´óÏó´«Ã½

1. Piranhas bark.
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2. Brunettes make better friends.

3. Self-made millionaires are more likely to have gone to state school.

4. One in six mobile phones in Britain is contaminated with poo.
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5. Penguins rescued from oil slicks get knitted jumpers to keep them warm.
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6. There will be more people in the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff on Saturday to watch the Wales v France World Cup semi-final on video screens than there will be at the actual match in New Zealand.

7. Meerkats recognise each others' voices.
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8. Lady Gaga doesn't like Lady Goo Goo.

9. Babies know if someone is being unfairly treated at just 15 months.

10. Really good sex can wipe your memory.

Seen 10 things? Thanks to Jane Lidstone for this week's picture of 10 pedaloes on the River Dee in Chester.

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I'm not too worried about whether Oliver Letwin put anything confidential in a bin in a public park (news, today, everywhere). I'm more concerned whether he's going to get for misuse of a litter bin.
Ray Lashley, Colchester, UK

Why doesn't Britain market Blackpool to foreign tourists? Because its about as appealing as Sierra Leone!
Jake Williams

Why doesn't Britain market Blackpool to foreign tourists? Try and trick them you mean?
Kevin Symonds

I do think Blackpool has been somewhat under marketed and under featured. It is my favourite British town and I have always wanted to have a walk over the "walk of faith".
Hafizi Hafiz

"There's only one way to settle this, as Harry Hill would say"? No he wouldn't. He'd say "There's only one way to find out". My Pedants Anonymous card is in my back pocket, thanks.
Frederic Heath-Renn, London, UK

Chookgate (Thurday's Letters), I failed the citizenship test on the Guardian website by one question. Then again, I've only spent 10 days of my life in the UK. Maybe if I go back for another 5 or so I'll be British enough to pass.
Khris, Winnipeg, Canada

Marcus (Thurday's Letters), I didn't think there were any men like you left! Maybe I won't give up on finding my ideal man!
Lisa, Portsmouth

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Paper Monitor occasionally observes that one of the most satisfying things in journalism is the ripples from one's work, the very notion that people are actually reading and caring.

Sadly for most journalists that's usually when people take umbrage. In the umbrage corner this week are Marina Hyde and Myleene Klass.

Hyde, in her Lost in Showbiz column in the Guardian, seems to have suggested that La Klass, when claiming she had pilfered monogrammed toilet roll from the Vatican, had been a little economical with the actualities.

Klass, a former reality popstrel, television presenter and role model for mothers everywhere, also suggested she had checked into hospital under a false name to avoid preferential treatment when having her baby.

Klass has come back at Hyde with a picture of the toilet roll in question, as well as a hospital discharge sheet bearing the name "Angela Quinn". These ripostes, for some reason not clearly explained, were carried on the Daily Mirror's 3am gossip page.

But Hyde is not going to let it lie. She has done a bit of digging and established that the toilet roll pictured [emblazoned with the letter "R"] is not from the inner recesses of the Vatican and the logo is probably just commercial branding.

And on the point of the special treatment, Hyde argues that the doctors and nurses dealing with Klass would in any case have her real name on her medical notes.

There's only one way to settle this, as Harry Hill would say:

Fight! Fight! Fight!

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Winning entries in the Caption Competition.

The competition is now closed.

This week it was Andy Murray admiring a terracotta statue of himself at the 2011 Shanghai Rolex Masters tournament in China.

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

6. Candace9839:
Love at first sight.

5. Rob Falconer:
Madame Tussaud's announces a shock merger with Cadbury's.

4. Dyeb51:
When asked if he wanted to play on clay, this wasn't quite what Andy had in mind.

3. Plaxton:
We're using this as a stunt double whenever Cliff Richard starts to sing.

2. Jack Tatty:
Owing to an understandable mix-up, Andy was put in the Emperor's tomb and the statue went on to win Wimbledon.

1. Andy Hill:
British Davis Cup team resort to desperate measures in their search for a worthy doubles partner for Murray.

