Piers Morgan: Tabloid Scum

Via Pink News.

PN have now got Benjamin Butterworth on the books.

Beats working for Richard Desmond.

Frida: I *HEART* The 70s

“My motto is to live in peace and respect all the different religions, people’s sexualities and ethnic origins.

"I cannot tolerate people who harm others in the name of religion and I salute all those who stand up for free speech and differences of opinion.”

Frida, quoted in the Daily Express.

Not quite sure why they've put her on the front page today, her 70th birthday's not til November.

Might have lost some of its poetry in the translation.

Still, a beautiful thought - and one that Fagburn is sure is shared by everyone at the Express, Richard Desmond and his new BFF, Nigel Farage.

Daily Star: Ban The Bum

IT'S not just people doing the Ice Bucket Challenge that are chilling themselves for charity - this brave teenager raised hundreds of pounds for charity by stripping naked on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Daily Star. 

Respect to that paragon of decorum and good taste the Star for pixelating this young man's bum.

On other pages, endless ads for proprietor Richard Desmond's 'adult TV channels'.

Express: Check-Out

All good things come to an end (and some not so good things, too). I’ve been predicting the demise of careers in print journalism for some time, and yesterday the latest scalp was claimed: my own.

After some eleven and a half years as theatre critic for the Sunday Express – which began with a review of the opening of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the London Palladium in May 2002 and ended with a column that included an instant gay theatre classic in Jumpers for Goalposts at the Bush last Sunday – I have been laid off.

The paper had been tipped off by a malicious third party that there were some private, personal (but entirely legal) images of me available on a gay website. I’d never seen or heard of the site myself so it was news to me, but yes, the thumbnail picture I was shown by the Head of Human Resources was indeed of me. I had not posted it, but remembered it being taken, by my reckoning, by a friend in San Francisco I have long lost touch with some 22 years ago – long before I either worked for the paper or the internet had come of age, so I never expected them to turn up on a website that didn’t exist then.

The Sunday Express’s Head of HR, however, believes that the existence of any such images could bring the company into disrepute. My sexuality is public knowledge and by revealing this information freely as I’m doing now, it is clear that I do not agree. The editor of the paper also stated, in front of the HR head, that the images were “embarrassing”. Sorry to disagree with his world view, but I’m not embarrassed at all. (In the week that Tom Daley came out, it is good to be able to be honest about who you are and even what you look like without your clothes on – though I will agree that Mr Daley looks rather better in a state of undress than I do.)

It is, of course, the prerogative of a newspaper editor to choose his own writers but there is a certain irony that a newspaper, now owned by proprietor Richard Desmond whose business interests once included the publication of Penthouse in the UK and Asian Babes – and which he continued to publish long after he acquired the Express group in 2000, until he sold the adult magazine business in 2004 – should be so affronted. (The company continues to own and operate Television X, a series of subscription adult television channels) It could be said that the only difference is that these are straight magazines and channels, whereas mine was defined as a gay one...

Mark Shenton, former chief theatre critic of the Sunday Express, writes on his blog at The Stage.co.uk
Basically when a publisher wants to get rid of a journalist, they'll find any technicality.
UK's leading porn publisher sacks gay man for some old not-really pornographic pics fifty people might have seen for "bringing company into disrepute."
Richard Desmond's Northern & Shell were also the original publishers of Attitude incidentally...

Update: Private Eye report that "Desmond still owns through Northern & Shell subsidiary RHF Hardon TV, the pay-per-view gay website..."

Big Brother: The Official Fanzine

BIG Brother host Rylan Clark could be sacked over claims he has bedded the Jimmy Savile police officer who starred in the show.

The gay presenter, 25, has been romantically linked to ex-policeman Dan Neal, one of the main contestants of this summer's series.

BB bosses have a primary rule forbidding presenters and other staff from getting involved with housemates.

They are now investigating to see if Rylan, who won the last CBB series, has crossed the line dating Dan.

The pair are understood to have got together last month after Dan was evicted from the Big Brother house.

He went on Rylan’s late-night show Big Brother’s Bit On The Side for an interview. Others in the room said sparks flew and they flirted...

