, Southampton

Re Dear Dr Oliver Double, comedy lecturer - if you ever meet a Miss Entendre, can I recommend that you marry her immediately? It could progress your career no end.
Sue, London

on London's new Westfield shopping centre says that a till is expected to ring every 30 seconds at Westfield shopping centre. Assuming there are 265 retail shops and they're open from just 9 to 5.30 then this means each shop will make just 4 sales a day. The effects of the credit crunch strike again!
Charlie, London, UK

Thank you so much, Darren (Your Letters, Tuesday), for the reminder to wrap up warm. I'll get my coat.
Adam, London, UK

After taking I am not afraid of Maths anymore. I'm annoyed at it.
Flavia, Dublin, Ireland

Sorry, Marcus - no takers. "A mathematical biker decides to sell his bike. The advert says the bike costs £1000 + half its price. How much is the bike?" Has Marcus tried to sell his hypothetical bike on Ebay? We don't need to work out how much he wants for his ruddy bike, we just need to know how much he wants for it, the shipping price, currency conversion rate and why his bike is so special he thinks it's worth a couple of grand. Personally, I'll just flick through the Argos catalogue again.
SCarr, Dublin

In the same vein as Basil Long's letter yesterday, I too would like to offer my services for the latest vacancy to crop up at the ´óÏó´«Ã½, this one occurring on Saturday nights (and Christmas Day). Naturally I will require a decent salary, fashionable clothes, a glamorous assistant and a working Sonic Screwdriver...
Mark Ivey, Hartlepool, UK

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Paper Monitor doesn't want to appear uncharitable. But it's impossible to let this one go without comment.

The headline on the front of the Guardian's G2 is "SPOOKY! Is the presidential campaign just following a script from The West Wing?"

It's Jonathan Freedland writing about the similarity between the Obama-McCain battle and the fictional battle between Matthew Santos (a charismatic non-white 40-something Democrat) and Arnold Vinick (mavarick war vet turned Republican senator).

Paper Monitor has to reply it is indeed spooky. It is spooky how the Guardian can run this a month-and-a-half after Freedland's programme on the same subject went out on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ and was done for the Magazine.

Over in the Sun there's another outing for the photo which shows a comically-fringed young George Osborne wielding a shotgun with a group of friends. Kelvin MacKenzie is not happy. He's so unhappy he even says something nice about Gordon Brown.

But while he is ridiculing the notion that Osborne is a man of the people, he does come up with a new coinage - the Osbo.

Will it catch on?

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"I don't do men with breasts" - Painter Jack Vettriano allegedly decides he doesn't fancy painting golfer Colin Montgomerie

Poor Monty, after years of heckling from American golf hooligans it must be a bit disappointing to hear reports of such disparagement from a fellow Scot. Particularly harsh from someone like Vettriano who is used to being ridiculed by the art establishment.

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As the temperatures start to plummet, I feel it's my duty to remind dog walkers to wrap up appropriately. highlights the dangers.
Darren, Leicester

Sorry Daniel Hayes (Tuesday letters), but in chemistry and pharmaceutics, it's absolutely standard practice to refer to something as x% pure (although admittedly more often with figures like 99.9% than 10%). In practice, it would be impossible ever to produce something 100% pure.
Moral: if you're going to write in with pedantry, be prepared to be out-pedanted.
Adam, London, UK

Re : May I just point out that they're films. And books. If you don't like them, then don't watch/read them. I'm sure Ian Fleming didn't expect everyone in the world ever to love or like them. I like them as a good way to escape from reality and drool over gorgeous cars (as well as the Bonds themselves - personally, I'm a fan of the lovely Roger Moore). *Gets off of soapbox.*
Jenni, Coventry, UK

Re British Bond villains (Tuesday letters). Alec Trevelyan may have been a British citizen, but as referenced in , he had Eastern European heritage; I believe his parents were Cossacks betrayed by the British. I think you are right about Miranda Frost however...
Paul, Cardiff

Re Two days in PC World: I know the staff are a bit slow in there, but...
Lee, Birmingham

I understand that the ´óÏó´«Ã½ has a couple of vacancies in its timetable on Friday night and Saturday. I would like to offer my services to ensure that these spaces are filled. Of course, I would be willing to accept remuneration on the current basis.
Basil Long, Nottingham

I just had to engage my brain to understand something Will Young said. Help!
Susannah, Northampton

The salmon in your picture () seems to have two different number tags. Is giving the fish an identity crisis part of the research?
Mark, Reading, UK

What an excellent case of nominative determinism for a . Turn that man into an animated character immediately!
Fi, Gloucestershire, UK

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Social mores change. This much even Paper Monitor knows.

