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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)
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- 10 things we didn't know (Sat)
10 THINGS WE DIDN'T KNOW THIS TIME LAST WEEK
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10 THINGS
10 jigsaws by Bryce Cooke
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Snippets harvested from the week's news, chopped, sliced and diced for your weekend convenience.
1. Charles Webb, who wrote The Graduate about himself and his female partner Fred, is still with her. The pair live in Hove, East Sussex, but are flat broke and facing eviction from their flat.
2. A hen can take on the characteristics of a cockerel - comb and wattle, crowing, trying to mate with hens - if the cockerel in their brood is removed. But they do not develop male sex organs.
3. British diplomats have a call-out rate of £84.50 an hour.
4. Paint is classed as a "hazardous article" under new health and safety rules governing public transport, and can only be taken on a bus if "carried in two containers".
5. Vanessa Mae is worth more than Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin, according to the Sunday Times Rich List 2006, which estimates Ms Mae's wealth at £32m compared to Mr Martin's £25m fortune.
6. Yellow, the Coldplay hit that ranked fifth in a recent roundup of Britain's favourite lyric, was inspired, in part by a copy of the Yellow Pages.
7. The Queen has visited every country in the Commonwealth except Cameroon.
8. Homer Simpson's hair is drawn as an "M" and his ear as a "G", representing the initials of Simpson's animator Matt Groening.
9. Suri - the name of Tom Cruise's new daughter - means "pickpocket" in Japanese.
10. Camel's milk, which is widely drunk in Arab countries, has 10 times more iron than cow's milk.
(Sources: 1 - the Times, Tuesday; 2 - the Guardian, Thursday; 3 - Daily Telegraph, Thursday; 4 - the Times - Tuesday; 6 - the Daily Telegraph, Thursday; 7 - BBC News website pop-up; 8 - Radio Times 22-28 April; 9 - the Sun, Wednesday.)
If you spot anything that should be included next week, use the form below to tell us about it.
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 21 APRIL 1532 BST
St George, a very large red dragon and several kids playing drums have just paraded past our office.
Ann,
Coventry
Stephen Buxton (Thursday letters), the climate change software is designed to use the "spare" time when your computer is on anyway, but not doing anything (bit like when you're sitting reading these letters). Oh, and the error has made me sign up to the project to try and help it get some "fixed" results sooner rather than later.
Ed,
Clacton, UK
Re Camel's milk could hit UK shelves: "Tapping the market for camel milk, however, involves resolving a series of humps in production, manufacturing and marketing." No, no, no, no, no. Surely that's the last straw...
Bryan Poor,
Oxford
It would take a really clever hairdresser to come up with a pun/double male Christian name salon (Thursday letters). How about Shawn Ed ("shorn head"), although I'm sure other Monitor readers could do much better.
Graeme,
Dundee, Scotland
My hairdresser is Terrance Paul. Paul being his middle name, moved into surname position for professional purposes.
Isabella,
Sheffield
Hairdresser names make our Punorama efforts look so weak. My all time favourite is Curl Up & Dye.
Kip,
Norwich UK
I have a theory: Magazine Monitor has been running several "watches" recently, most notable a Brent-, Natch- and Porridge-Watch. An anagram of that is "Diana rap be wrong, catch Tenth Dr.". Assuming MM cannot resist following up this intriguing lead I'm sure it will be thoroughly researching all things Whovian, and one of its sources will surely be the behind-the-scenes TV series Totally Dr Who. That programme is on at 5pm every Thursday, and THAT'S what MM is doing instead of publishing the letters. Am I right?
Ian,
Bristol
I saw Failure to Launch last night; the dad was eating porridge and it was portrayed in a negative light. Is this a first in recent months?
Alice,
Hitchin
From Taylorwoodrow's in-house company magazine refering to a construction site in South Wales: "A specially designed wheelbarrow, nicknamed the 'porridge pram' has been built to transport concrete around site."
Rob,
Warrington, England
Your article Why is the Conservative Party blue? briefly made the main Magazine front page as "Blue Puffbox" - need one say more ?
Paul Greggor,
London, UK
Sally (Thursday letters) draws our attention to "Pete courts fans' affections" as a verb-less headline. Alas, the Friday feeling has struck. "Courts" is a verb here, although it may look like a well-known noun.
Howard,
Bakewell
CAPTION COMP ***UPDATED*** FRIDAY 21 APRIL 1251 BST
It's time for the caption competition.
