The momentous events on the pitch in Charleroi last weekend
provided the perfect environment for the News of the World to be at its
absolutely xenophobic best.
Indeed, such was their enthusiasm that they grandly informed us that
this was a special ’souvenir edition’.
The first six pages of the paper and the back eight pages (14 in all)
were dedicated to patriotic Hun bashing, delivered in an unbelievably
gloating tone. Significantly, only two columns on page four reported on
the considerable hooliganism.
In the rush to canonise ’our boys’ and ’put Fritz in his place’, the NOW
seemed to completely miss the fact that in reality, England did not
perform particularly well and were very fortunate that an inept German
team missed a hatful of chances.
Sandwiched between the war - sorry - the football analysis, another pet
subject of the paper is ’given the treatment’ under the heading: ’Prince
William comes of age.’ The NOW put its own unique ’highbrow’ slant on
the story when referring to William’s choice of university: ’Girls here
get kit off at drop of hat.’
Further into the paper, we hit the more familiar staple diet of
sensation, scandal, sex and sleaze (’Five-star Ritchie unzipped Russian
beauty with his teeth!’), allowing us all to secretly enjoy the
titillation while, of course, outwardly disapproving.
This is obviously the recipe for the paper’s success and this style has
changed very little over the decades, since those heady days when the
’News of the Screws’ was essential, but furtive, reading for that early
teenage testosterone-overloaded paperboy every Sunday morning.
We have to wait until page 31, however, to really discover the very
heart and soul of the paper: ’pounds 2.3m Lottery winner buys his own
chip shop.’ Really? Who cares? He ought to be careful. Given the
football coverage, the Germans might retaliate by bombing it.
The rise of the personalised column is very evident in the NOW. From
Richard Stott (’his bite’s as bad as his bark’), Michael Winner,
Mariella Frostrup at the Movies, Mike Rutherford’s Motoring World, Peter
Prendergast’s Money World, Tony Harris’s Holiday World, Vivienne Parry
(’she’s smart, she’s saucy and she’s only in the News of the World’) and
Loudmouth Livesey (’the fan’s champion’) we are treated to columns of
what turns out to be, often, self-opinionated rubbish. The collective
noun for this lot should be a ’smart arse’ of columnists.
In summary, the NOW was easily digestible, mildly entertaining in
places, but altogether very forgettable - unlike last Saturday’s
result.
Publisher: News International
Cover price: 60p
Circulation: 4,031,686
Full-page colour ad rate: pounds 53,000
Full-page mono ad rate: pounds 40,598
Advertisers include: Sky, Nationwide, Land of Leather, Kit Kat, PG Tips,
Currys, PC World.
.jpg)
.jpg)