But it's amazing how quickly some things can change. Take smoking. Even 10 years ago if a star was snapped smoking it wouldn't have been a big deal. Now it's on a par with mistreating a kitten or public urination.

Take today's Daily Mirror. The 3am page has a big snap of Amelle Berrabah from the Sugababes. "[She] looks so sweet and ladylike - if you can imagine away that half-smoked ciggie... when Amelle got caught sneaking a fag break her demure image went, er, up in smoke."

And it's much the same over in the Sun. The front page of their tvbiz section is headlined "Mind your Lunghs" and it features veteran actress and Strict Come Dancing contestant Cherie Lunghi (geddit?), shock horror, having a cigarette.

There's a Son of Bullingdon moment in the Daily Mail. Page three has a photo of seven young gentlemen carrying shotguns. The one on the right has an extraordinary Hokusai wave (hat tip to Philip French) of foppish fringe and appears to be wearing plus fours. He is George Osborne.

One wonders whether there is a dedicated Bullingdon photo suppression unit at Conservative Central Office. It clearly needs more staff.

And all the Bond hoopla continues with the cabal of dyed blonde-haired columnists of a certain age, quantifying how much solace Daniel Craig could give them.

In the Mail, Allison Pearson swoons at the "brutally appealing" actor and rues the fact that in his latest flick, "not once does he take off his long trousers".

In the Sun, Jane Moore reveals "whenever I see him I have very bad thoughts indeed".

Paper Monitor feels just a little queasy.

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"We have gone on a journey from Plato to enlightenment via Milan Kundera and we have ended up very aptly with Kerry Katona" - Will Young on modern-day celebrity at the Oxford Union

Everyone expects the debate on modern celebrity to run and run. But nobody expects a reality talent show winner to come out with the likes of: "The clash between Plato's objective values and the notion of individuality through enlightenment, though necessary, has created a moral and spiritual crisis for modern day society." Lordy.

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In response to the and whether it's OK to hate it, I would like to point out that there HAVE been British villians. Alec Trevelyan and Miranda Frost are both British, Goldfinger is a British citizen, "Red" Grant is from Northern Ireland and Scaramanga is half-English.
Mark Doughty, Portsmouth

Unfortunately Carol Ironson (Your Letters, Monday), as Tom Leppard changed his name from Woodbridge, his is an example of an aptronym that is not of the nominative determinism type. So your spot was really more of a cheetah.
TS, Bromley, England

Is it just me, or ?
Simon, Emsworth

How amusing. The review of the teaching of sex education took nine months to produce results.
MCK, Coventry

In , Kevin Connolly writes: "But if John McCain wins it from here it seems to me that he should be compared to Lazarus not just Thomas Dewey." As it was Harry Truman that came from behind to defeat Thomas Dewey, surely Kevin should have said it will be Truman he'll be compared to.
PS, Newcastle, England

Dear Monitor, Pedantry alert! The headline, doesn't make sense. Pure means "unmodified by an admixture". Something is either pure or it isn't. Perhaps the writer was on something at the time the headline was written? Kind regards,
Daniel Hayes, St Albans, UK

Your piece on the iTunes automatic profanity censor is nothing new. I had a similar problem a few years back when on a forum to interest kids in poetry, we discussed The Owl and the P***y Cat. Kids seemed puzzled why the P***y, so it possibly had a reverse effect invoking curiosity.
Philip G Bell, Redbourn UK

reminded me of the album.
Neil, Manchester, UK

Re , "The project is known as ICECAP - Investigating the Cryospheric Evolution of the Central Antarctic Plate." Wonder how long the scientists had to work before they could get words to fit the acronym?
Paul Greggor, London

I heard a news story on the radio this morning about the International Money Tree Fund. Wouldn't the obvious solution to the financial crisis be for them to take a few cuttings and grow more such trees?
Adam, London, UK

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Strange, tangential and often unlikely events laid at the door of the credit crunch.