This week, singer Pete Doherty, who pleaded guilty to multiple charges of drug possession, arrives at court, where he was sentenced to a community order with two years supervision and 18 months drug rehabilitation.
6. James Roy, Edinburgh
Officer: "Buy your own iPod."
5. Stuart Moore, Cambridge
Filming starts on Shaun of the Dead 2.
4. Valerie Falconer, Penarth, Wales
"Possession of heroine? Yeah, Kate's real courageous, ain't she?"
3. Bob McCow, UK
"What are they bringing him in for?"
"Fraud - he convinced the press that he's a celebrity."
2. Jon Bright, London
As places to wake up go, this was pretty much as bad as it could get for Pete.
1. Catherine O, Maidenhead
Rolling in stoned gathers no Moss.
YOUR LETTERS (FROM THURSDAY) FRIDAY 21 APRIL 1210 BST
MM note: Apologies. Regular readers will not be surprised. Another batch will be published later.
I see Cherie Blair's £7,700 hair-stylist worked for a salon called Michael John. Have other Monitor readers noticed how when hairdressers aren't conjuring painful puns - Millionhairs, Hairazor, a Cut Above etc - with which to name their salons, they stitch together two men's Christian names eg: Paul Richard, Christopher Michael etc.
Maurice Day,
Bootle
Re Tom Cruise's new baby. A Suri is an alpaca with a coat that looks like dreadlocks (as opposed to a regular woolly alpaca, which is a huacaya). My first contribution to Monitor, and I am marked down as an alpaca fetishist.
Dick Hobbs,
Punnetts Town
Does anyone else see the irony in this (Error strikes BBC climate model)? Error notwithstanding, people are being encouraged to leave their computers on to help predict changes in the Earth's climate. Doesn't leaving computers switched on have an effect on the model they are trying to predict?
Stephen Buxton,
Coventry, UK, thelbq.co.uk
Re if "men sweat, women perspire and Paper Monitor glows, what does that leave for politicians?" They stew in their own juice.
Jan Podsiadly,
Croydon
Ice-Cream Van. Kensal Rise. Ride of the Valkyries. Say no more.
Patrick,
London, UK
Edward Higgins asks what happened to Kevin Costner and Mike McShane of Robin Hood fame (Tuesday letters). Little John (Nick Brimble) went on to star in Emmerdale and was bumped off by his sister. Maybe they both have been this fortunate?
Mandy,
Warrington
Re the verbless sentence watch that was ongoing a few weeks ago (I forget how it ended, I lost the will to live after a sentence containing 27 thats), I felt obliged to draw attention to "Pete courts fans' affections" as another shining example...
Sally,
London
The front page right now has the headlines:
- Tougher curbs on freed criminals
- Singer Doherty in new arrest
Should we have a new watch for when unrelated stories go so well together? What should we call it?
Stuart Moore,
Cambridge, UK
Am I on to a breaking news story? After reading the Monitor letters I was surprised to see that the first was from Rich, Whiteley, UK. Is that a conundrum or what?
pj,
barcelona
"Test Your Metal" RINGS out your headline about the advice for Peugeot workers there's words from 'EX-ROVER WORKER MAURICE MINOR'. Umm. Me thinks someone has been making up names.
Kevin Luff,
Isle of Man
In Hot air, Dr Alan Pounds says: "Disease is the bullet killing frogs, but climate change is pulling the trigger." Then what is the gun?
Gar,
Cardiff
Well done Sarah on surviving 40 days without the Monitor (Tuesday letters). The past 40 days can be summarised as follows: "DIANA KILLED BY PORRIDGE". Or maybe I wasn't listening properly.
Andy,
Milton Keynes, UK
PAPER MONITOR FRIDAY 21 APRIL 1027 BST
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Last stand of a Monarchy, runs the Independent's front page headline. The Indy's republican credentials have never been in doubt but on the Queen's 80th birthday it's not the House of Windsor that the paper is predicting the fall of, rather the Nepalese king whose autocratic actions have provoked bloody battles on the streets of Kathmandu. Yet on the day when just about every other newspaper carries a picture of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on the front, card-carrying Independent readers will doubtless detect a dual sentiment in the headline.
In a startling example of Fleet Street ESP - emulative subs' practise - the Mail and Express lead with the same picture, of HRH opening her birthday cards, and similar headlines. Elizabeth the Great (Mail); Our great mum (Express). The Telegraph runs the same pic - and a simple "Happy birthday Ma'am" while the Sun has a pretty lame contrivance whereby the Queen said she wanted the SUN to shine on her birthday and this is turned into a weak piece of self-promotion.
