Matthew Norman's Media Diary

All hail the First Lady of Sleb TV!

Published: 08 January 2007

TO BORROW the drolly punning strapline that graced her column when the Macaulay Culkin film was all the rage... O Malone! Clearly the Celebrity Big Brother presence of the Sunday Mirror's Carole Malone marks a new point in British journalistic history, and whether it's a high or low mark seems sure to prove the source of ferocious debate among Peter Wilby, Donald Trelford and the other All Souls from the groves of acamedia (note the sparkling anagram; one there for the OED's new words compiler to ignore).

The good news for Carole is that two of her rival First Ladies of Fleet Street, the Daily Mirror's Sue Carroll and Jane Moore of The Sun, are mates, and therefore likely to gloss over her little fib (she is 52 rather than the self-alleged 46). Alas, however, other First Ladies, and even Gentlemen, will sneer at her for this trifling vanity, and for reneging on her previous dismissal of the show as moronic piffle. This column will have none of it. Carol explained that she is merely placing herself at the heart of "the story every journalist wants to cover", and how exceedingly true this is. Only yesterday Bob Woodward, heavily disguised as a cameraman, was escorted from the site by security guards, while The Times' Peter Riddell apparently offered £25,000 from his own pocket for a berth.

As for the notion that only tabloid types would degrade our industry in such a way, this is both snobbish and misinformed. According to Channel 4 insiders (not my cousin by marriage Kevin Lygo, whom I have never met), secret rooms have been prepared, Goody-style, for two of our best-loved broadsheet dynasties. Tomorrow, Petronella Wyatt will sweep in with mother Lady Verucca and brother Pericles (pronounced to rhyme with testicles). And Thursday's coup de grâce will see Lord William Rees-Mogg arrive not only with son Jacob and Jacob's ever-present nanny, but also his Lear-esque trio of daughters Annunziata, Chlamydea and, of course, lovely little Clitoria. Who shall sneer at O Malone then?

* STAYING WITH with Sleb TV, here's another to my minuscule and serially treacherous army of readers guaranteed to go unanswered. But I ask it all the same: would someone care to finger the executive who hired Vernon Kay as co-presenter of The Two of Us, the BBC1 duet show on which Nicky Campbell last year produced the "Bridge Over Troubled Water" cover now routinely used as a crowd control device by riot police right across South-east Asia? Mr Kay's faux-domestic screen badinage with his wife (either Tess Daly or Cat Deeley; no one's quite sure) makes you nostalgic for the Craddocks, or even the Krankies, and the fellow plainly isn't the full ticket. I'm all for positive discrimination in the media, but there must be limits. Someone decided to pay these people a chunk of licence fee. Please tell me who.

* EQUALLY INTRIGUING is the metamorphosis of Sun showbiz writer Anila Baig. For years, Anila's picture byline showed her demurely shielding behind a veil. But after the row about Muslim women covering their faces, Anila's now appears unencumbered. It could be pure coincidence, rather than pressure from editor Rebekah Wade not to defy the paper's trenchant anti-veil line, but I think we might be told.

* A MILESTONE today when The First Post becomes the first internet journal to serialise a cartoon book. The book in question is Cancer Vixen, a rapturously received graphic novel about coping with breast cancer by the catchily named New Yorker cartoonist Marisa Acocella Marchetto. Other delights on an excellent website, styled as a hybrid of The Spectator and Private Eye, include Duncan Fallowell and Alexander Cockburn, while many will enjoy Peregrine Worsthorne's thoughtful eulogy to Saddam's execution, which he found perfectly ripping. Does anyone still rise to this sort of rot? I'm not sure, but it's good to know that the silly old sausage is still giving it a go.

* A JOY to hear Geoffrey Boycott railing about the ease with which England cricketers came by gongs in happier days. He says the MBE is so devalued he might as well pin his to the cat... in which case those responsible should help him out by taking it back. Naseem Hamed was stripped of his for doing bird over a stupendously reckless piece of driving, yet Geoffrey retains his despite a French conviction (upheld on appeal) for beating up a girlfriend.

But these distinctions are never easy, even for as high-minded a body as the BBC. Why Radio Five Live, which dropped Stan Collymore as a football summariser for dogging (it wasn't bothered by the Parisian assault on Ulrika), continues to use Boycott is beyond me. Perhaps all you can do is accept that such questions of immoral relativism fall into what Geoffrey might know as the corridor of uncertainty.

* IN VANITY Fair, finally, former friends and admirers queue up to kick Barbara Black as her husband prepares to be vindicated in a US court. It's hard to imagine Charles Moore being as heroically rude to Babs's face as the late Frank Johnson was when he ran The Spectator, but now he fearlessly portrays the old bird as socially capricious and domineering. And now that Cheerful Charlie's finally relocated his tongue, it won't be long before he unleashes it again against the Barclay twins' desecration of The Daily Telegraph, the paper he used to edit, which now pays him some £200,000 per annum for "consultancy" and a weekly column. Charlie Boy, the hour of your salvation is close at hand.