91Èȱ¬

Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.

1. The Queen has a washer-up.


2. Robots do marathons.
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3. Monkeys have self-doubt.


4. Artist LS Lowry was a debt collector.
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5. Postal workers get through two million red rubber bands per day.
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6. Nudity is banned on Facebook.


7. Blind people can regain sight.
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8. Alligators hide behind sofas.
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9. Sci-fi doesn't win Oscars.
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10. Capuchin monkeys wash using urine.

Seen 10 things? .

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With regard to the new red meat guidelines, I am suspicious of any advice which specifies a McDonald's Big Mac as the healthiest option.
ThomsonsPier, Reading, UK

My two-year-old niece swears there is an alligator behind the curtain in her house. After this story, I'm thinking there is some merit to her story.
Rachel Fox, East Leake, Notts

Moose (Thursday's letters) that's not the only thing they got wrong: Israel isn't even in Europe, so it's denying us our well-deserved second place in the women's tables!
Amanda, London

Re the fox in the Shard. "If foxes were meant to be 72 storeys off the ground, they would have evolved wings." Ditto for Humans. That's why I'm scared of heights.
Rob, London

Do they do Rasberry Nipple?
Mike, Newcastle upon Tyne

Some 91Èȱ¬ nominative determinism in longhand journalism? (John Hand quote on taking a written exam...)
Axel, Edinburgh

Re: Peter Bowden (Letters, Thursday) - the preferred adjective is Scotch, it is only generally seen as a pejorative if not relating to food or drink, see for example the Scotch Beef/Lamb Clubs.
Luke, Edinburgh

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Winning entries in the Caption Competition.

The competition is now closed.

This week it was members of the audience before the start of the PPQ show at London Fashion Week, one of which is wearing a rather fetching Latex outifit.

Thanks to all who entered. The prize of a small amount of kudos to the following:

6. Simon R wrote:
As you can see I've ballooned in weight

5. Rob Falconer
You'll have to speak up - I'm afraid I suffer from Tintinitus

4. Vicky Shortbread
"And I don't know why you're laughing String Shoe Boy."

3. beachcred
First signs of inflation creeping into the fashion sector.

2. SkarloeyLine
The Devil wears polymer

1. Cairngorm McWomble
Joan Rivers was relieved that it was Fido getting all the attention.

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

In the papers, it's all about what Kate was wearing.

The Daily Mail zeroes in on two items in the Middleton wardrobe. Firstly, the rather natty fascinator [a piece of "fun-size" headwear pinned at a jaunty angle onto the side of the head] with its pheasant feathers and little Royal Welch Fusilier insignia.

But it really goes to town on Kate's £700 Shetland herringbone coat which it notes approvingly has been in her wardrobe for five years. Five years! Wow, this a thrifty royal in the making.

Kate decided after first wearing the coat in 2006 that it was a little long and she had it shortened, causing the Mail to salivate: "Its new cut revealed glimpses of a thigh-skimming red-brown dress."

Conducting a quick straw poll of the office it is established that most would not throw away a £700 coat after less than five years, so Kate's position may well just be normal, rather than meriting the Mail's line: "Austerity campaigners would approve."

The Times trundles on in the same vein, praising her for "more than a dash of thrift". One assumes the normal state of affairs in the papers' eyes is for the well-to-do to make a massive bonfire of all their clothes at the end of every week.

Keeping them for five years is on a par with washing out jamjars and getting six cups of tea out of each bag.

The paper has also cottoned on to the age of the "snug-fitting camel coat with chocolate trims", but puts the price at £725.

Times correspondent Carolyn Asome has some time for hair analysis.

"Miss Middleton's swooshy brown mane has been swept into a ponytail but that didn't stop strong winds blowing it about her face."

Damn those strong winds. Ms Asome's prescription is a "chignon" or "Erdem updo".

Paper Monitor will bear that in mind.

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Sorry Fi (Wednesday's letters) living nearby I can tell you it's pronounced Bay-bra-ham.
Heather, Cambridge

"Woman finds alligator behind sofa" raises many questions. Had she been trying to find it for a long time? Why did she leave it there in the first place? Will she keep it somewhere more obvious in the future, like in a bowl near the front door?
Paul, Cambridge

A quote from this article made me chuckle. "R2 (a humanoid robot) is likely to take on many mundane tasks such as cleaning." I couldn't help thinking of Marvin the paranoid android from Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. How long until R2 starts complaining about having to do such menial tasks?
Paul, Croydon

Reading this, I hesitate to show my ignorance but is Scotch lamb (or beef) a cocktail? I assumed it would be Scottish Lamb (or beef) if food.
Peter Bowden, Birmingham, UK

Re Council cuts/non-jobs: "'Most people polled in Manchester would not want to pay for a nuclear free worker,' says Neil O'Brien, director of the Policy Exchange think tank."
If it's a free worker, why pay him/her?
Sven, Basel, Switzerland

Re this : Since when did we fill up the Channel and become part of mainland Europe? I bet Malta are seething about us trying to steal top slot from them in such a prestigious award.
Moose, Poole

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Newspaper diary/celebrity/gossip columnists are strange beasts. Like Autolycus in A Winter's Tale, they must become snappers up of unconsidered trifles.

