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THE MAGAZINE MONITOR
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Welcome to the Magazine Monitor, the home for:
- Daily Mini-Quiz results
- Paper Monitor
- Your letters
- Punorama (Weds)
- Caption Comp (Thurs)
- 10 things we didn't know (Sat)
10 THINGS WE DIDN'T KNOW THIS TIME LAST WEEK
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10 THINGS
10 beer cans by Rachel Lipsitz
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Snippets harvested from the week's news, chopped, sliced and diced for your weekend convenience.
1. George Formby's When I'm Cleaning Windows was temporarily banned by the BBC for its suggestive lyrics.
2. The late Dame Barbara Cartland founded a gypsy site called Barbaraville in Hertfordshire in 1963, and it still exists.
3. Tufty the road safety squirrel had a surname. It was Fluffytail.
4. Children and teenagers' more acute hearing means they can detect some high-pitched sounds inaudible to adults - and these sounds have been used in a device to ward off gangs from trouble-spots.
5. Someone with a 20-a-day habit will spend £31,025 on cigarettes over the next 20 years, according to the NHS's stop smoking website.
6. So-called super glues are useless for fixing antique vases because they can be weakened by ultra-violet light and lack the flexibility needed for a perfect alignment.
7. And the intensity of a bird's song is related to its testosterone levels - it's the fittest birds that sing the loudest.
8. Barry Cryer's mentor was the magician David Nixon.
9. New York is to launch what is thought to be the world's first municipally branded condom to encourage its citizens to have safe sex.
10. David Cameron's supporters are said to play a game in which they imagine themselves in a political version of Middle Earth, with their leader cast as a Tory Frodo.
[Sources, where stories are not linked - 2: Independent, 14 Feb. 4: Daily Telegraph, 16 Feb. 6 & 7: G2, 15 Feb. 8: BBC Radio 4's Chain Reaction. 9: Guardian, 17 Feb. ]
If you spot anything that should be included next week, use the form below to tell us about it. Thanks this week to Stephen Buxton, Coventry.
The BBC may edit your comments and not all emails will be published. Your comments may be published on any BBC media worldwide.
YOUR LETTERS FRIDAY 17 FEBRUARY 1540 GMT
Can someone explain how a new and very specialised sport like the skeleton gets invented? Did someone watch the luge and think, "That looks a bit safe. Let's make the tea-tray half the size and give it a name that conjures up images of death?"
Mike Simpson,
Leicester, UK
May I just congratulate Rachel of Reading on the best caption competition entry ever.
James Hayward,
Eindhoven, The Netherlands
It's a good one, but it's "Sartre", not "Satre".
Anne D'Anjou,
Montreal, Quebec
Dear MM. Thank you for your Thursday mini-quiz. We will use it in the next round of pocket money negotiations to try and argue in favour of a cut.
Ed Loach,
Clacton, UK
With regard to School play love scene 'ban' fear, might I suggest a competition to find the longest headline on the BBC news site consisting entirely of nouns.
Rob Foreman,
London, UK
I didn't know there was a Luton fashion week!
Anne Frick,
Luton, UK
Re Stella Alvarez's plea (Monitor Letters, Thursday): You can always come over to the Magazine Monitor's fansite at www.thelbiq.co.uk, and have a look at other people's entries. The site is not run by The Monitor, but rumour has it that various Monitor staff look in on it from time to time
Stephen Buxton,
Coventry, UK
[The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites]
I liked Nigel's pun, but think he could have gone just one step further to "Moulder and Scurry".
pj,
barcelona
No-need-to-read-the-story headlines are a pain (Paper Monitor), but for cryptic intrigue the headline How stolen goods have helped a disabled girl sleep soundly was excellently unguessable - nice story too.
Chandra,
London, England
Re whispering game. I clearly remember them interviewing kids on a march against paedophiles and they said they were trying to get Peter File removed from the area.
Strike,
Liverpool
Re Simon's rabies docu-drama (Monitor Letters, Thursday) - that would be "The Mad Death", which was only slightly more frightening than the scary "They Came from Somewhere Else", but nowhere near as terrifying as "Threads".
Matt,
Amsterdam, The Netherlands (ex-UK)
Aah! I get that joke by Paul Robinson (Monitor Letters, Thursday), - my brother's degree was in computery type stuff and he kindly inflicted a binary lesson on me once. Okay, 101 times. And I am not using binary.
Kaylie,
Ludditeville, UK
CAPTION COMP ***UPDATED*** FRIDAY 17 FEBRUARY 1223 GMT
It's time for the caption competition.
