There is absolutely sod all going on today. Look at the front pages of all the papers- nothing. Not even a gruesome murder to prick the nation’s ears. There’s a war in Afghanistan in which we’re digging in for the long haul, an MPs’ expenses scandal that crawls on, Tony Blair’s campaign to be the EU president, and people dancing on the telly on Saturday nights. It must be difficult working for a newspaper on days like these, when you have to fill your pages with something, anything, just find something newsworthy. While other newspapers may have to dig around to find something which is at least credible and/or true, The Sun isn’t held back by such expectations. They can print the most speculative piece with a silly headline and a picture, and as long as it involves celebrities, Islam, paedophiles or sex, they’ll get away with it.

So the front page is split between a footballer going to prison, a boxer kissing a woman, and a bloke becoming a father. By dividing the front page like this and hedging their bets, they are admitting that even they cannot decide which is less boring. The only entertaining part is that the sub-editors have used a football chant, “Going down, going down, going down” to gloat about a footballer being sent down for 18 months. 1-0 to The Sun.


PAEDOS! Last week it was Twitter, this week it’s Facebook, which if you believe The Sun have become littered with sex offenders waiting to rape you with a status update. Fancy sending someone a Nudge? Make that a grope. It seems that the stalwarts of print media are pumping a lot of resources into making us suspicious of their online competitors, as The Sun seems to have a new social networking nonce every time I look. I’m surprised they haven’t labelled it Rapebook, or hit us with a spoonerism which I use a lot, Bacefook. I really am surprised they haven’t thought of any of these.


MUSLIMS! Whatever you think about Islam, The Sun’s going to try to convince you that it’s an evil death cult trying to brainwash the honest, hard-working folk of this country. In this article, they have subtly used the image of a paedophile as a metaphor for the Islamic faith, which has lured a 14-year-old away from home. “Friends and family fear Sarah may have been brainwashed by hardline Muslims,” and they are pleading for her whereabouts, as though she has been abducted. Who knows, she may have been. She may have been abducted by Somali pirates or fundamental Christians as well, but that’s not in the story, is it?

MUSLIM MADNESS! Today’s only witty headline is aimed at an extremist cleric’s nutty claim that the Queen should become a Muslim. This guy has even mocked up his own photo of Buckingham Palace as a mosque, doing what The Sun would have inevitably done themselves if he hadn’t beat them to it. The trouble is, much like with the BNP on Question Time, this is giving fringe lunatics more attention than they deserve. I can’t even get on the guy’s website, it appears to have crashed as a result of all the traffic hes getting as a result of this article. When a fundamentalist Christian nut job who believes the earth is only 6,000 years old stood a very realistic  chance of becoming the vice president of the United States last year, the Muslim nutters don’t seem quite as unique.

The letters page is always funny, if only to see the views of readers which The Sun incubates. Someone was motivated to write in to say “I wish Jeremy Paxman could host Eggheads.” I wish they’d do Strictly Come Dancing in the nude, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. But perhaps funniest of all is a rant about someone passing their driving test in an uninsured car. “He should be banned from driving then be forced to retake his test.” But if he’s been banned from driving, how can he retake his test? If you want him banned, why do yo want him to retake is test? Another pearl of wisdom: “When is the death penalty coming back? Everyone I know wants it,” says Mick from Surrey. Who told poor old Mick that it was coming back, because I don’t think it is. And when you say your friends want the death penalty, do you mean they want to be executed? This isn’t the death penalty, it’s euthanasia.

Sadly, there’s no Jon Cunt again. I hope he, along with some proper news, returns next Friday.