A diary or gossip column contains the sort of stuff far too trivial to masquerade as news, but far too interesting not to report.

Richard Kay in the Daily Mail is arguably the doyen. His formula is tried and trusted. At the heart of the page is a picture of a young and attractive woman.

Today it's 21-year-old Amber Le Bon, daughter of Yasmin and Simon. Yesterday's was Czech model and Tsunami survivor Petra Nemcova, but it's just as likely there is an Hon or Lady somebody or other on there. For the layout to work the woman in question has to be tall and slender.

Then circled around the posh lady picture are a few small stories - fallings out in High Society, fashion world people doing eccentric things, and so on.

The woman's head is often partially cut-out and left protruding onto Kay's byline. Paper Monitor seems to recall that this design technique is known as a runaround.

Kay operates a certain degree of restraint. It's a work requirement for columnists and the minions who contribute that they get to plenty of social occasions, but he doesn't place himself constantly in the action.

Today's Kay highlight is the revelation that Boris Johnson's sister Rachel is considering doing a "spread" in GQ. She will not appear naked.

A world away, people from journalism and TV often read Media Monkey in the Guardian on the basis that the closer you are to the action the more interesting things become.

Kay's column works the other way round. The further you are from the action the more interested you are.

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"" - Did anyone else open this expecting to find a story about the world's worst cricketer.
Marc, Oldham, UK

'Given out for up to three months' Seems a bit harsh - even Ricky Ponting only got given out once an innings.
Edward Green, London, UK

"It is unbelievably cynical to criticise 'non-jobs' that don't even exist." What do you call a non-job that doesn't exist? A non-non-job? Not-even-a-non-job? A job?
Basil Long, Nottingham

To Bob of Leeds (Tuesday's letters), afraid it gets more complex than that.

True time is actually UT1 (Universal Time) which is based upon the rotation of the Earth where as TAI (International Atomic Time) is based on a weighted average of over 200 caesium clocks which are cross checked by satellites.

UTC (Universal Time Co-ordinated) is only known accurately in retrospect, so if you set your watch by it you'll be a month late as the International Bureau of Weights and Measures publishes monthly tables of differences between canonical UTC and UTC as estimated in real time by participating laboratories.

Because of time dilation, a standard clock not on the geoid, or in rapid motion, will not maintain synchronicity with UTC, hence a requirement for this method of "co-ordinating" the time and making periodical adjustments.

So as everything is either averaged or adjusted regularly I think we are safe to use GMT, apart from the fact that the term GMT means the astronomical day starts a noon and the civil day starts at midnight...
Simon, London - near(ish) to the Prime Meridian

Re: the "Study shows Welsh sheep 'more clever than thought'" article, surely the institute carrying out the into sheep deserves a nominative determinism mention?
Fi, Gloucestershire, UK

Define front line say MPs . Easy. If you're fighting in a warzone you're in a front line service. Otherwise your job is at risk.
Ed Loach, Clacton, UK

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

PM's affection for the Text Maniacs column is well-documented. Today's edition offers a reminder why the compendium of readers' thoughts conveyed by SMS message is held in such high esteem in these quarters.

It cannot be denied that most of the submissions on immigration reflect the paper's overall editorial line. "I've bin saying 4 ages that we Christians will soon be in the minority," argues "KC LEEDS" devoutly.

But balance is offered by "LADYJ BOOTLE" who offers a liberal defence of open borders in time-honoured text-speak.

"DA MORE DA MERRIER I SAY: MIGRANTS R WELCOME AZ FAR AZ IM CONCERNED: STOP MOANIN YA UN-PC LEMONS," she proffers.

Then there is the contribution from "PUBLUNCH" who texts in to say that he regularly sits near former home secretary Jacqui Smith "down the Villa".

He adds: "I often remind her of the 'porn shame'."

This is, of course, a reference to the occasion when Ms Smith was caught up in the MP's expenses scandal after it emerged that she had claimed for the cost of the two pay-per-view "adult" films watched by her husband.

Ms Smith has been reminding the broader public of this incident in a 91Èȱ¬ radio documentary about the pornography industry.

The Daily Telegraph commissions Rowan Pelling, formerly of the Erotic Review, to give her thoughts on this developments.

Ms Pelling

As the former editor of an erotic journal, I used to be the sort of person who presented high-minded radio documentaries about pornography. Little did I expect a home secretary to steal the crumbs from my table.