This week, heiress Paris Hilton chats to Boy George at the Brit Awards in London. But what's being said?
6. Rob, Hamilton, Bermuda
Paris fails to get the Zaphod Beeblebrox joke.
5. Matt, Manchester
"I have all the Wham albums!"
4. Dave, Lisburn
The new Chantelle and Pete Burns.
3. Chris Field, US
"The 80s called. They want your outfit back."
2. Charles Frean, Bedford, Massachusetts
"Why thank you, Boy! That's so sweet of you - but what does 'vapid' mean?"
1. Rachel, Reading
Paris to Boy: "I totally agree. And I think that IS what Satre meant when he said: 'The viable jewels of life remain untouched when man forgets his vocation of searching for the truth of his existence'."
PAPER MONITOR FRIDAY 17 FEBRUARY 1031 GMT
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Britain has a new darling today - Shelley Rudman, who hurled to an Olympic silver in the skeleton bob. And here are the headlines:
From bob hope to silver tea tray - Times
Shelley's silver service - Express
Skeleton bobby dazzler - Sun
But the headline of the day is surely the Daily Telegraph's "Half-naked bricklayer on a bender lunged at police with 4-ft didgeridoo". Read further? Say it with PM now - no need, for we know all we need to.
The jibes at Dick Cheney's expense continue after he peppered a friend with birdshot in a hunting accident. The Times' cartoonist depicts George Bush looking at the latest photos from Abu Ghraib prison, pausing on a photo of buttocks dotted with red raw wounds, and shouting "DICK!!!"
And the VP's exploits have had a knock-on effect for the Tory golden boys at the White House to kiss 'n' make up with the Republicans. For the Washington press pack was otherwise engaged when William Hague et al emerged from meeting the party's powerbroker-in-chief, Karl Rove.
Not only were the TV cameras nowhere to be seen, the MPs were shown to the "tradesman's entrance", says the Guardian. "Party aides had wanted the moment recorded in front of the White House portico, but they were told that protocol did not bestow such privileges on foreign opposition parties... (contacted later, a White House spokesman said he had no knowledge of such a rule)."
Ah, DC can be a cruel town to those out of power.
FRIDAY 17 FEBRUARY
Yesterday we asked how much pocket money 16-year-olds get a week on average - just 1% of you wrongly said £2, and 82% widely over-guesstimated £10. It's £4, which 16% of you correctly answered. Our usual snippet of Friday fun, the pointless poll, is on the Magazine index now.
YOUR LETTERS THURSDAY 16 FEBRUARY 1706 GMT
Re rabies: what really stuck in my mind was a BBC docu-drama in the 1980s about rabies coming to this country. I watched it babysitting my mum's friend's Alsatian dog. The victim was dying in a plastic hospital containment unit and every time he looked at his glass of water, it started swirling in the glass of its own accord. The dog stared at me throughout, which made it much, much worse.
Simon,
London
Re the paediatrician hounded by the illiterate (Whispering game); I recollect that the week before the one confirmed vandalism attack, Private Eye published a cartoon showing a paediatrician fleeing an anti-paedophile mob. Life imitating art, or just sad inevitability in our dumbed-down society?
Robert Day,
Coventry, UK
It recalls the time a friend of mine was attacked by anti-vivisection activists because he worked in an Apiary.
Paul Robinson,
York, UK
It reminds me of Benny Hill's visual gag many years ago about the ignorant sign writer. The word was supposed to be "therapist", but a space appeared between "e" and "r".
Alan,
London, UK
I liked your pointless poll poll asking "Are there too many surveys and polls?" on your article about pointless polls. Any chance of another poll on "do you think the poll above was pointless - yes or no?"
Isabella,
Sheffield
Did Sarah have a caesarean birth (Paper Monitor, Wednesday) because David wanted to minimise her time in Labour?
Ralph,
Cumbria
I forced a smile when I found my pun just wasn't good enough - braking the mould" if you please - but how about showing a large selection of puns/captions and allowing MM readers to vote for their favourites (in the tradition of the pointless poll), thus ensuring democratic delight and a greater number of funny things to read?
Stella Alvarez,
Teesside, UK
Looking at Kaylie's posting (Monitor Letters, Wednesday), it reminds me: When it comes to binary, there are 10 sorts of people, those that get it and those that don't.
Paul Robinson,
York, UK
Re my chip and pin calculation (Monitor Letters, Wednesday) - I did put the decimal point in the wrong place. I divided 11m by 50m and got 2. I guess maths will only get you so far if your mental arithmetic (aka, your ability to type the right number of zeroes into the calculator) is poor.