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Never mind Olympic swimming pools, Wales, double decker buses, Belgium, I have estimated that in my time I have been exposed to about 22,000 bananas of radiation
Zoe, Birmingham

Another report from the Department of the Bleeding Obvious.
Ralph, Chatham

Find all you need to know about birds here. It's Your Letters. (Wednesday's Letters). Oh Damn! You meant the feathered kind. What a let down.
Owen Roberts

Nadja, Virginia (Wednesday's Letters), "American baseball" clearly refers to baseball played in America rather than a sport called American baseball. Whilst I admit that most people would associate baseball with America, it is played elsewhere (there is a professional league in Japan) and, since you asked, yes there is doubt about where it originated.
Michael, Edinburgh, UK

I failed the . Packing my bags now, where do you recommend I move to?
Chookgate, Milton Keynes

Dear Magazine Monitor, I'm sorry to break this to you, but I don't think Henri from Sidcup (Wednesday's Letters) really does love you. It think it was just a ploy to get a mention in the letters section. I, on the other hand, have always loved and respected you, and would never be so crude as to play with your emotions just to get my name printed. Love and snuggles.
Marcus, Pompey

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A look at the stories ranking highly on various news sites.

OK, so celebrity sells. But looking more closely at the , it may be the captions rather than the photos that are attracting readers. That's because the caption writer appears to have gone off message and decided to give the glitterati the most unlikely of political causes:

"Yes, stars came out in force last week to show their support for the brave little people taking part in Occupy Wall Street protests across America. Here, actress Sofia Vergara demands higher taxes for the wealthy as she arrives at the Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic in Los Angeles on Sunday."

Alas, the New York Times' most viewed article on what it calls "The Big Disruption" is not referring to the Globe and Mail's mischief making. Instead it as well. Such a big task may explain why its title "something's happening here" doesn't give much away. Not much like when readers were encouraged to get into Team Katie and Team Peter after the separation of glamour model Katie Price and singer Peter Andre, Thomas Friedman is asking readers to decide whether they are in Team Big Disruption (the protests show growth obsessed capitalism is reaching its end) or Team Big Shift (we're in a middle of a change towards new technologies). OK so, really not much like Team Katie and Team Peter.

It really can be the smallest of things that can get readers clicking onto an article, as the Daily Mail's popular story proves. An pointed out why he gets in a lather (geddit) about shower gel. The article does give a nod to Parris's complaints of waste shower gel creates compared to soap. But the Daily Mail goes on to argue that shower gel is only around because of the "persuasive power of marketing". That, and our liking for smelling of sweet foods.

Discover's most read article finds - and write a book about it. He used surprisingly old techniques to remember sequences of numbers. The premise is that your visual memory is better than memory for lists or numbers. So you create a "memory palace" in your mind which pictures these numbers as absurd images. This didn't cut it in the international competition though - he managed to memorise nine and a half decks of cards in an hour but it wasn't anywhere near enough to get the grandmaster title.

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Her Majesty's press is tending towards introspection again today, months after its self-feeding frenzy over hacking. The Leveson inquiry into the General Nastiness is bringing out some unlikely revelations.

Yesterday Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail but someone rarely quoted in public, came into the limelight as he warned of the dangers of press regulation.

En passant, he referred to two newspapers as "brilliant" - but they weren't his own. They were ones "subsidised either by trusts or by Russian billionaires". By implication that is the Guardian and the Independent (or the INDEPENDENT as we must now shout it so that it is harder to miss).

Kelvin Mackenzie, the voluble former editor of the Sun, had some confessions to make in the London Evening Standard yesterday.

Noting that the inquiry wants to know how much editors know of stories' sources, he recalls that only once in his 13 years as editor did he ever ask about a source.

It turned out to be an expensive mistake. The story was wrong and the paper had to pay £1m in libel damages.

On another occasion, the Sun had published a story based on a leak from the Ministry of Defence, he said.

"The reporter concerned came in and said there was a problem. No 10 had gone nuts and an official inquiry was starting into who had leaked the story, with a colonel from MI6 being drafted in to head it. The reporter told me the MoD were determined to get to the bottom of it but it was not all bad news. Why was that, I asked.

"Because the colonel heading the inquiry was the bloke who gave us the story in the first place."

Meanwhile, over at said INDEPENDENT (this is already getting tiring), even the crossword is feeling a bit introspective. As is conventional in these matters, one must say the next few paragraphs should carry a SPOILER ALERT for anyone planning to solve the puzzle later today.

But there is a Today programme theme. Answers include MONTAGUE, REDHEAD, NAUGHTIE, NORMAN, FORD, WEBB, STOURTON, DAVIS, QUINN, ROBINSON and LYMAN.

