Red tops

Having collected a copy of the free Metro from Epsom Station yesterday, I took a look at it yesterday afternoon, having got home from my travels.

And a piece about the plotting of Prince Andrew made me very cross. Why is a newspaper which, while free, pretends not to be a red-top, peddling garbage like this? Just the sort of stuff which stirs up so much trouble on social media.

Checking up this morning, I find that the garbage in question is fairly old news. Perhaps the Prince did indulge in some loose talk in his cups years and years ago, but does he deserve to have it all dragged up again now? Who cares, anyway? 

It seems that the trigger for all this is the book at reference 1, due to be published on my birthday. To be serialised by the Telegraph. A book written by a journalistic celebrity, one Angela Levin, who despite dishing the dirt on everyone else, is very coy about her own private life. We have reference 2, but she has somehow blocked a Wikipedia entry being created for herself. Perhaps the Wikipedia people allow the living to do that?

Is she some relative of that other journalistic celebrity, the late Bernard Levin? Once pundit to chattering classes.

Turning to the Metro itself, I had thought that it was from the same oligarchical stable as the Evening Standard, now owned by the son of a former KGB agent, a son who is now naturalised in this country and a sitting member of our House of Lords. Big mates with the late fat leader. For which see reference 6 and for whom see reference 7. The same stable to the extent of being printed on the same printing presses and being served by the same distributive and creative resources.

But this seems to be quite wrong. The Metro is owned by the Daily Mail Group of reference 5, a group which appears to corral the Daily Mail family, the Metro and, curiously, the New Scientist. A must read for aspiring scientists in my schooldays. Perhaps no longer. While the online version of the Daily Mail gets lots of space, along with the Daily Express, in the trashy Microsoft News feed.

All in all, a non-event. But a non-event which was also, for me, a learning-event.

PS 1: there is still a lurking doubt. I must have got the idea that the Metro and the Evening Standard were joined at the hip from somewhere. More checking indicated...

PS 2: Tuesday afternoon: The Standard was owned by Associated Newspapers until 2009. Associated Newspapers is part of DMG Media, which has retained a 5% stake in the Standard. So quite possible that the Standard is still printed on their presses. I may have got into a muddle about Rothermeres and Harmsworths, forgetting that Harmsworths took the lordly title of Rothermere and so are actually the same people.

References

Reference 1: Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall: From outcast to future Queen Consort - Angela Levin - 2022. To be published 29 Sept. 2022.

Reference 2: https://www.angelalevin.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Levin.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_(British_newspaper).

Reference 5: https://www.dmgmedia.co.uk/.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evening_Standard.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evgeny_Lebedev.