Paper Monitor
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Ask not what the Olympics can do for you. Ask what you can do for the Olympics. With apologies to JFK. Paper Monitor is having to hunker down and get on with the job despite trying conditions. Yes, we have only two papers to monitor today.
And no, I have absolutely no idea if the delivery problem is related to the Olympics. But like everyone else let's put it down to the Games and show our pluck by getting on with the job in the face of huge adversity.
In a way it doesn't matter what paper you're reading. There is the Olympics. And then there is other news. And even the other news has rather a lot of Olympics in it. Take the Times' feature worrying that Prince Harry was turning into Dupree from You, Me and Dupree hanging out too much with Kate and Wills.
It concludes that, no he wasn't turning into Dupree. And that actually it is lovely the three of them all get on so well. So here's a big picture of the three of them in their Team GB tops at the Games. Possibly watching cousin Zara.
Which brings us nicely on to Simon Barnes' dispatch from some riding event at Greenwich Park. "Bloody horses, what the hell are they doing at the Olympic Games?"
. Horsey types who say impenetrable things like "looks more like his sire than his dam". Horsey virgins who whoop, yell and cheer, forgetting that horses aren't used to such raucous crowds. And the actual horses who bravely just get on with it.
"I hope all the anti-horse buggers connected with the Games were in Greenwich to see the glory of it all," he concludes.
Whether Marina Hyde in the Guardian fits this category is not clear. She tries her best to understand "County O'Clock" . But in the end it she just can't quite fit in.
She is buttonholed by one of the horsey types. He begins by saying how wonderful it is having the army involved in security. Then he asks which paper she works for. Uh, oh. "Oh dear..." is his response. The Guardian is not universally loved by the horsey crowd.
Getting tired of the nonplussed responses to her employer, she opts for a novel approach. "One puts them at their ease by agreeing that one absolutely wouldn't have the paper in the house oneself."
One hopes she wasn't whooping at the horses as well.