The Times is in mischievous mood, stoking claims that Cherie Blair is the country's de facto First Lady with a story about how the prime minister's wife ran up a £7,700 bill from her hair-stylist during last year's general election. Mrs Blair is pictured pointing skyward, although in the context of the front page, it's to a picture of the Queen.
The Guardian, another republican sympathiser, wants it both ways - promoting an opinion piece which praises HRH to the hilt, but damning the institution of hereditary monarchy all the same.
The FT too is on form: "Energy watchdog to back N-power"... and no, the watchdog in question isn't a corgi.
FRIDAY 21 APRIL
Yesterday's Daily Mini-Quiz asked what new campaign is using brown wristbands to highlight its cause. The vast majority of respondents were spot on, choosing the campaign to save the English breakfast. Today's Daily Mini-Quiz is on the Magazine index
PAPER MONITOR THURSDAY 20 APRIL 1043 BST
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
The tail end of the working week has come rather quickly, what with the Easter break.
But not so soon as the Daily Telegraph seems to think, publishing its "special souvenir supplement" of the Queen at 80 a full day before the monarch celebrates her big day. Not just a souvenir supplement, mind, but a SPECIAL souvenir supplement.
And it ticks every Telegraph box. Churchill? Tick! Gardening? Tick - free tulip bulbs named in her honour! Countryside sports? Tick and tick again! An attractive - yet ladylike - filly? Photos of a young queen, tick tock!
But perhaps PM's favourite is the line "the gloved hand that has reached out three million times". Three million and one, three million and two...
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail has a fine example of a headline which reveals all you need to know about the accompanying story: "CAMBRIDGE DON 'LAUGHED LIKE BENNY HILL AS HE GROPED ME'." In case you can't quite picture this, the Daily Express runs a photo of said comedian in full pervy mode.
And just about every paper carries the tale of motorists following satnav directions straight into a river - despite signs warning of deep water. On a road called The Splash. In the village of Brook End.
One or two cars a day get stuck, and bemused villagers are now familiar with the plaintive cry, "my satnav told me it was this way", says the Guardian.
A cautionary tale for those who wonder if their computer is trying to communicate with them - do not listen.
THURSDAY 20 APRIL
Wednesday's Daily Mini-Quiz asked whether Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' baby, Suri, who weighed at 7lb 7 oz (3.4kg), was smaller than average; bang on average; bigger than norm. It was bang on average. Today's Daily Mini-Quiz is on the Magazine index
YOUR LETTERS WEDNESDAY 19 APRIL 1630 BST
Paper Monitor raised the question that if "men sweat, women perspire and Paper Monitor glows, what does that leave for politicians?"
Politicians leak.
Rich, Whiteley, UK
Politicians ooze.
Brian Ritchie, Oxford
Politicians drip.
Sally, London
Re: Sex cues ruin men's decisiveness - I went on the internet for work (no, really) but caught sight of the accompanying photo and read the story instead. Now I'm writing this and can't remember what I was supposed to be doing. Maybe there's something in it.
Andy Donovan, Sheffield
The same study on women has so far failed to turn up a "visual stimulus" that affects their behaviour. Have they tried the local shoe shops yet?
Joe
I wonder if Katie and Tom's little girl was born with hair? Oh OK! Cheap gag coming up. Is she the Suri with the fringe on top?
Kip, Norwich
I do not own a television, yet I managed to score full marks on your daytime TV quiz! Never mind watering down GCSEs, A-levels and degrees, when the standard of Magazine quizzes falls, we know that society is in trouble!
JG, London
Thank you PM, I love you! I can now say that I have played a Quiz on here and got full marks! Do I now receive kudos?
(PS. Do I have more chance of getting this letter published by informing you that an icecream van came down my street playing "The Twelve Days of Christmas", it was serving porridge and the man inside had a megaphone shouting conspiracy theories regarding Princess Diana's death?)
Maggie, Manchester
PUNORAMA ***UPDATED*** WEDNESDAY 19 APRIL 1500 BST
Any colour you like - but not on this bus!
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The rules, as ever, need little explanation. We choose a story which has been in the news, and invite you to create an original punning headline for it.
So set your phrasers to pun for this week's tale - the man who was banned from a bus in Cardiff, for carrying a pot of paint.
Brian Heale, 73, was ordered off a bus and told to take his tin of antique cream emulsion with him. It turns out that new rules governing public transport list paint as a "hazardous article".
