Paper Monitor
11:35 UK time, Thursday, 18 December 2008
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
[Faintly] It's me again.
Thanks for the get well wishes yesterday, especially those who trawled for gems with which to cheer up an ailing Paper Monitor. (Who will avoid the mince pies and brandy butter at the Monitor Towers festive high tea - by working from home - and instead munch upon a slice of dry toast. Perhaps with a scraping of Marmite. Made, please note reader PollySaxon, by one's own well-scrubbed hand.)
The silver lining tale a reader sent in from Bradford's Telegraph and Argus touched the heart. The manflu debunking proved very timely. And as for the Times' ... reader JudgePix rightly highlighted the deathless prose of "'Happy Birthday Adolf Hitler' was an inappropriate use of icing sugar".
And so to today's papers. Two photos stand out. One is a black and white portrait of a young man in a boater, eyes narrowed, holding a cigarette like a joint. It is Barack Obama circa 1980. The Times opines that his smoking habit - now down to cadging the occassional sneaky fag - was "a bigger barrier to him getting elected than the colour of his skin".
And the Daily Mail continues to ply its "treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen" shtik with the nation's women. Nancy Dell-Olio gets a kicking for wearing a see-through top at her age. Nigella for dishing up "porn on a plate". And Camilla is pictured next to a laughing horse.
Headline: "A dazzling smile for the duchess"
Caption: "The Duchess of Cornwall meets a competitor as she tours the stables backstage at the Olympia Horse Show yesterday."
And, for the attention of Caption Comp et al ahead of this afternoon's festivities, news that it takes a "four mile walk to burn off one mince pie".
Ha!
The 