If you're really interested, the clue for HUMPHRYS is "Irritable interviews ultimately taking little time".

And if you're really interested, this is reached by the following method: HUMPY for "irritable" then S for "interviews ultimately" (its last letter) going around ("taking") HR (an abbreviation for hour, or "little time").

Paper Monitor hopes you feel smarter now.

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A look at the stories ranking highly on various news sites.

The most read Slate article promises a stranger than fiction story about a 15-year-old called Hazel Bryan. She was pictured protesting against black students studying at her school and subsequently Slate says she became . Given that, the magazine says "you'll never believe what she did with the rest of her life". It tells of how Bryan's attitude changed, and she "hoped some reporter would track her down and write about how she'd changed". She'd changed so much that, years on, her and the black student in the picture, Elizabeth Eckford, became friends. That is until they went on Oprah and fell out.

Following David Cameron's announcement that there will be changes to the UK , Guardian readers are seeing if they would pass it. Questions on divorce rights and school uniform are asked of people applying for British citizenship. One question stood out:

How might you stop young people playing tricks on you at Halloween?

A popular Independent article expresses dismay with . The most recent is actress Hilary Swank's appearance at the Chechnyan president's 35th birthday party - heavily criticised by Human Rights Watch. She wasn't the only celebrity paid to go to Ramzan Kadyrov bash - Jean-Claude Van Damme was also there. The piece, however, suggests celebrity appearances may be on their way out. That's because it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep them secret. Earlier in the year, it points out, Beyonce, 50 Cent, and Mariah Carey performed at parties hosted by the Gaddafi family but it was caught on mobile phone films.

A reaction against conventional wisdom of how to treat drug addicts is put forward by Dr Peter Ferentzy in a popular Huffington Post article. He says . Instead, conventional thought is that addicts should be left to fall to rock bottom. But when it is compared to a cigarette smoker, he says, it makes no sense:

"If a tobacco smoker seems unwilling or unable to quit, will ruining that person's marriage and getting him or her fired at work do the trick? Of course not."

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I feel almost fully prepared for the likely occasion when I find an oil-covered penguin off the coast of Skegness. I now know how to clean it and help it find its way back home before releasing it into the wild and safely firing off a gun into the air to celebrate this achievement. Thank you.
Ross, London

If it takes this lady two and a half hours to get ready in the morning then surely the article shouldn't be about her commuting woes, but rather her dressing issues?
Catherine, Angel, London

Re: Is the alcohol message all wrong? Too much of anything can cause bad behaviour, even chocolate. Moral of the story is a little bit of what you fancy does you good.
Wendy Crossley

I'm glad ´óÏó´«Ã½'s covering Moneyball as it was a good film (and like most sports films not really about the sport). I am curious, however - "American football" makes perfect sense (distinguishing it from football/soccer), but why does the ´óÏó´«Ã½ always refer to baseball as "American baseball"? Is there some other baseball I haven't heard of? Is the world in doubt about where it originated?
Nadja, Virginia, USA

Please consider for the caption competition. Thank you
Michael Drost, Netherlands

Dear Magazine Monitor, did I ever tell you just how much I love you? Love and hugs and lots of kisses (mwwwwah!)
Henri, Sidcup

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Another day, another study, another set of remarkable findings and another exercise in how to sell a story.

Scientists at the University of Stirling in Scotland have studied women on the pill and come to some conclusions, the main one being that females using such contraception subconsciously pick less sexy but more reliable men to have relationships with.

The Daily Mirror's headline reads: . It starts its story with an opening line that declares:

"Dull sex and break-ups are in store for women on the Pill."

Interestingly, the findings suggest that women on the pill have relationships that last on average two years longer than women who are not. But the newspaper says they are more sexually dissatisfied, according to the study, so that could trigger a break-up - couldn't it?

In the Daily Telegraph things are presented rather differently. Its headline reads: "". The suggestion that those relationships might be less sexually satisfying doesn't automatic mean the end of a marriage for this paper. It's more of the keep calm and carry on sort.

Maybe Suzi Godson sums it up best in the Times . She analyses the research done, as she puts it, by the "University with too much money". Her conclusion? Focus your attention on something else rather than "trying to establish tenuous but headline-grabbing links between hormones and relationship behaviours".

