Paper Monitor
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Not so much riches on a Bank Holiday Monday as slim pickings. With all three - count 'em - newsagents en route to the station closed (and no Metro today), there was no newspaper to while away the commute... not even a leftover Sunday supplement lying creased on the seats.
The situation was no less serious on arrival at Monitor Towers, with the in-house paper shop closed and only the barest of bones delivered to the office. Hey ho, with fewer papers than usual to browse, perhaps Paper Monitor will have time to join the throngs at the local beach. Or park. Perhaps pub. Or hop a cheap flight.
Fortunately, Team Telegraph is on hand with tips on how shape up and dress right for the all-too-brief respite from work.
"HEALTH: Unleash your inner caveman" exhorts one tagline on the front page. "FASHION: Sailor chic - ageless, flattering and easy to wear," reads another.
Alongside the fashion shoot pics are the requisite photos of celebs getting it oh-so-right (Kate Moss, of course) and dreadfully wrong (Paris Hilton, ditto) and a list of dos and don'ts such as "Never wear a gilt braided admiral's cap - even in jest." Dang. That'll necessitate a trip home to repack before hopping that flight to the Costas.
Still, at least Paper Monitor doesn't have to trek to the far reaches of the Metropolitan Line, where Tube zones no longer have numbers but letters and the villages have duck ponds and bluebell walks. Yeah, thank goodness, eh?
But the paper is much taken with the quaintly pretty hamlets in this stockbroker belt just outside the M25, and no doubt many a Telegraph reader will be able to pick out their own roof in one of the many pics that accompany the page three story about how the area offers the UK's best rural idyll.
But think of the neighbours. Vernon Kay. Cilla Black. Mike Oldfield. Tubular Bells with the bass cranked up, anyone?