All Posts Tagged With: "Stephen Brook"

Sun's new man loses his Big Brother

August 28th, 2009 • Peter • 0 comments • Related • Filed Under

 There is a depressing inevitability about the appointment of another former showbiz hack to the editor’s chair of a paper that possesses what Stephen Brook in the Guardian describes as “the ability to shape the nation’s views on everything from the X-factor to next year’s general election”.

          While a lot of people, including me, don’t recognise that degree of influence in  the Murdochs’ biggest selling Shag Rag (ol’ Rumplechops is a whizz at divining the zeitgeist rather than driving the mood) there is still a distressingly large proportion of the British public who derive at least some of their views from what they read in this opprobrious arse-wiper, and we should be concerned that the Sun is now going to be edited  by a truly light-weight gossip-monger and ex-editor of its tacky little Bizarre page, Dominic Mohan, whose only clear talents lie in brown-nosing those minor celebrities who will have their photograph taken with him and a comprehensive knowledge of Big Brother ‘contestants’. One of his biggest challenges will be in replacing the several million words written about this dreary programme that currently appear each year in the paper, now that Channel 4 have taken the laudable (if pragmatic)  decision to ditch it.

And, by the way, where will Andy Coulson go now, when Cameron dumps him?

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Coy about Coulson

March 5th, 2009 • Peter • 0 comments • Related • Filed Under

Stephen Brook reports in MediaGuardian today that the Sun’s American editor, Emily Smith is coming back to London, and her replacement will be based in Los Angeles (where the celeb gossip is) rather than the East Coast (where the real news is).

Brook points out that Smith, and her successor, Peter Samson have both worked on the Sun’s Bizarre column, the principle gossip page in a paper that is owned by a man who mainlines on gossip. He reminds us that Bizarre is regarded as a stepping stone to higher places and has spawned a lot of hacks who have gone on to greater things.

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Another editor takes the Hypocritic Oath

June 30th, 2008 • Peter • 0 comments • Related • Filed Under

When dear cuddly old Hello! magazine arrived in 1987 from Espana to ooze innocuous platitudes all over its celebrity subjects, it revealed a nauseating and shameful British hunger for tattle and trivia about the rich, the famous and the spuriously celebrated.

Where once gossip was tucked on a quarter of p.13 or so, it is now a globally traded commodity and dozens of organs of far more vicious temperament and determined to get fat on the proceeds have burst onto the scene like a pack of hunting dogs eager to extract every morsel of meat on offer. Such was their appetite that when TV companies started conveniently and relentlessly manufacturing throwaway celebs through BIG BROTHER, the new gossip mongers pounced on the defenceless victims in a feeding frenzy which is truly symbiotic.

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