Paper Monitor
11:46 UK time, Friday, 13 July 2007
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Assorted columnists mourn the passing of the diary columnist to end all diary columnists, Nigel Dempster, who penned gossipy snippets for the Daily Mail for more than 30 years. And how do they pay tribute? With gossipy snippets about the man himself, of course.
People in the Times recounts how Dempster kept the ashes of his mother in his office. The urn was found by a discombobulated secretary who screamed, then called health and safety. "Mrs Dempster stayed put but the secretary departed."
The Guardian's Roy Greenslade recalls his last meeting with Dempster. "Though slight, he was bent forward as if addressing a child, eyes betraying a hint of mischief. Had I any gossip? He was, for a moment, just like the Nigel I had met in 1973 in a drinking club near the old Mail building in Tudor Street. A charming hack in a bespoke suit interested in filling a column about nothing of any consequence."
And in a fit of confluence (is that possible? It should be) with , what are the freebies on offer with today's papers? Only a handful get in on the act on a Friday, leaving the covermounts to their weekend counterparts.
• The Daily Telegraph has "FIVE free garden plants - superb exclusive hellebores for every reader (P&P required)".
• The Mail gives away part six of The World at War (well, a token to take to WH Smith).
• The Sun also has a token, not for a CD or DVD but for "Hols from £9.50".
• The Independent (poster cover a timetable of the school day of the future, no pictures of dolphins) has a pull-out Proms guide.
Meanwhile, news this week that Sebastian Faulks is to pen a Bond novel has given the picture desks yet another excuse to dust off their well-thumbed prints of Daniel Craig emerging, wet and buffed, from the sea in Casino Royale.
After getting a full-page run in yesterday's Mail, it's in the Indie's gossip column today. How else could the right-on paper offset its guilt over using a pic of bikini-clad lovelies on the same page?
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