Watching brief - Amanda Platell on Rebekah, breasts and bottoms
Published 27 January 2003
The pro-war newspapers have almost ten million buyers, while the anti-war ones have fewer than three million. So can we really say that the press leads public opinion?
Ever since the Sun placed Neil Kinnock's head inside a light bulb, there has been a myth that the newspapers, especially the red tops, determine public opinion. The belief that it was the Sun wot won the 1992 election for the Tories is partly responsible for the intellectual left's hatred of the tabloids and wholly responsible for new Labour's fear of them.
Yet most of us who have worked within the tabloid market know that successful newspapers reflect the views of their readers; they do not form them.
If proof were required, it comes with the latest polls on war with Iraq. An ICM poll for the Guardian reflects those conducted on an almost daily basis on talk radio and television. Support for war is falling. Outright opposition has risen to 47 per cent, and 81 per cent demand a fresh United Nations mandate before they would support any military attack.
If the papers were, in fact, leading public opinion, these figures would be the other way around, as only the Daily Mirror, Guardian and Independent could really be described as anti-war newspapers. Their combined sales, at around 2.7 million, are eclipsed by the 3.4 million circulation of the Sun alone. The total sale of what can be described as the pro-war newspapers totals almost ten million. Mass public opinion is creating a real commercial dilemma for many papers that are largely right-wing and pro-war. Their readers may be the former but, increasingly, they are not the latter.
Sunday nights are complete again with the return of Bremner, Bird and Fortune on Channel 4. Finally, someone has had the courage to take on David Blunkett, even if it was the Archbishop of Canterbury in a boxing ring.
The sketch with the Home Secretary and the archbishop left Rory Bremner's many admirers wondering who he had used as a body double for the rather flabby-chested Rowan Williams - Blunkett's taut naked torso was clearly all Bremner. Alas, I have learnt that the preacher was also Rory, though I am assured he slouched and pushed out his stomach to create the effect. I must admit that I was rather hoping to discover a prosthetic paunch by way of explanation.
And they say she never talks. The Sun's new editor, Rebekah Wade, had a swift answer to the "will she or won't she drop page three" debate raging over her appointment this month. The first page three of her new editorship was a full-length, naked-except-for-a-pair-of-snakeskin-boots picture of Rebekah of Wapping (no, no, another Rebekah). If anything, there has been more naked flesh since Wade took over. Page three was sacrificed on day four of her tenure - only to be replaced with no fewer than nine nearly naked bottoms. However, I remain puzzled that more attention was given to Wade's views on bare bosoms, even on the Today programme, than to the hardening of her attitude to the tits in No 10.
Kamal Ahmed's piece on Alastair Campbell in the Observer Magazine was insightful. Campbell described the effect on his life of the deaths of his friend John Merritt and John's child Ellie: "I can remember with John's coffin it being so heavy, and with Ellie's it was so light," he said. Most of us can identify with the death of a family member, but there is something uniquely shocking about the death of someone you have chosen to love. The effect of the interview was that it changed our perceptions of the bad boy of British politics. The man who helped to create the Third Way had hitherto lacked a third dimension. Yet one cannot help wondering whether it was pure coincidence that Campbell agreed to do the interview in the immediate aftermath of Cheriegate or whether it is another stage in the spin-doctor's exit strategy.
On the subject of top-up fees, Michael Gove writes in the Times: "Anyone put off from attending a good university by fear of that [£21,000] debt doesn't deserve to be at any university in the first place." In one of the most elitist pieces written on the subject, Gove shows how easy it is for commentators cushioned by national newspaper salaries to become detached from the financial realities of ordinary working life in Britain. Perhaps these worthless young "fools", as Gove describes them, are the bright sons and daughters of nurses or factory workers or teachers, whose entire family has lived year after year on less than £21,000. To many, this is no paltry sum.
Most images of the tens of thousands of troops heading for war are simply chilling - except one, the pictures of soldiers saying goodbye to their sweethearts. Where along the way did we all forget to kiss like that? Whether they were their young girlfriends or the middle-aged mothers of their children, these men kiss their women like there's no tomorrow. We can learn from them.
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