Olympics’ long run
Visitors to the BBC Southern Counties Radio website could be forgiven for thinking the Olympic Games go on forever these days.
When they try to access their local news bulletins for Surrey and
Sussex online, an audio announcement informs them that the service is
suspended because of internet broadcasting restrictions during the
games.
But it promises normal service will be resumed after they finish.
Related
Hard-pressed commuters had to brave a picket line of braying promotion
girls as they headed into Angel tube station in North London last week.
They were handing out a mini glossy Telegraph containing money off
vouchers for copies of the broadsheet -a marketing attack designed to
spike the new all-tabloid Times.
But what happens when you present your vouchers to the newsstand
outside the Angel? “We don’t take those,” the chirpy newslady told
Dog’s cash strapped informant. “We used to, but it was six months
before we got the money back.” Now she knows how freelance journalists
feel.
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The Wharf : first with pics Heat : belated exclusive
Carried away by rumours of a romance between singer Brian McFadden
and the Australian pop star and Neighbours actress Delta Goodrem, Heat
exclaimed that it had “exclusive first pictures” of the pair in its
November 6-12 edition.
Erm, not quite chaps.
East London weekly The Wharf was there several days earlier, on October 28, courtesy of its staff photographer Phil Stephenson.
The Wharf ‘s editor, Ann Stenhouse, told Dog: “A shot of Brian
McFadden taken at the same location was also in The Sun on October 27,
which is why we didn’t run the piece as a picture exclusive. It’s a
shame that Heat doesn’t have the same integrity.
“But they do say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, in which case The Wharf is very flattered indeed.”
This isn’t the kind of knowledge we want
Publisher A&C Black describes its Writers and Artists Yearbook as “a comprehensive, up-to-date directory of media contacts”.
No less a figure than JK Rowling says it is “full of useful stuff! It answered my every question”.
So Dog was disappointed when he tried to call the listed number for
the New Statesman and found himself connected to the spare parts
department at the Holloway Road black cab distributors, Mann and
Overton.
Taxi for Mr Wilby, anyone?
Top: Littlejohn’s original column in The Sun ; bottom: the Mail’s rip-off Peterborough piece
Nelson column stolen by Mail
When the Peterborough column was dropped by The Daily Telegraph last
year, the Daily Mail was quick to launch its own version. Now, not
content with ripping off other papers’ used names, it has gone one
stage further and started ripping off entire used columns.
The main item in Tuesday’s Peterborough (“the column that belongs
entirely to you, the reader”) was sent in by a Bruce Baker of Pinner,
Middlesex.
Headlined “A rum do at Trafalgar”, it was a spoof account of how
Lord Nelson might have reacted to modern health and safety regulations.
Sounds vaguely familiar? That’s because it was also a word-for-word
rip-off of Richard Littlejohn’s Sun column more than a month earlier,
headlined “Rum, sodomy and the lifejacket”.
As Littlejohn himself might say: he couldn’t make it up – so he nicked it.
From the Malton and Pickering Mercury. A mistake in expenses? Surely not in any self-respecting newspaper.
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