Now, what the heck is going on in Cumbria? Its clouds are getting really rather creative this week. When it comes to random look-alikes in strange places, food usually serves up the best. How can we forget the face of Jesus in a tortilla and the Virgin Mary in a watermelon.

But today alone the papers have two cloud formations in Cumbria, both looking like something familiar. Firstly, the Daily Telegraph has clouds in Maryport looking like a . But paper Monitor's favourite is a picture of some fluffy things in the Carlisle sky looking like a . As the Sun puts it - pigs will fly.

Still nowhere near as good as the though.

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A look at the stories ranking highly on various news sites.

Readers are attracted to stories of a litigious nature today.

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ÌýFirst up, the Guardian says an American . The piece points out that nowadays complaints about trailers tend to centre around them giving away the whole plot of the film. But this one says the trailer makes it looks like an action film when it is nothing of the sort, and, despite its name, has very little driving.

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The second legal story is more along the lines of resisting "elf 'n' safety". Telegraph readers are flocking to a story about a new EU directive around toy safety. It deems so a safety warning is now needed on the packaging. They refrained from saying "it's blown out of proportion".

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And the final of the three is the Times' popular story that Finnish lawyers' are warning that . Carol Midgley is not impressed, suggesting more concern should be focused on spinach caught in the teeth.

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Breaking the theme is the Daily Mail's popular story about a , 18 metres higher than London's new Shard tower. The "how dare they" tone the article takes seems to be because the 74 floor building could accommodate all the 2000 residents of the village it is in. Paid for by the villagers, £31m of the £300m cost is for a solid gold ox.

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I'm confused. Angela Dawes is Dave Dawes' 43-year-old wife but they are planning to get married next year. I suppose they might as well spend the money on something.
Paul, Ipswich

Will Self says that "the great British public require convicted prisoners to be scapegoats for all that is wrong with society". But isn't that the point? What better measure is there of a society than the extent and severity of the crimes committed? No more important, perhaps, than the healthcare or education system (which itself is inexorably linked to crime), but a better measure, surely?
Luke L, London, UK

Re the Yeo Valley boyband. Isn't it rather reminiscent of the Friday Night Armistice's British beef boyband from the 1990s called Topside?
Michael Hall, Croydon, UK

I'm glad someone has decided to write this article, as anything which raises awareness of these conditions is a step in the right direction. Interestingly, I know people who suffer from these conditions who jokingly "misuse" the terms themselves, sometimes about others. If we are always on our guard when it comes to language, then we become paralysed and unable to express ourselves. British comedians in particular would also struggle. However, anything which constitutes the use of the term in an aggressive or passive aggressive fashion is bullying and wholly inappropriate.
Alanna Clegg

Dear Mark (Monday's Letters), it's not unreasonable to think that after 26 years of happy marriage our chances of divorce are zero. But, rather unreasonably, I find that I have the hots for a 19-year-old bingo caller from Southend-on-Sea. 'll be seeing a solicitor in the morning, then I'm getting a tattoo and Oliver is going to whisk me off to Margate on the back of his brother's moped.
Mrs Esdale, Bridge

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Ooh, someone's had a makeover.

Lots of us have been there. You reach a significant birthday, take a look at yourself, decide you look a bit of a fuddy-duddy and it's time for a new you. Or you buy a motorbike.

For most people reaching 40 or 50 is the age where they decide to shake things up a bit. For the Indepedent it's reaching 25.

It has a bigger, bolder masthead, which editor Chris Blackhurst says is "". Take note all you newsagents out there, no-one puts the Independent in the corner.

Although, if the paper is hoping its new, hard-to-miss masthead will translate into more sales it may be disappointed. Lower readership numbers over recent years is probably not down to the paper being the wallflower of the newspaper stand. But, we will have to wait and see. Paper Monitor could be proved wrong.

But, cue quivering bottom lip, the Viewspaper is no more. Gone. History. Kaput. Launched last year, when the Independent had its last Gok Wan-style makeover, the daily supplement promised "Britain's most wide-ranging opinion, award-winning commentary, more space for your letters, the finest writing on cultural matters, a daily essay and in-depth features on the environment, media, science, technology and history". Basically, it promised the moon on a stick.

But in a fit of honesty not usually associated with newspaper editors, Blackhurst admits it's more likely the daily supplement was "put on one side" and "forgotten" rather than read and enjoyed. A much nicer way of saying binned or dumped.