Typical. You wait for one good pun, and three come along at once. Paint-ently injust (Gareth Jones, Frome), He couldn't contain his emulsion (FP, London) and Splatts not fare (Sarah Catrin Jones, Cardiff).
Ding ding! You paint getting on here mate (Kevin Williams, Norwich, Chris Noakes, Ramsgate and Georgie, Kingston among others) and Lacquer confidence leaves commuter emulsional (Stephen Buxton, Coventry).
Flying off the shelves at the DIY superstore are I'll get me coat (Gareth Jones, Frome - again), Tyred and emulsional (Catriona Smith, Birmingham) and Tint fare (David Dee, Maputo Mozambique).
And front row, top deck is Vinyl warning by Helene Parry, South Wales expat to Brentford Lock, and Spike Breakwell, Dunstable.
PAPER MONITOR WEDNESDAY 19 APRIL 1235 BST
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Right, the week is now well underway so no excuses for holiday shenanigans any more.
One man hard at it is Tony Blair, pictured in pore-enhancing close-up on the pages of the Daily Telegraph, the Times and the Guardian. If men sweat, women perspire and Paper Monitor glows, what does that leave for politicians with their noses to the grindstone defending the NHS/honours system/Iraq war? Answers by the usual form, please.
Meanwhile, the Guardian and the Daily Mail get their calculators out to break down the reported salaries of the BBC's top earning DJs. The Guardian says that Jonathan Ross earns the equivalent of £3,397 an hour; the Mail that it's £60 a minute. Which is £3,600. Paper Monitor would quibble their maths, but remembers the adage about glass houses and stones just in time.
And speaking of numbers, it's just two days to go before the Queen's 80th birthday. The Daily Express, which must surely have caused the odd royal cornflake to go down the wrong way in its time, only goes and spoils her birthday surprise.
In its article about the newly unveiled portrait of Elizabeth II by Jemma Phipps, it spills the beans that the artist has also been commissioned to paint the Queen's corgis as a present for the monarch.
Here's hoping she hasn't read today's edition. Ma'am, your vintage LBQ key ring is in the post by way of consolation.
D'oh!
WEDNESDAY 19 APRIL
In Tuesday's Daily Mini Quiz, we asked what new gadget is the Swiss army knife going to acquire? No fooling you lot - two-thirds correctly said an MP3 player, while 30 percent opted for the more fanciful - but no less essential - parmesan shaver and just four percent chose a pop-up bird flu mask. A new mini-question is on the Magazine index now.
YOUR LETTERS TUESDAY 18 APRIL 1822 BST
Nick's letter, reminded me of that staple geek slogan, plastered across many a t-shirt in IT departments up and down the country - "There are 10 types of people in the world, those that understand binary and those that don't".
Steve,
Harrogate
Re the recent letters about ice cream van tunes. The one in our village plays Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer - not very seasonal! (I can only think it must have been imported from Australia).
Vicky,
Stalbridge, Dorset
7 days, 7 questions informs us that "Research has found young people born within the sound of London's Bow Bells are more likely to speak with a blend of Jamaican, Bengali, Turkish or Brazilian than cockney". Quite interesting, considering that Brazilians don't speak Brazilian -they speak Portuguese.
Mariana,
Rio de Janeiro/Brazil
To Simon of Bristol, the 5th November we do not celebrate or glorify terrorism, the opposite, we celebrate the fact that the would be terrorist was unsuccessful. Guy Fawkes was the "terrorist" and he did not succeed in his attempt to blow up the houses of parliament.
Julie Duncan,
Cairns, Australia
Well, I did it. I survived all of Lent with no Paper Monitor. I must say I feel spiritually refreshed and cleansed. A month or so with no exposure to the British press, even as mediated through the benign filter of PM, certainly makes you feel a whole lot cleaner. And quite bored. I'm desperate for some good old muck-raking news. Could some kind soul summarise the last forty days of scandal for me?
Sarah,
Halifax, Canada
Saddam Hussein sat in a metal pen as [the handwriting analysis] was presented.' Will he be made to sit in other appropriate metal objects during other parts of the trial?
David Richerby,
Athens, Greece
BrentWatch - Unnecessary picture of David Brent found on front page of New Website linking to this story!
Ben Hill,
Cardiff, Wales
Too much chocolate.
Martin,
High Wycombe UK
I enjoyed watching Robin Hood Prince of Thieves as the Bank Holiday movie on BBC One on Monday. But can anyone tell me whatever happened to its stars - notably Kevin Costner and Mike McShane? Both were, memory serves, big at one stage. Could their disappearance from public life be a Curse of Robin Hood? Come to that, what happened to Bryan Adams too?