Horses are being abandoned as it costs so much to feed and house them - especially now the price of hay has shot up.

There may not be another Bond film for a while, says 007 actor Daniel Craig. "Economically the world is in quite a lot of trouble so who knows if we can afford to do another Bond movie anytime soon?"

...and if they can, Bond could become an honorary Brummie.

The Queen will wear outfits she's worn before on a state visit to Slovenia and Slovakia.

And Coronation Street's Molly will wed in a dress bought for another actress as the wardrobe department cuts its coat.

England's cricketers taking part in the Twenty20 Stanford Super Series "swag-grab" - for which they are paid a king's ransom - are told not to enjoy the spoils too much.

Author Kathy Lette has given up taxis and instead walks - or jogs - all the way across London's picturesque Regents Park to get about.

Cobblers are getting more customers as shoe wearers try to make do and mend, rather than buy new shoes.

And prams are flying out of charity shops as soon as they are wheeled in.

Students may get lower degree marks because of working part-time to pay the bills.

Rather than drowning our sorrows, we are buying less beer.

Although fans of covers acts may wish to raise a glass to mourn the cancellation of the Hallowfest tribute band event.

Islamic financial systems which forbid the charging or paying of interest, could come into vogue.

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

As Paper Monitor's second cousin once removed, Crunch Creep, likes to note, many a trend these days is being laid at the door of ye olde credit crunch, but not until now has anyone raised the prospect that this squeeze on easy money could catapult us back to Mesoamerica circa 200 AD.

Who on earth would seriously moot such a possibility? Step forward the Guardian, which sets the whole thing off on the cover of its G2 supplement with a picture of a loin-clothed chap being strangulated by a Mayan warrior, complete with goat mask.

"Death of a civilisation: Could we share the same fate as the Maya?"

(At which point Paper Monitor finds itself pondering whether ready access to bountiful supplies of dark chocolate is necessarily a bad thing?)

Inside, the paper juxtaposes a picture of the part-ruined Mayan Temple of the Sun with... wait for it.... yup, the Bank of England, AKA "The Temples of Doom".

G2's dramatic depiction of what a plummeting Dow Jones might eventually mean for all of us sets the stage for some serious drama, the like of which Paper Monitor was on the look out for yesterday, albeit in the guise of PBH - "prejudice, bigotry and hatred" - the Mail's agenda, according to the Guardian.

Yesterday's search was frankly a bit disappointing. But unlike the hunt for WMD, today we definitely have some results.

Sadly, however, the target for today's PBH is Paper Monitor's venerable employer and sugar daddy. The ´óÏó´«Ã½ is "facing an unprecedented backlash" it says, adding these readers' comments: "Of course none of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ production team saw anything wrong with it... they are all of the same ilk - uneducated, impolite yobs with no insight at all into what is decent or commendable" and "The ´óÏó´«Ã½ seems to employ nothing but people who suffer from an inferiority complex."

Do not! It's YOU who has an inferiority complex! So there.

But there is reams and reams of loathing - actually Russell Brand comes out of it much worse than Ross or the ´óÏó´«Ã½. The Mail even goes so far as to accept that "it is just possible that Ross is genuinely contrite". Brand, however, still wears nappies, according to Richard Littlejohn.

The one line which somehow seems to be buried in the coverage is the verdict of the man himself, Andrew Sachs. Way way way down in the middle of the story, far from the headlines, is this humble paragraph: "I wasn't attacked in any way. People are writing and talking about it, quite rightly. I am sorry that I am involved in it - I'm just fed up talking about it. I love the ´óÏó´«Ã½. I have worked for them for over 50 years and I continue to work for them. Sometimes things can go wrong."

If only that were the final, dignified word on the saga. Paper Monitor for one will say no more about it.

As it is, it has no time to say anything at all about the Times .

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"I'd never have one. They're the most selfish creatures out, and they only care about themselves" - Tom "Leopard Man" Leppard on cats

He has made a living out of looking like a leopard - thanks to having 99.2% of his body tattooed in leopard spots. But now Tom Leppard - real name Woodbridge - has come in from the cold and traded his windowless bothy on the Isle of Skye for a heated, terraced house. He's also looking after a neighbour's cat.

