´óÏó´«Ã½

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

1. Nicolas Sarkozy collects stamps.

2. Doodling aids memory.

3. Peanut allergies have trebled in the past decade.

4. Wendy Richard was in Up Pompeii.

5. The biggest underground machine in the world mines salt in Cheshire.

6. There are two types of intelligence.

7. About 1,000 people in the UK lose their voice box annually.

8. Hitler spared Blackpool because he wanted to use it as his personal playground.

9. Fleeces were part of the acid-house scene in the 1980s.

10. Rio has a Sambadrome.

Seen 10 things? . Thanks to Stefan Kucharczyk for this week's picture of the sun reflecting on the water in Wolverhampton.

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Apologies for Thursday's non-appearance...

Re the , could her former boss not simply have been using her Facebook entry as an excuse to sack her when he found out about her lack of literacy?
Dan, Manchester

Don't be so sure, Nick from London (Letters, Weds). I call myself a faithful agnostic and go to a Unitarian Universalist church which doesn't have a creed, takes no position on whether and what God is, and instead focuses on a search for spiritual growth.
Amy, Maryland, USA

I fear this letter may become lost in the many wrongly submitted caption competition entries. Even if I were to come up with a caption, I could never submit it as I did not serve in the armed forces and so do not have a nickname to register under. BUT, having never heard of the "Screaming Jelly Baby science challenge" can someone please tell me what this boy is actually doing that requires him to wear safety goggles?
Heather Simmons, Macomb, Michigan USA

In your weekly quiz, you calculate Sir Fred Goodwin's pension as £1,898.63 a day. However, that's an over-simplification. He'll still pay tax on that however, so it'll actually work out at nearer £1,139.18. Which is still far far far far far too much. Anyway, the really important point being, if you'd done the calculation correctly, I'd have got 6, not 5...
Mat Hickman, Bristol

In the office still (it's 19:30 GMT for accuracy's sake..) and still no letters. What do you lot get up to on a Thursday night at Monitor Towers? Pub quiz? Weekly bowling session? All-you-can-eat porridge competitions against Robert Peston, Nick Robinson et al? I'd love to know, but fear that the reality just wouldn't be as good as the fantasy.
Molly, Dorking

It's probably a good thing that has those convenient wipe-down seats.
Dan, Cambridge

I knew a friend from university who had a relative that named their daughter Abigail (shortened to Abi)... shame their last name was Hind.
Mike Henry, Reading, UK

In and their record breaking we read this sentence: "The popular cartoon, featuring Bart, Homer, Marge and other residents of Springfield..." No Lisa? No Maggie? Is it just me or is that a trifle sexist?
Andrew Faraday, Crewe, England

Nominative determinism again? Sir Fred GOODWIN!
Malcolm Langley, Wrexham, Wales, United Kingdom

Did anybody else start reading Dan from Cambridge's letter (Letters, Weds) and immediately think of a mobile phone type of blackberry? What a sad world we live in that technology comes to mind before nature!
Jane, Northampton

Re: the anger around Sir Fred Goodwin's pension. I propose a new TV show - "RBS Survivor". Sir Fred Goodwin is sent to a desert island along with a group of RBS shareholders.
Simon Guerrero, Melksham

In they say "you can derive a phrasebook of words you could use if you tried to show up and talk to, for example, William the Conqueror." So it's a English-French dictionary then?
I'll get my manteau.
Ruaraidh Gillies, Wirral

Dear Miss Manners - Is it considered Bad Form to use the last of the milk intended for your child's porridge on your own cup of morning tea, and make aforesaid porridge instead with water?
Rachel, Minnetonka

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Winning entries in the caption competition.

The competition is now closed.

This week, a pupil takes part in the Screaming Jelly Baby science challenge for the Training and Development Agency for Schools. Thanks to all who entered. The prize of a small amount of kudos to the following:

6. katelils "No, I'm Spartacus!"

5. WycombeDad
"Still covered in dust from their three day forced march, the exhausted jelly babies were made to stand in rows as the boy god chose his sacrifice."

4. Spider Edwards
"Master Gormley showed creative promise from an early age."

3. eattherich
"Risk: The Confectionery Edition."

2. peter68
"Ronnie Corbett's fine effort at hide and seek was finally thwarted by Jack, age 13, from Dudley."

1. QuizzerCol
"Now remember, men, only give your name, rank and E-number."

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

When Paper Monitor parts the mists of time and recalls its days as a cub newspaper reporter, it remembers the calls that used to come in from the general public.

There were many that one knew would never result in a story, but the ones that were promising divided into two categories. Category one was the complicated ones - detailed, fiendishly hard tales. Category two was stories that were silly and could never be disproved.