Paper Monitor might have been guilty of this crime itself on several occasions, but is sad to see the Viewspaper go. All of the above features are now said to be in the main body of the paper. But having lost a lot of its middle-age spread and now feeling much more streamline, you have to wonder where it's been squeezed in.

Like so many before it, the Independent hopes it is more "modern, confident, dynamic and sharper" after its revamp. Don't we all, don't we all.

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"Rude nation: Why Britain should mind its Ps and Qs"? It's its Fs and Cs I'm worried about.
Rob Falconer, Llandough, Wales

No, Fi from Gloucestershire (Monday's Letters), but I did hear a gnarly voice shout "Constant vigilance!"
Geeky gal, Brighton, UK

Is this (second photo) drunk-girl-two-hours-earlier?
Henri, Sidcup

It is not possible to control things "...with just your thoughts". As this article shows, you also need a computer wired to a robot. Or a body.
Colin Main, Berkhamsted, UK

Oh dear, another scientist who has failed to read the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s excellent articles on statistics. The overall divorce rate may well be 50%. However, getting divorced is not a simple random event. So the chances are very much dependent on the individual and are within their control. Thus, the observation that "people don't think it's the same for them" is reasonable. Some people, for example, know the chances of them getting divorced is zero. Having made it though 26 years of happy marriage, I think my odds are better than 50/50 too.
Mark Esdale, Bridge

Why does every story about a famous musician include a title from one of their songs?
Jonathan, Oxford

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A look at the stories ranking highly on various news sites.

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The diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks may seem like a distant memory to some, but others are still going through them, trying to find out as much as they can. And for Wired readers, there is some , Daniel Serwer. He puts a bit of a dampener on the whole thing though, saying it's clear that whoever leaked them didn't have access to the top secret stuff.

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Also putting a dampener on things is a popular Times article. , it says. In the late co-founder of Apple's speech he urged people to do what they love. The Times is having none of it. What about getting the bins collected, it shouts. And remember the people who discover what they love but also discover they are not very good at it.

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It looks like something out of Indiana Jones. But as Daily Mail readers are finding out, so called after a climber put their attempt to pass through it on YouTube. The irony, it seems, is that the path is going to be improved to help tourism, where as the article says its very dangerousness is what is attracting people.

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An old staple of the stories popular with readers is, along with cats and Hitler, Chinese growth. So it was only a matter of time before that growth was questioned. Time magazine says a strong contender for one of the most important economic questions in the world is . It tells a tale of towns full of unused new buildings, roads and bridges. A bursting property bubble is not inevitable though - the optimist's view is maybe these empty towns could prove to be just the catalyst needed to keep the economy driving forward when demand catches up.

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

The financial crisis shows no signs of abating but Paper Monitor is relieved that the British press has its eye on the real meltdown - the alarming goings-on at X Factor.

"Mass Exodus" of the massacre of the innocents that took place at the weekend with four acts dumped from the show in "shockingly brutal scenes".

Two judges were reduced to tears, the paper reported while the Daily Star added that a third - Gary Barlow - was so angry that he "".

Despite the mass cull, the Daily Mail suggested that the show was struggling to hold on to viewers.

"X Factor loses 1m viewers (and 5 weeping wannabes)" announced its headline.

The paper claimed that the dip in viewers happened after "fans were forced to endure advert and promotional trailer breaks that filled more than a fifth of Saturday night's programme".

The other big issue worrying the nation's papers was the quick dip that England rugby player Manu Tuilagi had in Auckland harbour.

The Samoan-born centre jumped from a ferry and swam to a jetty where he was arrested and interviewed by police.

If England had beaten France with an exhibition of flowing rugby, Paper Monitor suspects that the headlines may have been a little different.

"New rugby shame as England star is held for diving off a ferry" was the next to a picture of Tuilagi in Dennis the Menace-style striped shorts.

And finally there was important news for men carrying a bit of spare capacity. The Daily Telegraph reported that attractive women are happy to overlook a man's growing gut if he increases his salary.

According to the stats, if a single man increases his body mass index by 10% he must increase his salary by 2% to keep dating a similar partner.

It creates the obvious dilemma for the man battling middle aged spread - to stay late in the office to win that pay rise, or rush off to the gym to work on those abs.

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