Alexander Lewis Jones,
Nottingham, UK
PUNORAMA ***UPDATED*** THURSDAY 16 FEBRUARY 1330 GMT
It's time for Punorama.
The rules are straightforward - we choose a story which has been in the news, and invite you to create an original punning headline for it.
This week it was the story of the robot propelled by a slime mould which shies away from light. A scientist has attached a star-shaped sample to a six-legged robot, to control its movements with beams of light.
Taking a sticky step forward was Sun-believable what robots can goo (Mark Wrighton, London).
And picking up the sci-fi theme was the call for Moulder and Scully (Nigel Macarthur, London) and To mould-ly go where no man has gone before (James, Epsom).
But the most succinct mix of mould and robotic movement was The Slime Machine (Gearoid O'Muimeachain, London).
PAPER MONITOR THURSDAY 16 FEBRUARY 1206 GMT
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
The mornings are getting lighter, which puts Paper Monitor in a frisky mood. How better to celebrate than a charivari of highlights? We spoil you, honest we do.
There's a flurry of no-need-to-read-any-further headlines:
"Plagued by teenagers? You'll like the sound of this - businessman invents siren to move gangs on from trouble-spots. The other good news is that only under-20s can hear it" - Daily Telegraph
"19-stone Stuart 'too fat to drive our bus' - but he drove one for same firm when he was 21-stone" - Daily Mirror
"POSH ICE - Victoria hits the slopes with £8,000 of designer gear (and she didn't even do any skiing)" - Daily Mail
The Mail also asks the rhetorical question of the day with its headline: "HAS MADONNA GYRATED HER WAY TO A HERNIA?"
To mark the passing of smoking in pubs, several papers feature archive pics of kinder, gentler, more fuggy times. Best are in the Daily Express - adverts such as "More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette!" and a baby saying "Gee Dad, you get the best of everything... even Marlboro."
The Guardian has a neat simile for Vogue editor Anna Wintour coming to London Fashion Week, which should make her visit's significance obvious to even dedicated non-followers of fashion: "haughty as a cool sixth-former who deigns to put in an appearance at a fourth-former's birthday party."
And there is a Diana headline in the Express today - but it's Rigg, not Spencer.
THURSDAY 16 FEBRUARY
Yesterday we asked how Danish pastries are to be renamed in Iran, as the cartoon protests continue, according to the official Iranian news agency. Only 16% got the right answer, which was "Roses of the Prophet Muhammad". Another question is on the Magazine index now.
YOUR LETTERS WEDNESDAY 15 FEBRUARY 1555 GMT
The furious reaction of smokers to the upcoming restrictions reminds me of an incident a few years ago when my workplace still permitted smoking. I had to eat lunch in the same room as several smokers, who punctuated the meal with several cigarettes. When I opened my lunchbox one day to reveal a rather fragrant cheese, the first to complain about the smell were the smokers. One even asked me to eat it outside.
S Crook
Caterham
Hah! I've spotted your imperceptible witticism, MM - the row over these cartoons has spread to France, so instead of illustrating the mini-quiz about Danish pastries with a Danish pastry, you put up a pain au chocolat, soon to be known as what to the Iranians? Clever.
Kirk,
Guernsey, CI
(MM note: well spotted, that man.)
A Danish pastry, by the way, in Denmark is known as Vienna bread.
J Andresen, Loughborough
Is "I was only looking for UFOs" for computer hackers (Profile: Gary McKinnon, The 'spider's web' of hacking) the same as "my dog ate it" for school children?
Judy Cabbages,
Peebles, Scotland
The contrast between Matt and Alexander's estimates was remarkable (Monitor Letters, Tuesday). It depends how many people you think have cards. Alexander's estimate seems to be two to three million cardholders, and Matt's the whole of the UK population (roughly 60m). While not everyone has a chip and pin card, I have two (one credit, one debit) and I'm sure others have more. I think Matt's estimate is the closer of the two.
Ed,
Clacton, UK
Why am I so much better at the daily mini-quiz than I am at seven days seven questions?
Mark Faulkner,
London
Grace (Monitor Letters, Tuesday), P = {[(D*E)+(F)^I]S^2}/R+6S
Where P is the probability of having a letter published;
D and E are references to Diana and the Daily Express;
F is references to previous letters and other parts of the BBC news website;
I is in-jokes (be careful, these change - while Sudoku and imperceptible witticisms scored highly in 2005 their score has dropped recently);
S is quality of spelling and grammar - poorly spelt letters score lowly, very badly spelt letters are more likely to appear;
And R measures how often a similar observation has been made. While the first person to spot Brent in a workplace romance article will score highly, the Monitor won't print all 100 subsequent letters.
