I try hard to take Boris Johnson seriously. Visiting some of the worst ravages of the riots today he said: "I'm going to make Croydon great again." He was doing so well until that last word.
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Paul Dacre is many things. He's not, though, Pol Dacre. The Khmer Rouge were responsible for the deaths of around one in four of Cambodia's population.
They beat and stabbed children, they forced little girls to marry grown men, they ripped the flesh off tortured prisoners using pincers and they even banned the concept of 'love'.
The trial of a couple of withered of Mr Burnsalike despots is currently taking place. If you search the media hard enough you can read about it. Though it isn't getting the line by line, live coverage afforced a bunch of egotistical celebrities at the Leveson Enquiry.
Dacre got it spot on when the Daily Mail today called Hugh Grant 'mendacious' for suggesting, without any evidence whatsoever, that the Mail on Sunday hacked his phone, broke into his flat and hired criminals as paparazzi. The last accusation is ludicrous. Real photographers are far more sociopathic.
Grant was clearly reprising his most famous roles. You know, those simpering posh twats from likeable but inconsequential romcoms. Because he couldn't really be like that could he? His line about standing up to bullies was straight out of About A Boy. His self-deprecating dealing with his arrest could have been from Four Weddings and his well-spoken tosspot routine was a dead spit of Love Actually.
Worse was to come. Garry Flitcroft, a footballer you probably haven't heard of, appeared to say that the fact that two women approached a newspaper claiming he shagged them was such a coincidence that it must have been down to phone hacking.
Except everyone in Blackburn knew he was a serial shagger with a penchant for lap dancing munters.
So he took out an injunction and when it was lifted he had to tell his wife, his father-in-law was ill and several years later his dad committed suicide. He's now divorced by the way. Not all footballer's wives have the patience of the woman married to multi-millionaire Ryan Giggs.
And it was all the fault of the papers. Nothing to do with the fact his wife left him over his philandering, his father-in-law was probably pissed off with the husband of his daughter using local gold-diggers as an ornament for his knob. I'd wager his own dad eventually died of shame.
There's only one man to blame for what happened and that's the two bob footballer who decided to dip his wick in a couple of publicity seeking tarts.
But nothing could prepare for the sight of the unwashed comedy God that is Steve Coogan. Unfortunately in real life he's not as funny as Alan Partridge. And his hair's worse too.
He seems to think publicity is an unfortunate byproduct of being famous. Though it didn't stop him doing several in depth interviews to publicise his various shows, books and DVDs.
It's like saying earning lots of money and, yes, being able to shag lap dancers, was an unfortunate accident that befalls people in the public eye. Funny how all these anti-press celebs like to sleep around.
Unfortunately Grant, Coogan and Flitcroft are pushing at an open door. They could claim the Daily Mail eat babies, the Sunday People drugged their kittens and the Daily Star has reporters permanently living under their floorboards and an army of Guardian readers will believe them.
Even the usually excellent Guardian writer Michael White was fooled. In a brown nosing column he heaped praise on Grant as some kind of hero citing his bravery and kindness. Such sycophantic arse-licking has not been seen since Alastair Campbell's defence of Robert Maxwell, which spared a punch up between White and the future spin doctor many years ago in the House of Commons.
Meanwhile, there's a trial going on in Cambodia.
You can read about it with a couple of clicks of a computer mouse on any number of British media websites. That's because you have a free press.
It means you have a choice. You can, if you wish, read about what Kim Kardashian had for breakfast or you can peruse a report of how some of the world's worst criminals get treated when they caught.
You can read about James Corden going to Broadway, if you want, or you can analyse the Greek debt. You can learn what Amy Childs said on Twitter, what Sinitta had to eat in the Bushtucker trial (another trial, the papers are full of them) and what Lady Gaga wore for some awards ceremony.
The point is, you can do all these things here. And journalists won't come round and connect electrodes to your balls if you don't.
And when they do misbehave, they will get fired or even jailed. Several senior policemen will resign, loads of D-listers will get compensation, Britain's best read newspaper will close and the taxpayer will spend millions on listening to Hugh Grant and Steve Coogan telling us all which bits of their lives you're allowed to read about.
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Oh dear. Russell Grant now claims he 'knew' Diana would die. Funny how horoscopes themselves never actually say such things. Naturally I don't believe a word they say, but then us Sagitarrians are a pretty cynical bunch.
He used to do the horoscopes, through syndication, for the Ilford Recorder. Once when there was some contractualy dispute, we couldn't use it. So instead we, the reporters, did it.
And you know what, it was no less accurate. I'll tell you how we did it next time.
Court adjourned...Solly
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