Today's Sun has a glorious example. A businessman loses his mobile phone on a seaside walk. A few days later he gets a call from a fisherman who has found it in the belly of a 25lb cod. After minor repairs the phone now works.

This story is a perfect category two. Even the guys from CSI couldn't disprove it. And it's the kind of thing where even if it does turn out to be shonky, nobody's really going to mind that much.

All the papers are loving two stories today. The first is the photographer that takes pictures of the inside of waves.

The second is that of Kimberley Swann, a 16-year-old fired for making unflattering remarks about her work on Facebook.

One of the comments was "im so totally bord". Another was "I onli started Monday... its in sum office". But the most delightful aspect of the story is Ms Swann's account of her sacking.

"He called me into the office and said 'I have seen your comments on Facebook and I don't want my company being in the news'."

Unfortunately the name of Ivell Marketing & Logistics is now very much in the news (Sun, Daily Mirror, Daily Star, Daily Express, Daily Mail).

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See the Quote of the Day every morning on the .

"It's all about hookers. Black is great to show off cut and definition, but beneath all that I have always had a fascination with hookers" - Designer Jasper Conran explains his latest collection.

High Street favourite Conran's collection has received decent notices from the fashionistas although few will have spotted the major theme.

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

After yesterday's Paper Monitor highlighting the sharp observations in the Daily Mail about women's sartorial choices, today's edition is unashamedly focused on the fairer sex.

First stop has to be the Daily Telegraph, which is never shy of celebrating the female form in all its Home Counties spendour.

Step forward... you guessed it: Keira Knightley, who adorns page four, to support a story on the axing of a King Lear film because of the credit crunch (Hello Crunch Creep! Are you still with us?).

Writing in the Times, newspaper columnist and ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4 presenter Libby Purves tells of her stab at stand-up comedy for Comic Relief. Her switch from writing to comedy surely represents a journey most travelled in the other direction, with the wealth of (mostly male) comedians now penning columns... Dom Jolly, Frank Skinner, David Mitchell and so on.

As the only remaining daily that can't do full colour on all pages, the Express works admirably within its constraints to produce a gallery of Britain's finest statues - an artform that has never demanded much in the way of varying hues.

It's a fine idea, and the Magazine should know. After all, it too.

X Factor judge Cheryl Cole is the person most bosses would employ, according to the Star, while the Sun has a gem of a story about how actress Brenda Blethyn opened a new library in her home town of Ramsgate - and paid a fine for a book she borrowed 50 years ago.

Final word must goes to the Mail, which prides itself on how connected it is to its "femail" audience. And all zillion of them would have had a laugh today at the sight of one of the paper's portly male writers wearing a "male girdle" to give him a flat stomach.

"Here's a list of things women can keep for themselves," writes a rather short-of breath Vincent Graff, "window shopping, shoe envy... and a belief that you can 'visibly streamline' your body by placing the fat bits inside a piece of clothing that is made of posh elastic and is three sizes too small."

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"My dad gave me threepence to pay the fine but I spent it on a Wagon Wheel" - Brenda Blethyn finally pays a 50-year-old library fine

When the actress turned up to open a new library in her home town of Ramsgate in Kent, she brandished more than a pair of scissors for cutting the ribbon... a cheque for £26.

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You've got to admire the world of politics - where a blackberry because it annoys someone, rather than the more obvious reason that it is not a berry (it's a compound fruit).
Dan, Cambridge

and yet the condition is idiopathic eccrine hidradenitis. That's the same idiopathic as the one that means "without known cause", right?
Rob, Reading

Wiiitis, surely?
Daniel, Oxford, UK

Take the chap out of , and replace him with a 17-year-old hoodie. There would be public support for the court's decision and it wouldn't even be newsworthy. Just because someone is old, doesn't mean they aren't a nuisance on rollerskates.
Sharon, Nailsea, UK

I know there's some controversy about whether atheism should be defined as a faith (Tuesday's letters), but surely we can all agree that agnosticism certainly isn't. Can't we, Dave?
Nick, London

Dave (Tuesday's letters), who thinks the won't cover atheism, there are quite a few stories about illness on the Health news pages, ignorance on the Education pages, and several articles about really boring things on the Entertainment index?
Anna, Peckham

Someone should take back to the shop. It's clearly faulty.
Simon, Colchester, UK

Has been written especially for the Monitor faithful?
Laura, Leatherhead

We had a kid at our school called Ben Down. He had a brother, Neil.
Basil Long, Nottingham

30p and 10 Turkish kurush.
My 30p includes a cheque for 1p (thanks Mr Griffiths!) and a special 1p from a Ms Cook from Rhode Island on which I should make a wish. The cheque also got me thinking - if a bank received millions of cheques to process all for 1p, would the cost of processing said cheques outweigh the value they brought to the bank? I'll get my groat...
Ben "Pennyboy" Merritt, Sheffield, England

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

While one might not expect a fashion pundit to wear a donkey jacket herself, surely someone whose life revolves around what to wear when, and how, should be able to correctly identify one.