Edward Higgins,
Plumstead
A Porridge Watch contender? On the 3rd November, 1918, the News of the World suggested several anti-flu precautions: Wash inside nose with soap and water each night and morning; force yourself to sneeze night and morning, then breathe deeply; do not wear a muffler; take sharp walks regularly and walk home from work; eat plenty of porridge.
Pip,
Kettering
Porridgewatch: The Herald today carries the splendid headline "Oat cuisine is latest food fashion"
Helen Cross,
Dundee, Scotland
Re Today's Paper Monitor. Surely the word "late" in the phrase "the death of the late Princess of Wales" is redundant: I can't see how it is at all possible for somebody who is dead to not be late! Also, somebody who is already "late" cannot die, so to speak of the death of somebody who is late is grammatically suspect.
I hope that made sense.
Matthew,
Gateshead
Can someone please explain why eating your own (or someone else's) placenta doesn't count as cannibalism? Presumably if Katie Holmes decided to extract one of her kidneys and Tom Cruise ate it, at least one of them would be arrested.
Martha Hampson,
Bristol
PAPER MONITOR TUESDAY 18 APRIL, 1116 BST
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
The problem with bank holidays is they tend set the body clock one day backwards, so Monday feels like Sunday and Tuesday like Monday. Readers of the Daily Express will be further lulled into this subconscious time-shift as the paper plays its traditional start of the week joker by splashing with a Diana story.
Sooner or later, the Express' absorption in the circumstances surrounding the death of the late Princess of Wales will be pounced on by some media studies student for their final year dissertation.
And that final year could be coming sooner than before, according to the Times. It reports the government's plans to condense university degrees from three years to two for those who don't buy into the traditional pursuit of lying in bed until 3 o'clock in the afternoon, surfacing only to catch the latest episode of Countdown, or is it Deal or No Deal these days? The idea is they will graduate with less debt than their more slovenly counterparts and perhaps snaffle their jobs too.
Undergrads who don't play by the rules face a further cautionary tale on page three of the Times which reports the story of the real Graduate. Charles Webb is the real Benjamin Braddock - the confused protagonist played by Dustin Hoffman in the 1967 Hollywood movie the Graduate. Mr Webb based the story on himself and his female partner Fred, and then sold it for a retrospectively paltry £14,000 to Hollywood Movie Moguls Inc. The film went on to gross £60m. Mr Webb and Fred are still together, and living in Hove, East Sussex, but are flat broke and facing eviction from their flat.
Look around you, Mr Webb, all you see are sympathetic eyes.
TUESDAY 18 APRIL
In Monday's Daily Mini Quiz, the challenge was to find the one-word song title that has appeared most in the UK's top 40 music charts. The winning song entry, Crazy, with 12 songs, was cheered along by 4 percent, Angels received 31 percent, Kiss by 18 percent and One by 9 percent.
PAPER MONITOR MONDAY 17 APRIL 1210 BST
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
On Good Friday Paper Monitor found story after story about cute animals. Today, with the working week just one sleep away, the papers decide it's time to toughen up.
The Independent, cheery as ever, fills its front page not with a heart-warming picture of a majestic whale, but of its bleeding carcass being hauled aboard a Japanese whaling vessel.
The Daily Telegraph ditches the puppies and butterflies in favour of nature's flipside: the top 10 pests gardeners love to hate. Which is a good excuse to run huge photos of snails, weevils and other nasties bent on undoing the good work you've done in the garden over the long weekend.
And hang your head if you've been Ikea (yes, you - PM knows where you've been). The paper reports that Ghurkhas called in to keep the peace at the flat-pack giant say they've never seen the likes of the chain's notoriously temperamental crowds.
The Daily Mail keeps up the campaign of intimidation with the headline "100 FREED EARLY TO RAPE AND MURDER".
Meanwhile, the Sun reports how Charlotte Church has a stalker. So worried is she by the man who lurks outside her house that she has asked the paparazzi who dog her every move to photograph the man who, er, dogs her every move.
And because it's a Monday the Daily Express has "QUEEN'S GRIEF OVER DIANA".
MONDAY 17 APRIL
In Friday's Pointless Poll we asked what's the most annoying thing about bank holiday weekends. The results are, as ever pointless, but 52 percent of you said sitting in traffic jams, 37 percent said DIY guilt and 11 percent said no access to work e-mail. Today normal transmission resumes, with the Daily Mini-Quiz on the Magazine index now.
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