Posted by
Axegrinder on 30 October 2009 at 10:01
Tags: Uncategorized
Strange goings on at The Nation newspaper in Bangkok which is carrying a picture caption from new Thailand national manager ‘Byran Robson’ alongside a picture of the late great England manager Bobby Robson.
Do they perhaps mean new Thailand national team manager Bryan Robson?
Posted by
Axegrinder on 6 October 2009 at 11:26
Tags: Uncategorized
Suffering from journalism?
Help is at hand from the pharmaceutical industry apparently, in the form of a new drug called Printoxafin.
Hear all about it in this bonkers video produced by Glasgow-based journalist Tristan Stewart-Robertson of W5 Press Agency.
Posted by
Axegrinder on 2 August 2009 at 21:04
Tags: News of the World, Uncategorized, the News
When the News of the World ran a story claiming a brothel was being run in a flat above Labour Party offices in Kent, naturally the local paper had to follow it up.
The News in Rochester made the story its page three lead (pictured above), and reporter George Nott excitedly told readers that police were investigating claims of a vice den at 73b Maidstone Road, just above the office where Bob Marshall Andrews MP holds his surgeries.
“Our photographer was yelled at and told to leave while taking pictures for this article,” wrote Nott.
It is puzzling that the News appears so surprised at what is going on in the upstairs flat. A certain local paper in Kent is currently running an advert in its Adult Services section from an enterprise called A Touch of Class (pictured below). A quick phone call from Axegrinder reveals two girls are available at 73b Maidstone Road where ”specialist services” start at £60.
The name of the local paper running the ad? Why the News, of course.
Posted by
Axegrinder on 28 July 2009 at 20:58
Tags: Construction News, Emap Inform, Nick Edwards, Simon Middelboe, Uncategorized
It was was red faces all round at the usually yellow-topped Construction News this week as a production error led to the previous edition’s page 2-3 spread being repeated.
Readers had the questionable pleasure of wading through editor Nick Edwards’ leader for the second week on the trot, while the contents page certainly had a sense of déjà vu about it.
The mistake was particularly embarrassing for Emap Inform chief executive Simon Middelboe, who has been at the forefront of centralising all production desks across the division.
His dream of sub-editors beavering away in isolation from the reporting teams has cut costs but has now resulted in the worst rick in the mag’s 140-year history.
Axegrinder understands a furious Edwards tried to get the edition pulped and reprinted but thousands of copies made it out to bewildered readers.
UPDATE: A regular reader of Construction News contacted Axegrinder on Thursday to reveal a fresh twist to the unfortunate saga: “They have now sent out a replacement issue for last week’s magazine, which has just landed on our desks along with this week’s issue. If, as you suggest, they knew that they had messed up and decided not to pulp and reprint the issue, why did they do it afterwards, adding postage costs to their woes?”
Posted by
Axegrinder on 11 June 2009 at 17:27
Tags: Tanya Gold, The Guardian, Uncategorized
I fear hackette Tanya Gold is about to lose another friend … all because she felt the need to tell Guardian readers how she hates wedding lists.
On Wednesday she wrote: “Three weeks I ago I received a wedding list from a friend. Let me be more accurate. She used to be a friend, but as her wedding looms she has been replaced by a shape-shifting, John Lewis-icking monster.”
The friend’s error was to want “ice-crushers and cookbook holders and spoons. Give them to me, she squawks through her John Lewis proxy, because I am in love - and that means I get consumer durables for free! I demand a new kitchen - and you will pay for it!”
Gold favours another type of wedding gift.
“I will take my friend out for dinner … Although I suspect she will probably stick the cutlery in her bag and take it home.”
When the article appeared on the Guardian website, it didn’t take long for Gold’s poor friend to deliver her verdict. In a comment posted on Wednesday lunchtime (a time when the hungry hack was unlikely to be at her computer), someone called Jo Holland wrote:
“As the bride referred to in the piece I should point out that Tanya was invited to my wedding but no wedding list was included in her invitation because I know how much she hates them.
“I do have a wedding list at John Lewis which I can appreciate is bourgeois but we decided that it would be practical, though by no means compulsory. The irony in all this is that I really, really don’t care about gifts and have never even brought the subject up with Tanya (my dress, I concede is another matter). It might sound trite but all I want is a happy unforgettable day surrounded by people I love. My wedding is less than a month away and frankly, Tanya I don’t want any spoons but I’m not sure that I want you at my wedding either.”
Oh dear, another weekend at home beckons for poor old Tanya.
Posted by
Axegrinder on 2 June 2009 at 11:35
Tags: I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, Piers Morgan, Radio Four, Stephen Fry, Uncategorized
In his unsurprisingly piss-poor column The Insider, in The Mail on Sunday’s Live magazine, Piers Morgan says he and Stephen Fry “haven’t really seen eye to eye since he once went on Radio 4 and invented a new word to describe murdering me”.
Sadly, Piers decided the word coined by Fry was “too rude even to repeat in this column”.