But the Daily Mail's Liz Jones falsely accuses Culture Secretary Andy Burnham of wearing one to the unveiling of the Queen Mother's statue. And then she goes on to repeat the fallacy that Michael Foot wore one to lay a remembrance wreath in 1982.

But Mr Burnham's jacket is quite clearly a short overcoat, or "a perfectly good jacket", as Michael Foot once said in defence of his own outer garment.

Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie are also flamed for wearing too-short skirts. "Argh! Mini skirts on posh occasions do not work, nor do giant polka dots, or ruching, or velvet, especially not all at once."

But the pair are decked out in sombre shades of navy and regal purple, which is more than Ms Jones can bring herself to say about the hapless Marie-France Burnham, wife of that's-not-a-donkey-jacket Andy.

Her red, white and pink outfit brings a touch of spring to the occasion - perhaps a little more than February calls for - and the Mail punishes this style slip-up by casting her into the inner ring of the seventh circle of fashion hell.

This involves being plastered across not just the front page but an inside double-page spread, both with virtually identical headlines:
"A sombre tribute to the Queen Mum... and the Labour wife who got it SO wrong" - page one
"The woman who got it SO wrong - At a sombre unveiling of a statue of the Queen Mum, one New Labour wife stands out like a sore thumb" - pages 10 and 11

Perhaps she can take some cheer from the Daily Express, which opines that "only Princess Beatrice looked a little out of place, teetering on five-inch heels..."

And while the Daily Telegraph makes no mention of anybody's outfit, its art critic points out the Queen Mum's own fondness for large pink hats.

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"I would like you to assist me with a soft loan urgently to settle my hotel bills and get myself back home" - Not an e-mail from the Right Hon Jack Straw MP after all, but Nigerian fraudsters who hacked into his Hotmail account.

The fake message asking for $3,000 (£2,000) after the loss of his wallet while visiting Lagos went to hundreds of the justice secretary's contacts, including constituents, ministry officials and Labour party members. Not one offered to help him out with the money.

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.
Susan, UK

"As the six-barrelled gun let rip 7.62mm bullets at the rate of 3,000 a minute, huge splashes rose around the target." So he missed then?
Ewan, Oxford

I wonder why "" was top of the most e-mailed. Presumably anyone who would find it interesting would not receive the message.
Claude, Cambridge, UK

Did anyone else experience a moment of pure joy on learning the name of the ?
Amy, Surrey

I'm all for free speech. So in that spirit, will the ´óÏó´«Ã½ also be launching for other faiths, including atheism and agnosticism, to air their views?
Dave, Swindon, UK

"" - though it obviously didn't stop the writer of the article's headline.
Dan, Cambridge

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Forgive Paper Monitor for coming over all Paul McKenna but let's try a little experiment.

Think of a woman in the news. Someone whose face has been dominating the papers - both tabloid and broadsheet - for a few days. Hold that thought and now try to think of another female who has also exerted a gravitational pull on national news editors over the past 48 hours.

And the names you are holding in your head are... Jade Goody and Gail Trimble?

The opposing intellects of these two women - one a reality TV star who became celebrated for thinking that Rio De Janeiro was a person; the other the captain of last night's winning University Challenge final, who has been lauded for knowing that the common name of the Betula pendula is silver birch, proves too good to resist for the Sun, Daily Mail and Times.

Of course, given Goody's tragic circumstances, there's a temperance in the tone of the Mail's piece, which asks why the ex-Big Brother competitor is celebrated while Miss Trimble is apparently being "vilified". The writer concedes: "You can hardly blame Jade Goody for taking the money from her worshippers."

The Sun's columnist Fergus Shanahan meanwhile, chooses to speculate on what Mrs Tweed (nee Goody) might make of Miss Trimble - the point being that the money she is making out of selling her wedding photos is to go towards funding her children's education.

Also in the Sun is one of the most extraordinary bits of "Gonzo journalism" of recent years. Hunter S Thompson coined the term to describe the type of writing where the reporter gets inside the story by, well, erm, actually being in the story.

In this case it's the paper's defence editor Tom Newton Dunn who, he is very proud to say, sank a pirate boat himself. Lordy.