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Not sure where to go with this, so many angles. But for a start, driving a car might indicate that the chap hadn't quite grasped the basics of his fake identity?
Stig, London, UK

Re : an apt name for a policeman, considering what he's investigating.
Stuart, Croydon

Do I get kudos for Geddit?
Carol Ironson, Preston

is the best description of John Prescott I've ever heard
Rory, Grimsby

A certain ´óÏó´«Ã½ story has been bugging me for the last few days: the one about "". Obviously, whoever wrote that article didn't know that in space, sound does not travel - therefore, they can't have "recorded" sound. So, would someone tell the ´óÏó´«Ã½ that these scientists must have recorded some other form of emission (likely something in the electromagnetic spectrum) and then hooked it up to some type of synthesiser?
Daniel Evans, Telford, UK

Apparently the timeless appeal of Smurfs is . I guess that explains why there's no need for more than one female in a population of over 100.
Joe G,

I've noticed that in recent weeks, MM favourite Drunk Girl has been increasingly side-lined by her Germanic aunt, . Probably because no-one can afford to drink anymore.
Nick, Belfast

Just when you think a recession can't get any worse you suddenly start hearing Simply Red's Money's Too Tight To Mention everywhere.
James Hayward, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

May I suggest the following text for a song to be sung on a bus advertising the slogan:

Re Ken's letter (Your Letters, Friday). While "disorientate" is regarded as incorrect by most Americans (and, let's face it, it is rather redundant), both "disorientate" and "disorient" are equally acceptable in British English.
David Richerby, Leeds, UK

The fire - could you be a bit more specific about the time please?
Dam, Cambridge

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

The doctored image of Sarah Palin in a swimsuit (see Friday) has disturbingly cropped up a number of times in Paper Monitor's mind over the weekend.

Jostling for position though is that photo of George Osborne et al in their penguin suits posing for their undergraduate PoshSoc photo as the doctored image of today. Well, it might or might not have been doctored. The Daily Mail says two people appear to have been airbrushed out of the photo, though the evidence is frankly slightly less than conclusive. What is most shocking, though, is that only eight of the 20 people in the photo have been identified. Obviously there's the Bullingdon omerta (vow of silence) issue to overcome, but come on Fleet Street... surely someone somewhere could be persuaded to ID these generously hair-gelled fellows.

Personally Paper Monitor is slightly disappointed in the people in one's past that none of them ever do anything scandalous, fantastic or even interesting. When oh-when will one of them enter the Shadow Cabinet or sleep with Russell Brand or something. Please!

Meanwhile. The mutual loathing that newspapers have for each other is rarely voiced in print - it's so unbecoming - but a Guardian book review at the weekend opened with these words: "The Daily Mail is in many (no, most) respects a dreadful paper, relentlessly stoking the worst human emotions: prejudice, bigotry and hate."

Ooh that hurts. Feels almost like a declaration of war.

A quick check of today's Mail for prejudice, bigotry or hatred (henceforth to adopt a WMD-style acronym) isn't too rewarding, though there is a bit of apparent escalation of hostilities, with king of columnists Keith Waterhouse having a pop at the Guardian, dropping in the line "bless its recycled sandals" and saying that it is "usually so gullibly green that on some days it is indistinguishable from a plate of guacamole".

As for PBH, there is also a double page spread which has the eminently Mail-style headline: "Bush's stupid, brutish presidency has made the US more hated than at any time since Vietnam." Hatred for George Bush is, one assumes, not the kind of thing the Guardian reviewer had in mind. There IS an article about how Agincourt was England's finest hour, but it doesn't quite make the mark.

In fact the only thing which seems to pass muster is a column by Melanie Phillips: "Gloating cruelty, foul vulgarity and a ´óÏó´«Ã½ that has lost its sense of shame." The ´óÏó´«Ã½'s new mission, she says, is to "degrade, coarsen and brutalise". To be honest, Paper Monitor tries not to read e-mails from management, but will go back and check up on these new objectives. If tomorrow's instalment reads like an episode of The Wire, you'll know the reason.

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"I thought I Saw a P***y Cat - Danny Kaye" - iTunes' automatic profanity censor goes into overdrive

Among the words that were rather inexplicably asterisked by the online music store were "hot", which became "h*t" in (Red Hot Chilli Peppers); "killer" which became "k****r" (Killer Queen); and "Johnny" which became J****y for Johnny Cash.

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