Paper Monitor
11:04 UK time, Thursday, 10 May 2007
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Top marks to the Times for its beautifully-produced souvenir edition to mark the resignation of Tony Blair, even if it does carry the rather sober subtitle: The Blair Years in the Times – the Rise and Fall of New Labour.
With apologies to Woody Allen, wouldn't a more apt slogan not be: Everything You Think You Ought to Know About Tony Blair But Won't Have Time to Read.
There are 24 pages! Admittedly most of it is a cuttings job, sorry a "selection of the best" articles to have been written about Blair, so faithful Times readers might comfort themselves in thinking they've devoured most of this once already.
But does anybody actually have the time to digest this stuff? Perhaps it's just something to file away with the vague notion of passing it on to a grandchild in the years to come.
Such souvenir editions tend say more about expectation than reality – and no, that wasn't Paper Monitor squeezing in a barbed comment on Blair's legacy.
As a politically-aware, fairly centrist sort, the average Times reader might have voted New Labour once or twice, and will recall the huge weight of expectation that accompanied Blair's election in 1997.
The subtext goes something like this: Blair meant something. Now he's going, things won't be the same. That's quite significant. And your paper has done something out of the ordinary to recognise that. It doesn't matter if you just flick through it and don't actually read it. Look, there's a picture of Liam Gallagher on the front cover of Vanity Fair with Patsy Kensit. There's a picture of Jill Dando, PY Gerbeau, the Twin Towers ablaze… it's been a notable 10 years. Hmmm, now let's move on to the sports pages.
Small and utterly frivolous point of note: In its intro, the Times' special says "the first mention of Tony Blair in the Times was May 24, 1982". Not so - here's one from 31 May, 1980; a Sunday evening television listing for the 91Èȱ¬ One show Buccaneer. "The Thin End. Tony Blair is in jail after the discovery of arms aboard his aircraft."
The 
