Paper Monitor
10:32 UK time, Thursday, 31 January 2008
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
He was dubbed the "most hated man in Britain", so how do the papers report the death of Jeremy Beadle?
- with a laugh, in the Sun, which goes for the front page headline "Beadle's not about". But here's an interesting tactic – instead of using giant bold capitals, the headline is written in a computerised approximation of handwriting and the effect is to soften what otherwise would seem a pretty crass pun.
- with commemorations, in the Daily Mirror, from a clutch other celebrities such as Noel Edmonds, Henry Kelly, Sarah Kennedy and Carol Vorderman, each of whose names is rendered in bold in the text just to keep readers interested.
- with reverence for his charity work in the Daily Mail, which highlights the Β£100m the practical joker raised for good causes.
- with a nod to his little-known intellectual side in the Times, with mention of his love of books, his impressive legacy in the media (from Edmonds to Chris Morris) and his suspicion of the press.
- with a self-referential mention in his Daily Telegraph obituary of how Beadle himself made a small difference to paper's obit pages. How so? The piece reads thus: "His advice even touched the Daily Telegraph's obituaries column, whose practice it was, before Beadle began lobbying the paper's former proprietor Lord Black, to omit the date of death of the people whose lives it memorialised."
When it comes to the very recently departed, the Independent, however, has its own loss to deal with.
Paper Monitor is always on the lookout for reasons to read the Independent, as has been discussed over the past couple of weeks. And there's a good reason today - a free US election wallchart to put up in the kitchen at home. (Weird but true.) It's full colour wallchart and smells great - the sort of thing that has to be printed well in advance and, unfortunately for the Indie, before the withdrawal of two of the key candidates yesterday. Messrs Giuliani and Edwards still sit proudly as contenders.
None of this will matter at Independent Towers, though, which is mourning the sad death of star columnist Miles Kington who has given the paper's pages a note of erudition and wit since its launch in 1986.
The report of his death didn't make it to the first edition, but in later editions it displaces that of Beadle. The paper will doubtless mark the man's contribution in the following days, including, one hopes, the invention of . It adds: "He listed his hobbies as 'mending punctures' and 'falsifying personal records to mystify potential biographers'", which raises an interesting philosophical conundrum about whether either point can be trusted.
Independent stalwarts will miss Kington, who was without fail a reason to read. That's not a bad epitaph.
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