70 years ago the sub-editors on The Times used to have a competition to see who could write the most boring headline.
The only one I can remember was “Small earthquake in Chile. Not many dead.”
At the other extreme, of course, are sensational headlines, like “Man bites lion.” But “Madonna to wed Jesus” takes a bit of beating and I bet whoever wrote that felt it was their lucky day. How long, I wonder, shall we have to wait to read “Madonna divorces Jesus”?
Another line that amused me was “Darling: show some fire”. I should tell overseas readers that this had nothing to do with Madonna and Jesus nor even sex. Sorry. It refers to Alastair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, telling his colleagues in the Labour Party to liven up a bit. Now, our Alastair is the political equivalent of Rigor Mortis. It was like being told to get a life – by a corpse.
But the thing that really made me chortle was reading yesterday in the Independent that a friend of Gordon Brown’s for 50 years was going to reveal his shortcomings.
With friends like that …