Daily Star - fascinating!

And in other news in today's Star...

A WHOPPING great well done to sweet farty Charlotte – our Celebrity Big Brother champion. Told you she’d win, didn’t I?

RICHARD Desmond told yesterday of his vision to keep Channel 5 “punching above its weight” by investing in quality programmes He told TV industry leaders that Channel 5 would to continue to make intelligent, populist programmes, such as Big Brother but would not chase ratings by being “cruel and predictable”.

BIG Brother is set to run for another five years...

Zzzzz...

Rylan Clark: Daily Star Star

The Daily Star.

Horrible stuff.
But there is some good news - The Star remind readers that by happenchance Rylan's hosting a new Big Brother spin-off show that launches on Richard Desmond's Channel 5 this Thursday.

Richard Littlejohn: Bashing The Bishop BBC Again

Hurrah!
That permanently offended nutball Richard Littlejohn has entered the fray of the Torchwood gaysex scene "storm of controversy" in a "think" piece in the Mail bashing the BBC [Bolsheviks Broadcasting Buggery] once more;
"Take the latest episode of Torchwood, the Doctor Who spin-off. It began with a seven-minute gay sex scene, which outraged many viewers. Why?
[Cause they're the sort of boring prudes who read The Daily Mail? Oh, that's not what you mean. Sorry. Do carry on...]
"The BBC says: ‘We aim to depict relationships, whether heterosexual or homosexual, in an honest and realistic way.’ Fair enough. But what on earth has sex got to do with a science fiction show? Why does the lead character have to be a ‘pansexual’? They’ll be telling us next that the Daleks all wore bondage gear under their tinfoil armour.
"But this is what you get when you hire a proselytising homosexual like Russell T. Davies to write mainstream drama. Gifted writer he may be, but he comes with an agenda.
"There is a place for exploring gay themes on TV, but not at prime time on BBC1 in a programme watched by many children and their parents [It was shown after the watershed]."
"No doubt Davies and his producers will dismiss anyone who objects as a ‘homophobe’. But you don’t have to be a prude or a bigot to disapprove of a gratuitous seven-minute sex scene in a sci-fi series.
It would have been equally unnecessary if it had involved a man and a woman, instead of two men. Of course, there’s always the ‘off’ switch. And it’s not as if there aren’t hundreds of other channels out there. But we’re paying for this through our licence fees.
"BBC drama, like its news output, is always refracted through the prism of the metropolitan prejudices held by the people who work there and take their world view from the pages of the Guardian..."

It's classic Littlejohn, isn't it?
Well, when I say "classic" I mean it reads like a list of illiberal cliches that could have been churned out by the Versificator at The Ministry Of Truth in 1984.
How ironic that Mr Littlejohn accuses the BBC of "churning out some appalling dross".
Why oh why don't we just privatise the BBC and sell it to a fine upstanding gentleman like Richard Desmond?

Sunday Express: Dick Jokes

IMMATURE BBC BOSSES MUST CLEAN UP ONCE GREAT TODAY
"This childish desire to shock has more in common with an adolescent attempting to be rebellious than serious broadcasting and it surfaces time and time again..."
Express Comment.*

DICK SENT FOR TRIAL ON SEX ATTACK CHARGES - News headline today.

*The Today programme featured an item where a doctor said he'd been abused by being called a "bastard". Oh, and you probably don't need reminding but Express publisher Richard Desmond is a pornographer - and his other title The Daily Star is a real filth-free zone, too...

Scottish Daily Express: White Tie And Nancy Boys

Missed this - it only appeared in the Scottish edition.
Private Eye writes;
"Sadly, Richard Desmond's attendance at Elton John and Richard Furnish's White Tie and Tiara Ball - held as The Express put it, "at the couple's Berkshire home, which they share with their six-minth-old son Zacahry" - came a few days too early for guests to be be able to discuss a fascinating item which appeared in one of his titles this week.

The Hickey column, The Scottish Daily Express.
It appears to have been removed from the website.
It may not have been, but the website's shit and the search engine doesn't work.

