Paper Monitor
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
"Panic over Loose Women pox crisis".
No, it's not a snippet from Pepys's Diary: Late Night Edition. The pox in question is a bout of shingles affecting the presenters of the ITV show, reported in the Daily Mirror.
Over in the Times, page three is given over to the death of amplifier pioneer Jim Marshall. There's a box from the paper's Chief Rock Critic Will Hodgkinson.
Paper Monitor is puzzled, not recalling ever seeing any of the paper's non-chief rock critics.
Good Friday offers a fairly restrained selection of news in the papers, a newsprint complement to the life of a bank holiday. The thrum of lawnmowers, the knock of cork on willow, the clink of pint glasses carried by the armful in riverside pubs.
On the letters page of the Times, the big issues of the day are discussed. Some correspondents mourn the demise of poetic pub names in the current depression. Another bemoans the departure queues at Luton Airport - "the Marquis de Sade school of customer relations".
Elsewhere, there are stories of troubled Easter getaways as the roads and railways are clogged for the 7,348th bank holiday weekend in succession.
And, sated, the news junkies return to their leisure.