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May I be the first to point out that Drunk Girl, has a out?
Mich, Balham

Jon, London (Monday's letters) - we are only on GMT for five months of the year as it is. Since Magazine Monitor is populated by pedants such as myself, during those five months only a very small part of the country (ie within 0.25 degrees of the meridian) is on the right time to the nearest minute.
John Airey, Peterborough, UK

Jon of London - we'll never be on GMT? We haven't set our watches to GMT since the early 1970s, when we changed to UTC (atomic time). That's why we have leap seconds.
Bob Peters, Leeds, UK

Dave from Cornwall (Monday's letters) - there's a pre-school near us called Dropmore Infants. I hope they have padded floors.
Ian, Burnham, UK

"Wind is an abundant, clean, home-grown alternative to fossil fuels. It can't be blown off course..." in this story. Chris Huhne - minister or comedian?
Mark, Cornwall

Re: Study shows Welsh sheep 'more clever than thought'. A case of damning with faint praise? I mean, they're not known for their witty banter.

Sarah, Basel, Switzerland

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

There are some stories that are just made for certain newspapers.

Take the news that a 16-stone banker dons Union-flag style lycra and a black mask for four nights a week to rid the streets of Birmingham of crime.

You know it's a story that's found its natural home when it's in the Sun, under the headline "THE PHANTUM"

The portly, red-bearded fellow has yet to be unmasked, although a photographer somehow managed to snap him as.

He says he also breaks up street fights, stops burglars and helped police arrest a suspected drug dealer in London. But he keeps his nocturnal super-heroics from his girlfriend:

"It's very hard. I tell my girlfriend I'm playing late-night poker with friends or watching pay-per-view sports. Instead, I get a map and say: 'I want to make that area safe tonight.' While I'm over that area, nothing bad will happen. You can make a small bit better at night."

Elsewhere in the paper, there's a heartwarming tale of 91-year-old Freda O'Brien, who has lived in the same council house in West Yorkshire for 84 years. There are some great photos of Freda outside the house, going back as far as 1928.

Asked the biggest change in the street during that time, Edna replied: "The cars. When we moved in, nobody had one."

And finally, in further evidence that good things do come in threes (like Quote of the Day, Random Stat and Paper Monitor), there's a third gem to note in the Sun.

The paper sets aside the terrible loss of life suffered in Libya in the clashes with protesters, to come up with an inventive front page headline: "CAMEL FOR MR GADDAFI"

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not a splinter. It's 25cm long. That's a stick.
Karl, Coventry

Was I the only one who saw this headline: Cornwall speech therapy pilot gets £250K, expecting some strange industrial tribunal case?
Graham, Hayle

Another excellent example of nominative determinism. Reminds me of the woman who complained that one end of her sausage was empty, the butcher told her that in the current economic climate it was difficult to make both ends meat!
Nick Henderson, Balmalcolm, Scotland

Re: Staying on BST all year. If we do this, we here in the UK, the home of Greenwich Mean Time, will never actually be on GMT!
Jon, London

Re "Australian town becomes SpeedKills in safety campaign". A few year ago, I visited Kilmore, Victoria. There was a hospital there. Yes. The Kilmore Hospital.
Dave Moore, Par, Cornwall, England

In an FA Cup match report, we read that "Joe Hart ". How exactly did he do that? And if the goal was absent, I wonder where it went? (Perhaps that is what needed to be exposed.)
Vi, Berlin, Germany

No picture! How will the counting monitorites cope?
Paul, Croydon

I'm looking forward to Paper Monitor reporting splashed across the front page of The i, thereby kicking off a whole new round of Drunk Girl letters to Monitor. I'll get me carry-out.
Rik Alewijnse, Feering, UK

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

The Sun "goes big" in newspaper parlance, on the story of Britain's largest teenager.

The girl has been followed by the newspaper for some time. She was 33 stone by the age of 15, managed to lose 15 stone at a fat camp aged 16, before hitting 40 stone at the age of 17.

There's a two-page spread with all the bells and whistles. A box from Sun reporter Sharon Hendry lightly casts doubt on the health credentials of the part of South Wales that the girl is from.

"I had my doubts about how her strictly-controlled diet and exercise regime would translate back to Aberdare."

It's all very poignantly and sensitively handled until the Sun casts around for a graphical way to convey the girl's weight.

She weighs the equivalent of 619 tins of beans, 113 house bricks or a single Harley Davidson sportster. Those comparisons pale by comparison to the Sun's suggestion that the girl is equal to four Amir Khans.

The Mail on Sunday around Jamie's Dream School on Channel 4 with its headline: "Boys told to give sperm samples for Jamie show."

The best bit is the totally deadpan line: "A Channel 4 source insisted viewers would not see the samples being collected."

Thanks for making that clear.

Over in the Guardian's , Paper Monitorites can get some real industry inside gen with an interview with Peter Hill, departing Daily Express editor.
He expresses regret over the paper's expensive libelling of the parents of Madeleine McCann, but Roy Greenslade does not press him on a question every Paper Monitor fan would want answering:

What is the basis for the legend "The World's Greatest Newspaper" in the Express masthead?

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