James,
Edinburgh, UK
Fantastic. This place is already ridiculously cliquey, and now we have the IT crowd forming their own little sub-clique and sniggering at people who don't understand their jargon (Monitor Letters, Tuesday). Way to make new readers feel welcome guys! (I bet you don't print this at the top, middle or bottom.)
Kaylie,
Runcorn, UK
PAPER MONITOR WEDNESDAY 15 FEBRUARY 1245 GMT
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Apologies for the delay, Paper Monitor has been snowed under replying to its many admirers and finding vases for its bouquets. Good thing such outpourings come but once a year or PM would never get any work done...
First to another Valentine's Day gift, that of a bouncing baby boy for David and Samantha Cameron.
There is much fascination with the Tory leader's choice of casual togs in which he emerged triumphant to make the happy announcement - "fashionable frayed jeans and his favourite Converse All Star trainers with Velcro fasteners", says the Daily Telegraph, an outfit his wife is understood to have brought to the hospital.
The Daily Mail describes his trainers as "rather special... much sought-after limited editions... only 500 pairs of the £50 American shoes were supplied to the UK."
But PM wonders how "favourite" these sneakers can be, looking as box-fresh as when he last wore them for a dress-down photo-op in the family's country cottage (when the Guardian's Marina Hyde pointed out that these very trainers have been available in the UK for the past six years).
The Telegraph points out that two other Tory MPs have recently become fathers, and another is expecting his wife to give birth any day now. What was happening nine months ago? PM casts its mind back... Gadzooks, the general election!
Which doesn't really bear thinking about too hard. Ditto the Sun's Valentine date with George Galloway, in which the Respect MP invites its undercover girl reporter to nibble his iced donut.
PS: Nothing about Diana in the Express. Again. Wassap?
WEDNESDAY 15 FEBRUARY
Yesterday to mark the switch-over to chip-and-pin we asked how many pin transactions are there every second? Just five percent of you correctly answered 125 each second - 38% wrongly said 1,125 and 57% said 10,125. A new Daily Mini-Quiz is on today's Magazine index.
YOUR LETTERS TUESDAY 14 FEBRUARY 1740 GMT
lizard wuvs his ickle monitor. xx
x, Witney,
UK
What does Victor Meldrew know about Wembley Stadium anyway?
Kieran Boyle,
Oxford, England
Can the regular MM letter writers suggest a formula for getting a letter published? I have written a few and have yet to have one excepted [sic].
Grace,
London, UK
Judging by the picture in the story Fine Warning Over TV Mobiles the message out to be "don't watch TV on your mobile because you'll get hit by a bus"?
Sam,
Hertfordshire
To all Monitor flexicographers I've just found a rich seam here. The mother-lode appears in the Washington Post archives apparently.
Brian,
Muscat Oman
The Daily Express is on to you and save all their best Diana headlines for the weekend when they know the Paper Monitor is off duty (I think Sunday's read something along the lines "Wills asks Diana whether he should marry girlfriend"). Also, I haven't time to trawl through all the Winter Olympic highlights. Please can you create a daily link showing all the best (ie. most painful looking) falls and crashes from the day before. Happy Valentine's Day
x x x x
Jon Cox,
Hove
Re: James Hayward's spellchecker laughter. "Reason 138" - you crack me up, but will non-IT people be confused: bet is on!
Callum,
Edinburgh, UK
You have a video report entitled: "How buying Valentine's Day flowers may harm the environment". You didn't have the corresponding one about what gets harmed if you don't.
Stig,
London, UK
I've just had a vision. "I can see Uri Geller looking slightly sheepish this summer."
Steve,
London, UK
Thanks for the Love Map, but there's no such place as Humberside - it's either the East Riding of Yorkshire (where Hull is) or Lincolnshire. Can everyone please update their records - it hasn't been Humberside since the 1980s and I can't think of anyone I knew growing up in the East Riding who would call their county by such an ugly name. People from call centres in India, on the other hand, still don't recognise the county.
Caryn,
Lindfield, West Sussex
Only 125 pin transactions every second? If my maths is right, that works out to approximately 1.3 transactions per person per week - it doesn't look quite as impressive when written like that...
Matt Lewis,
Chester, UK
The results of today's quiz are a shocking indictment of people's real maths skills. It's not difficult to get an estimate. 125 transactions per second gives a total of 10.8 million per day, or about two per person per day.
