The Star

The shocking death of Gary Speed that has generated such respect and grief from the football community will be a big test of where the tabloids are morally post the News of the World phone hacking scandal. Like the McCann’s saga, at the moment they are taking it easy with him and going with public sentiment out of respect for Speeds family. But it’s becoming obvious that Speed wasn’t that depressed and so he may have killed himself for other reasons. Footballers have wretched gambling habits and we know they find it hard to keep their trousers on around the ladies, a macho world indeed. But the other taboos on why he may have done what he did will generate far nastier chants from the crowd and expose footballs prejudices once again when and if the tabloids eventually turn on his memory, which, by my calculations, will happen. Speeds death doesn’t make any sense and whether we like it or not we collectively hope the secrets, if there are any, will be revealed. That is human nature and why we get the tabloids we deserve. They reflect our busy body and darker side. Everyone reading this would love to know what the McCann’s said on their cell phones after Maddie disappeared. If they were discovered to be involved in any way we would have celebrated the tabloid in question. We are hypocrites, why the Daily Star and Daily Mail exist.

The Star is for people who are able to watch soap operas all night by not once watching the news. But the big story this week was the reader’s nemesis, David Cameron, finally standing up to Europe and the beginning of the end for us being in it. We all know the Euro is done for and their politicians are just kicking the can down the road so they can get re-elected. We have cut the deadweight and we can sit on the bank and watch them sink as Britain, rather ironically, becomes a safe haven for currencies and bankers –their bankers.

Paper wise the Daily Star picks up its bow and aims squarely for the bulls eye of the lowest common denominator, a working-class no nonsense redtop, a blood red rag to a bull – and full of that bull. It doesn’t claim to be a journalistic bastion and has amazingly escaped the Leveson Enquiry so far, why its circulation was so inferior to the Murdoch papers, we presume. It is a direct copy of The Sun with its Page Three girls and has reams of sport at the back to stop the adverts tumbling out. The big sports story is Sir Alex Ferguson is not worried about falling out of the Champions League. I bet he is regretting throwing that Carling Cup match now. What he may not be aware of is only three clubs have ever won all of the three big European Cups and all of their bid Domestic cups plus the World Club Championship and European Super Cup in their history.

The Star is celebrity obsessed too and its politics all over the place like Ulrika’s tits these days, the tea brake paper of the canteen that doesn’t want to test its readership too much. In the celeb pages we hear Tom Cruise is to shoot another Top Gun movie. The X-Factor, of course, dominated this bit of the rag.

The stories are short and sweet and nothing too technical, a paper that wants to be read quickly and so to race the reader through to the sport, whilst the punters subliminally take in those all-important adverts. You don’t think you will ever want to buy those 20 x 50 binoculars for 29.99 or the deep heat massager for the ladies (ahem!! I think we know what the girls want that for!) but people do. I still have my 20 x 50 bins right now! It also has an appropriate puzzle page for its readership and it ideal for your work breaks, their crossword comfortably the easiest of all our nationals.

The paper, somewhat surprisingly, is rather disinterested in the right wing rants that tend to garner a healthy blue-collar readership, immigration, gay men and religion not a big issue here. The Daily Mail tends to have a reporter in court every time black or Asian person goes to jail or, indeed, gets off for a serious crime whereas the Star prefers to just report the more showbizzy stories, the big one today that Jeremy Clarkson is to be censured for telling the exact same jokes most of us want to hear. Again they have not been named at the Leveson enquiry and clearly have better relationships with their stars that feature in their paper. The hypocrisy of the stars like Hugh grant and Steve Cougan milking the Leveson has not been lost by the Star reporters, a lovely picture of sexy Sienna Miller posing for the paparazzi outside the Leveson court rooms the picture of the year for me. With a decent puzzle page its ideal for your work breaks.

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/home

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