Tabloid bullshit of the month award - August 2011

It's here!  It's great!  It's late!  Ha haah!

It's the 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award for August ought eleven!  There's a line of them medieval blokes with long trumpets that have coats of arms hanging off them tooting out a fanfare.  In my mind.  And yours too now, because I put them there with the magic of words.


August hasn't been anywhere near as eventful as July in the sulphurous netherworld that is the tabloid press.  No papers shut down, some people arrested, but not very high profile.  No excellent performances by top cops (as the Sun would call them - see, I pay attention) in front of Committees.

What we have had, though, is the award very, very nearly being won by our very own Prime Minister, David Shinyface.  Very nearly.

Following on from his awful, tabloid-inspired, mendacious speech about immigration, Shinyface decided to get all Charles Bronson and tough about Human Rights in the Daily Express.  That's right.  Our Prime Minister elected to show what he's learned about the honesty of tabloids from the News of the World phone hacking scandal by having an article published in a newspaper owned by a pornographer who removed it from the Press Complaints Commission so it doesn't have to face regulation.  Even the scant regulation of the PCC, which covers about as much as a porn star's lingerie put through a boil wash. This means the paper is free to do what a free press does best. Lie about Muslims, the EU and the Human Rights Act.  Excellent choice, Mr Shinyface.  Perfectly shows the utter contempt you hold for the general public, you bloat-faced pantomime baddie.

But this month I had to ignore the Prime Minister in favour of an absolute sterling example of one of the things the tabloids are excellent at, the sort of story synonymous with the red-tops (and the papers that think they're not red-tops).  We're talking about the tabloid hatchet-job, my friends.  Early this month, you may remember, the Daily Mirror settled its crosshairs on Steve Wright and BOOM! blew him away with the buckshot of his own depravity.

The winner is 'Steve Wright: inside the weird world of the Radio 2 legend', by Ryan Parry.

Here's the email:

Dear Mr Parry, 

You know that bit in 'Footloose' where Kevin Bacon charges around a deserted warehouse jumping about and whirling and kicking up his legs like someone's punted him squarely in the anus?  You might want to start doing that now, and doing it for joy!  You've won the 5cc tabloid bullshit of the month award for August 2011!  Kick off your Sunday shoes, my friend. 

You already know what you've won for, I bet.  If you don't, and the man who wrote 'Steve Wright: inside the weird world of the Radio 2 legend' is sitting there wondering what he might be getting a bullshit award for, you probably need to book some appointments with someone.  Here's why you won (I hope you've already said this to yourself over and again in shame as you struggle to sleep, shivering): 

• Imagine someone in radio listening to other people's shows to pick up ideas. Why, it's almost as if this would be entirely normal behaviour for someone who works in bloody radio, but you've seen through the veneer of totally banal normality to expose the unspeakable evil behind a man just getting on with his job.
• "For breakfast, he usually asks for poached or scrambled eggs on brown toast from a restaurant called Avelli’s, porridge from Make Mine or Eat, a small bacon or sausage butty with ketchup from Eat and a skinny latte with one sweetener." The bastard! Eggs?  For breakfast? He's worse than Fred West!
• As if having eggs or porridge for breakfast wasn't enough, this depraved, thoroughly evil man has his lunch at 1.30.  Or 'lunchtime' as it's often known.  I, for one, have never heard the like. I hope our top psychologists are coming up with a suitable treatment for such inhuman, despicable behaviour.
• Wait, what? On Fridays he often goes to visit his mum? Oh my god, hanging would be too good for this monster!  I mean - having eggs for breakfast and eating lunch at lunchtime you can almost understand, but visiting your mother? I think I've just been a bit sick in my mouth.
• If you're trying to do a tabloid hatchet-job and you can't dig up anything worse than 'he likes eating', you should probably, you know, just stop.  You might make yourself look stupid.  Well, stupid or weirder than the person you're trying to hatchet.  

Keep it up though! It's this sort of thing that keeps tabloid journalists at the bottom of the list of the most trusted professions, below estate agents, carnies and serial killers. 

I will be publishing this email over at www.fivechinesecrackers.com.  As ever, you are more than welcome to have a reply published by simply replying to this email.  You're actually encouraged.  I've been sending out this award for nearly a year now, and not a single recipient has ever had the courage to respond.  It's like you guys prefer skulking in the shadows or something.  I bet you all have your lunch at lunchtime as well, you sick bastards. 

You're also in with a chance to win the 5cc tabloid bullshitter of the year award, which I'll be giving to the hack who's won most monthly awards by the end of the year.  If you're going to make an effort to win, please don't do it by creepily attacking people for going about their business.  It's just not nice. 

Cheers then! 

5cc

Okay, you people.  That's it for August.  Tune in at the end of September for the next one.  If I have a month as busy as August it might be late again, but never mind.  It's not like I'm eating eggs for breakfast or anything evil like that.