Alexander Lewis Jones,
Nottingham, UK
PAPER MONITOR TUESDAY 14 FEBRUARY 1045 GMT
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
It's Valentine's Day again and Paper Monitor can proudly crown the Daily Mail the most romantic paper in Britain.
It boasts a four-page Valentine special, including seven romantic souls who have chosen to propose to their loved one in the paper and pictures of fluffy kittens, swans - and a potato. But the spud in question is heart shaped, in case you were wondering.
For everyone fed up with romance, the Independent is the paper of choice today. "Excitement, freedom, no-string sex - the joys of a solo Valentine's Day", its front-page strap line screams. Inside seven "happy loners" speak out in praise of being single.
It's a "life of no compromises" where you can be "completely spontaneous" says one. The single life sounds good. But it is ultimately "a soulless, empty existence" another concludes, rather defeating the object of the article.
But getting away from all the romance and fluff, The Sun focuses on more weighty matters - a double-page spread on "lookalikes of the lookalike of lookalike Chantelle".
Last week the paper introduced the nation to the first professional double of "TV Phenomenon" Chantelle Houghton, the Paris Hilton lookalike who won Celerity Big Brother. Since then Laura Kay has not only been inundated with offers of modelling work but also people wanting to be her lookalike, with nine of the best featured in today's article.
Readers can even vote for their favourite. But think long and hard before casting your vote because the winner will get a year's worth of orange lipstick from Superdrug. Is that a prize or a punishment?
TUESDAY 14 FEBRUARY
Yesterday we showed a picture of an obscure Disney character and asked you to name him. The correct answer, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, was identified by 54% of readers. A new Daily Mini-Quiz is on today's Magazine index.
YOUR LETTERS MONDAY 13 FEBRUARY 1600 GMT
Re: Blair to miss key ID cards vote. "Tony Blair will miss a crucial Commons vote on ID cards after being delayed in South Africa, Number 10 says."
Perhaps immigration didn't believe his ID
Stuart Moore, Cambridge, UK
"The Queen is the only over-75 not legally required to have a driver's licence." 10 things we didn't know last week. You sure? So you get one aged 75 even if you haven't managed to pass the test by then? And they wonder why insurance is high.
Stuart Moore, Cambridge, UK
Re: 10 things we didn't know last week. Number one states: The Queen is the only over-75 not legally required to have a driver's licence.
I hope my grandparents aren't about to be arrested. They don't have one either...
Matthew Jones, Bracknell
So can we assume the Indie reporter mentioned in today's paper monitor is currently tied up assessing the problem?
Candace, New Jersey, US
Re: Nokia launching net call handsets .
"The calls will be rooted through their net link if their phone is in range." Oh how us IT people laughed at this. Reason 138 why you should never trust the spellchecker.
James Hayward, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Come on, Paper Monitor! Did the Daily Express not show up this morning? I, and I'm sure countless others, wait with bated breath to find out the latest Diana conspiracy. Does this mean we'll have to actually buy the damn paper?
Graham, Poole, Dorset
PAPER MONITOR MONDAY 13 FEBRUARY 1233 GMT
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Free gifts, readers' offers, competition prizes, as the papers try to kick start a new week with yet another round of complimentary extras, Times readers might feel somewhat short-changed by their freebie - a poster calling on footballers to stop diving. Paper Monitor's expectations took an immediate tumble.
With Valentine's Day looming the Daily Telegraph picks up on a shifting balance of power in a tempestuous marriage that, nevertheless, has survived 10 years - that of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Word has it that the couple has embraced a more modern form of partnership by agreeing to share big decisions in the government household. The Sun represents this more succinctly by stitching together pictures of Brown and Blair to make "the new face of the Prime Minister".
It seems unlikely though that Interflora will be helping soothe relations further between numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street tomorrow, given both men's interest in fair and ethical trade. Both the Guardian the Daily Mail douse our burning passions with cold water by revealing the disturbing and highly unromantic story behind the international trade in many of the flowers which eventually end up in UK florists.
Further distressing news for any Casanova with a conscience from the Independent which tells of the environmental-damage posed by sex toys such as jelly rubber. "Spanking enthusiasts are also short of green options, since most paddles are made of leather or rubber," says the Indie, which dutifully dispatches a reporter to put some eco-friendly alternatives to the test.
MONDAY 13 FEBRUARY
With Sir Walter Raleigh immortalised in a bronze statue in Devon last week, Friday's Pointless Poll on the Magazine asked which of the following most deserved to be honoured with a statue: Jade Goody, Bernard Manning or Simon Cowell. The winner according to Magazine readers: Bernard Manning. Interesting, but ultimately pointless.
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~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~54~RS~)
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