For those who may not have heard Fry on that famous edition of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, Axegrinder is happy to reveal that the word in question was “countryside”.
Posted by
Axegrinder on 28 May 2009 at 22:31
Tags: Daily Telegraph, Uncategorized
Just as the Telegraph is allowing us to look into hitherto hidden areas of MPs’ affairs, so this desire to reveal all is extending to its own website, right down to Home Affairs Editor Tom Whitehead asking publicly: “Can I say Baby P’s killer?”
Axegrinder feels this is perhaps taking glasnost too far.
And, no, you can’t say “killer”. But thanks for asking.
Posted by
Axegrinder on 19 May 2009 at 18:05
Tags: Nine News, Uncategorized
When a shooting took place outside a strip club in the red light district of Sydney, Australia’s Nine News service managed to track down a highly eloquent and polite (she even thanks the reporter) eyewitness.
Nine News’s website gives an edited taste of her account (”There were these two [men] fighting… The fatter [man] said to the skinnier [man], ‘Oi bro, you slept with my cousin’.”
But, as the unedited film of the interview reveals, her actual words were shockingly different and it’s astonishing they are still on the Nine News website.
Axegrinder can’t wait for the day she appears in court as a witness.
Posted by
Axegrinder on 6 April 2009 at 14:40
Tags: Uncategorized
Closing drinks for Press Gazette have become almost an annual affair in recent years.
The last farewell (possibly) will be at the Old Bell, Fleet Street, from 6pm tomorrow. PG staffers past and present will also be saying goodbye to deputy editor Julie Tomlin - who is starting a new job at the Frontline Club.
All are welcome to buy Axegrinder a drink. I will be exposing myself.
If anyone sees a fat lady - stick a bun in her mouth before she starts singing. You never know…
Posted by
Axegrinder on 4 April 2009 at 20:26
Tags: Catholic Herald, Daily Telegraph, Damian Thompson, George Pitcher, Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Ruth Gledhill, The Times, Uncategorized
Has the press secretary to the new Archbishop of Westminster been watching too many episodes of political satire The Thick Of It or its movie spin-off In The Loop?
Axegrinder only asks because Peter Jennings does seem to favour Malcolm Tucker’s approach to media relations.
Jennings has managed to spark an unholy row by offending Jonathan Wynne-Jones, religious affairs correspondent for The Sunday Telegraph. He introduced himself to Jennings, long-serving press secretary to Archbishop Vince Nichols, after the press conference confirming the appointment to succeed Cormac Murphy-O’Connor.
“You’re a total shit,” Jennings told the Telegraph man, apparently upset that he’d reported letters sent by two bishops complaining that Nichols would be a divisive choice.
For good measure, Jennings then suggested Wynne-Jones had made up the story, and was, in fact, lying.
He put it to Jennings that it was perhaps unwise and unfortunate to have this outburst with his boss only a few feet away, and press everywhere.
Says Wynne-Jones: “I also questioned whether ‘total’ was quite fair, arguing ‘irritating’ or ‘arrogant’ might have been more appropriate.
“Considering Peter should have been celebrating, given that his boss has just got the top job, I thought he might have been in a slightly better mood.
“To be fair though, he did calm down and came and apologised. He even admitted that he realised that Archbishop Nichols isn’t universally popular amongst his colleagues, and said that he didn’t doubt my story.
“I’ll forget about it. I hope the officials in Westminster will be as forgiving.”
Before forgetting about it, Wynne-Jones wisely wrote the entire thing up for his blog.
His fellow religious affairs correspondents seem to be greatly enjoying “total shitgate”.
Ruth Gledhill of The Times, who was sitting next to Wynne-Jones and witnessed the whole thing, has commented: “Press officers are generally taught at nursery school that they might think we are shits, they might think they know some of us are, they might even find a way to keep us in the dark and feed us on it, like mushrooms.
“But they should never, ever tell us this to our faces, especially when surrounded by bishops and archbishops of the Roman Catholic church, itself an institution only beginning to recover from a series of PR disasters.”
After Gledhill reported the row on her blog, she wrote that Jennings has reacted by threatening her “with all withdrawal of future cooperation”.
She adds: “Great isn’t it? Within hours of the appointment of the new Archbishop of Westminster, his press officer falls out with The Times and The Sunday Telegraph and makes a laughing stock of himself over at The Guardian.”
Damian Thompson, a Telegraph leader writer and editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald, gave this reaction: “Peter really is his own worst enemy. Jonathan’s story was a proper scoop: some ghastly bishops tried to stab Vincent in the back by writing nastily to the Nuncio, and one of them (I have no idea which) decided to leak this to Jonathan.”
The Rev George Pitcher, religion editor of the Daily Telegraph, joked that “total shit” is “probably a badge to wear with pride, like ‘total football’ or ‘total war’. Better than being called ‘a bit of a shit’ surely, which doesn’t imply a satisfactory total evacuation.
“I think the religious press corps should hold a competition to find the most insulted journo — but only because I know I’d win it, hands down as it were.”
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