Is this the outsourcing of the patrolling of the High Seas to News International? Sadly, the truth is a little more mundane.

Aforementioned Newton Dunn was on HMS Northumberland when the crew kindly let him shoot the mini-gun [a machine gun] at a wooden skiff that had been used in a hijacking in the Gulf of Aden.

"As the six-barrelled gun let rip 7.62mm bullets at the rate of 3,000 a minute, huge splashes rose around the target."

Hurrah for the forces of good. But only time will tell whether Newton Dunn can be reintegrated into civilian life after his Boy's Own trip to the Horn of Africa.

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"Make as much noise as you like when we score, but this constant noise is driving some fans mad" - Note from safety officer at Middlesbrough FC

There must be poor delicate flowers among the Boro support. All that noise can be very wearing on those with a fragile constitution. The Sun cruelly notes that the injunction to only make noise after scoring would have meant that Middlesbrough fans would have been silent for the last eight hours of Premiership football.

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Following on from Matt, Cambridge (Friday's letters), people who are registered blind do not have to pay for their own post which is a plus. However, I have worked with the blind and partially sighted for over ten years and they always receive letters which aren't in Braille. I think it's disgusting that in today's modern world, companies are not allowing for people with disabilities.
Jessie, Staffs

Matt (Friday's letters), legal blindness does not necessarily entail complete blindness. Only a certain proportion of those who are legally blind cannot see at all. It's possible the man in that story was still able to read the letter.
Daniel Evans, Telford

Adam (Friday letters), I share your apostrophal pedantry. However, were you not equally exercised by manisha98116's ending his/her entry with a preposition? On, it is not.
Savo, Surrey

I note that men and women sin in ways so that the same sin is defined as "greed" for men and "avarice" for women. Do women just get a slightly better class of sin?
Hannah Tillim, London

28p.
Ben "Pennyboy" Merritt, Sheffield

Re: 10 things So Hitler had bad table manners? Nowadays, it is a novelty if you see people actually sitting at a table for meals. Does this imply there could be trouble ahead?
Tim McMahon, Pennar, Wales

I.......am writing.......this letter.......in the....... spirit of.......Tigger.
Lee Pike, Auckland, New Zealand

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

There's a bit of a tradition when Britain does well at the Oscars for Paper Monitor to note how the hard-nosed national press adopts a sort of local paper mentality, championing the achievements of our plucky home-grown underdog in the face of all that Hollywood glitz and glamour.

But let's take that thought a little further this time. How does a genuine local paper respond to one of their brood clutching the prized gold statuette?

Cast your mind back to the days before Kate Winslet got all gushy and moist of eye at award ceremonies. Then she was just humble old Kate from Reading, as the Reading Post reminds us today.

"Kate Winslet's Oscar Triumph" is the headline (in the online edition at least) and no time is wasted in making the local link.

"Reading's most famous daughter Kate Winslet finally fulfilled her childhood dream as she scooped the best actress Oscar for her role in The Reader."

What's more, La Winslet revealed some of that homely Kateness of old in a press conference by actually name checking the Post.

"After her triumph, Winslet... found time to mention her favourite local newspaper the Evening Post and The Retreat pub where her mum won the top prize for her pickled onions in this year's contest, featured in last week's paper.

"My mum won a pickled onion competition in the local pub just before Christmas and the Reading Evening Post sent me a picture of her holding her jar. Well, Reading Evening Post, here's your next Winslet picture!"

Oh this is better than Paper Monitor had anticipated. What else has the Post done on this prodigal daughter of Royal Berkshire? An interview with the pickled onion judge perhaps... Let's type Winslet's name into the search engine and see.

Ah, there it is - the very story our Kate was referring to, and then some:

"Kate Winslet's mum scoops onion crown"

"Kate Winslet 'I'm still a Reading girl'"

"Kate Winslet scoops two Bafta nominations" which might go unremarked upon but for this sensational example of micro editionalising: "West Reading's Kate Winslet - a double Golden Globe winner..."

And Paper Monitor's own favourite:

"Kate Winslet's uncle gets in a muddle"

Grazers of Paper Monitor's meadow may like to suggest their own favourite local paper takes on past Hollywood successes, using the comments button below.

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" I don't know. These aren't academic questions" - "Britain's brainiest woman" Gail Trimble scores zero in the Sun's quiz

She's got a stack of A-levels and GCSE's (in genuine academic subjects), is studying Latin at Oxford and on Monday night leads her team in the final of ´óÏó´«Ã½ Two's University Challenge having wowed the likes of Jeremy Paxman with her quick finger on the buzzer. But when the Sun invited Miss Trimble to answer five questions of its own, she score a fat zero.

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