THE END OF THE WORLD

NEWS OF THE END OF the News of the World has provoked both glee and gnashing of teeth among analysts, twits and the chattering classes in general. Obviously, the end of a Sunday newspaper that has lasted 168 years and has recently been selling five million hard copies every week (their claim of 7.5 million must include the online edition) is a disaster for our press system in general, but an opportunity with a big O for other unscrupulous (read “enterprising”) publishers in their race to fill the gap.

“MILLIONS CAN’T BE WRONG” was a slogan often used by cunning advertisers in the late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties when our current consumer society was taking its baby steps, and this was usually a guarantee, for “thinking types”, that the product was piss-poor beyond redemption and thus to be touched only with the proverbial barge pole. To some extent this is true of the NOTW, which had to commit crimes to grant these millions what they were looking for.

THE MILLIONS, HOWEVER, who regularly bought Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World were perhaps not in a mood to be right or wrong, but merely to be amused by reading the nation’s best scandal sheet, exposing gay orgies involving vicars, result fixing at cricket matches, political faux pas, corruption at the highest level and generally letting us know who was shagging whom, and sometimes how often, how and where. Should there be anyone in the dark as to the business of this august organ, I suggest a sneak peek at www.newsoftheworld.co.uk where all will be revealed, as they sometimes say.

I WAS NEVER AN AVID reader of this type of newspaper, but nevertheless I feel it is a shame to see tradition going the way of all flesh. “We must all take responsibility for this”, stated Janet Street Porter on TV on Loose Women yesterday. “We buy these papers and we love them,” she went on, and the newspaper editors simply provide us with what we want and deserve, even if they have to be deceitful or even criminal to get it.

AS THERE IS A SLIGHT CHANCE that David Cameron, in being personal friends with the harridan Rebekah Wade, editor at the time of all the illegal activity, and in employing (and defending) Andrew Coulson, equally involved in authorising phone hacking (and committing perjury over it) may also be dragged down through this scandal, my reaction is one of horror. How can David Cameron be anything but as pure and innocent as the driven snow? Surely 11 million people who voted Tory can’t be wrong?