Private Eye's Number Crunching adds;
Number of photos of White Tie & Tiara Ball co-Host David Furnish in OK! magazine's coverage of the event - 5.
Number of photos of OK! proprietor Richard Desmond in OK! magazine's coverage of the event - 9.

Also curiously currently unavailable/findable on The Daily Express website is their star columnist Ann Widdecombe's words on hearing Elton John and David Furnish had had a baby;
"You don't have to be homophobic to shudder!"
But it helps!!! etc etc etc

The Daily Star: Tabloid Exposé

Richard Peppiatt, a journalist on The Daily Star, announced his resignation this evening - saying he can no longer write for the paper because of its gutter-low journalistic standards, its Islamophobia and tacit endorsement of the English Defence League.
This is something Charlie Brooker attacked brilliantly and savagely in The Guardian last month.
You can read Peppiatt's J'Accuse resignation letter to owner Richard Desmond here.
Peppiatt tells us of such lows as being told to go out wearing a burkha in public for a story, and having to write a story about how the Daily Star had stopped some "tax-payer funded Muslim-only loos" - which had never existed outside of another Star journalist's imagination.
"Not that my involvement in stirring up a bit of light-hearted Islamophobia stopped there. Many a morning I've hit my speed dial button to Muslim rent-a-rant Anjem Choudary to see if he fancied pulling together a few lines about whipping drunks or stoning homosexuals."
This is how the Daily Star works; invent stories, incite homophobia, whip up Islamophobia, and fuck the consequences.
Peppiatt tells Desmond; "You may have heard the phrase, 'The flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil sets off a tornado in Texas.' Well, try this: The lies of a newspaper in London can get a bloke's head caved in down an alley in Bradford."

Channel Five: OK! TV + Gay TV?

Oh dear.
Richard Desmond has bought Channel Five for £103million.
"Dirty Des" is the (almost) billionaire publisher whose Northern and Shell company owns OK! magazine, and the frequently homophobic rags The Daily Express and The Daily Star.
Investigative journalist, Tom Bower (the author of an as yet unpublished biography of Desmond), is not alone in believing Desmond's past business dealings make him "unsuitable to own a TV channel."
Desmond will be asked to appear before parliament's Culture, Media and Sport Committee to explain his plans for the channel - rumour has it that it may be filled with celebrity tittle-tattle, a sort of OK! TV.
He has promised Channel Five "will not go downmarket", and said he's trying to buy in some big broadcasting brands; "We are talking to the Big Brother people, we're talking to the Coronation Street people, we're talking to Simon Cowell..."
And he's pledged to keep Five's chair and CEO, Dawn Airey - who's often dubbed "the most powerful lesbian in the media".
He also hinted that Katie Price might front a show or two.
Oh dear.
But this OK! TV could also be a little bit gay.
Richard Desmond is a businessman who didn't get where he is today by being averse to making money out of us mos.
Northern and Shell began publishing Attitude magazine back in 1994 - it's a matter of debate when NS finally cut its ties with the magazine, possibly only two or three years ago.
He also owns a lot of highly lucrative pay-to-view porn TV channels, including Gay TV.
Last year Gay TV were found by Ofcom to have breached broadcasting rules by screening free-to-view on air promotions (those ads you see for adult channels when you're channel hopping) in which - and I quote from the Ofcom Broadcast Bulletin - "Some of the male presenters spoke to camera fully naked with their genitals in full view and on occasion in close up. Brief but non-explicit sequences of sexual activity, where genitals were frequently and clearly visible, were also shown and on occasions the genitals were being handled. In addition, some explicit sexual language was used by the presenters. Examples included: I’m aching to show you all the big dicks we have…getting hard for you tonight… we will be unloading our balls all over big hot studs… it’s explicit sucking and fucking action… these boys are fresh and their cocks are throbbing to get some tight arse... it’s all about cock so come in and get some tonight… cock after cock after cock, giving and taking it until everyone blows their load."
Ofcom didn't let this little breach stand in the way of them giving Mr Desmond the green light to take over Channel Five.