The Final Edition of the News of the World by Nick Bryans
All good things come to an end. Such as the football season. And pipes of Pringles. But also some unquestionably dreadful things come to an end, such as newspaper the News of The World. The News of the World ceased trading this week, following irreparable damage caused to the brand following the hacking of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s phone, back in 2002. Rather than sack then-editor Rebekah Wade (Brookes-Kemp-Mitchell), owner Rupurt Murdoch decided to simply sack off the entire paper and it’s 200 members of staff. So clearly Wade (Brookes-Kemp-Mitchell) knows an amazing secret that he can’t risk her telling the world. Like the recipe to Pimms. Or KFC’s secret blend of 13 herbs and spices. We formed a letter to Rebekah Wade (Brookes-Kemp-Mitchell) in which we outlined what the News of The World was, so we won’t bore you with those details again. Instead, we decided to examine to last issue of the News of The World, and instil on our brains the lasting impression of what this lynchpin of Sunday tabloids aimed to convey.
The final issue of NOTW was like a ‘greatest hits’ of their 168 year history, with regular columnists throwing in a mawkish post of self-righteousness for good measure. The headline emblazed on the front cover was:
THANK YOU & GOODBYE – After 168 years, we finally say a sad but very proud farewell to our 7.5m loyal readers.
All that says to me, is that 7.5M people in Britain shouldn’t be allowed to breed. Sorry, but the last thing we need is more people who judge their newspaper purchases on which can provided them with the most candid nip slips and cheap holidays to France.
The paper quickly descends into a self-important eulogy about how fucking good it was, just you loony lefties didn’t realise as you were too busy drinking ginger tea and eating Paninis to notice. Its pages are headed with ‘The World’s Greatest Paper’, a tagline that the Daily Express also uses, so one of them must be wrong. Wait – they both are.
Pages 6-7 have a double page spread by Sara Payne (mother of murdered school girl Sarah Payne) entitled:
News of The World proved it is a force for good
It relates to how the NOTW passed ‘Sarah’s Law’; a law allowing public access to the sex offenders register, so parents could know if a ‘sex-offender’ was living in their area. Now, it’s clearly an impassionate piece by someone who generally believes her daughter’s murder could have been prevented had this law been in place. But many have spoken out against it, including the police, with the law leading to such things as a paediatrician having their house targeted due to people mixing it up with ‘paedophile’. Basing your entire moral high-ground on a controversial and slightly reactionary campaign – with arguments for and against (with some even arguing that it does more harm than good) – comes across as, well, wrong.
There’s a memorandum to ‘the joys’ that Page 3 has brought to ‘the nation’, even though it isn’t even proper page 3, just some photos of scantily clad celebs which they probably nicked out of FHM. They then run a few pointless stories about the royals and HANG ON A SECOND – IT’S AN ADVERT FOR HOLIDAYS TO EUROPE FOR AS LITTLE AS £9.50! News of the Screws; living up to form as ever.
Story wise, this edition is usual fare for NOTW; foreigners in unscrupulous behaviour, famous people on holiday in bikinis – it’s full on ‘chewing gum for the eyes’. It really emphasises how little anyone with so much as half a brain will miss this turgid publication.
Luckily for us, Carole Malone’s final column of wisdom then turns up.
So, it’s the end – a cruel, terrible, excruciating end for this journalistic giant which is so much more than just a newspaper.
Sorry, more…?!
There’s never been a Sunday since I was 15 years old that I haven’t bought this Newspaper.
Carole, you utter narcissist.
She then blurts on for an entire page about how fucking awesome the News of the World has been (so awesome it had be shut down), how it has acted as some sort of white knight; catching politicians, crooks and perverts up to unscrupulous behaviour, and how even though she ‘cannot begin to imagine’ what Milly Dowler’s family are going through, it was 8 years ago, when the paper was run by an awful bunch of plums. Now however, it’s staffed by an amalgamation of Mother Teresa and Santa Claus, so we should all be weeping at its demise. Apparently.
Then comes perhaps the highlight of the paper; Dan Wotton’s XS. The showbiz column by ‘award winning columnist’ Dan Wotton. Already news on TWITTERZ this week for having a public spat with Caitlin Moran, due to her less than complimentary words about the paper’s death, Dan manages to cut loose here and sign out with a bang.
Essentially what we get is Mr Wotton’s private photo album of his snaps with celebrities, which could be retitled ‘Proof that Dan Wotton has a better life than you’. And he really does, he has photos with Susan Boyle, James Cordon and Mcfly! But hey, photos not enough for you? Well then you can enjoy vomit-inducing tweets and messages from celebrities stating how much they fucking love Dan Wotton.
‘ARLENE PHILLIPS: I will miss our chats, gossip, smiles and secrets. Love A’
*throws up in mouth*
It really is a repulsively self-righteous spread of absolutely nothing. And surely a conflict of interests? Dan Wotton is a showbiz reporter, meaning he has to impartially report on these people. Instead, he appears to be so far up most of their arses, that he’s wearing their heads as a hat. Could you imagine Robert Peston with his arm round Ken Clarke at 4am outside Chinawhites? No, didn’t think so. But I suppose it’s a tabloid showbiz column; who gives a shit? And if you do; why?
Naughty celebrities of Britain, you can breathe a sigh of relief as I sign off today.
Why, because they can get through a meal in a restaurant without you bolting towards them with a camera phone and a message book, all under the guise of ‘reporting’?
More dull stories about nothing, then a story about Katy Perry and Russell Brand’s new £4M house, with the utterly abysmal ‘Perry Nice!’ caption. Then there’s a story about MPs naming Custard Creams as the greatest British invention, beating off still competition from, I dunno, Golf. And misanthropy.
The rest of the paper is as per, until we get to quite outstanding 48-page souvenir pull-out. It showcases front pages of the paper throughout the years. This is the quintessential nucleus of the paper, stories that have shaped our manifestations of it, the pinnacle of its existence. And when showing their greatest hits, they have chosen to include;
- Billy Idol is father of my baby
- Costner was a wolf in bed
- Win a race horse
- Runaway bishop confesses all to NOTW
- I’m going to have all my 8 babies
- Free family day out a Butlins worth up to £32
- Vinny Jones’ £1M giveaway
- Queen meets Camilla
- Boris Becker’s secret love child
- Shamed TV star John Leslie caught snorting cocaine
- Jacko’s deathbed
- Crouch beds £800 Teen hooker
A tour de force of titillation. Truly the red top’s greatest hits.
The NOTW sport section follows suit in gratuitous self-praising. Andy ‘Britain’s Best Sport Columnist’ Dunn (I’m spotting a pattern here), has another 2 page spread entitled ‘SIMPLY THE BEST’ regarding the NOTW sport coverage. This is unequivocal rubbish. The only sport stories that get printed in the screws are either fabricated transfer rumours or footballers sleeping with prostitutes. Call me fussy, but I do expect more from sport sections in newspapers. Andy Dunn states that;
The one thing that people don’t understand is that we are fans. Fans fortunate enough to be journalists. A press pass does not strip us bare of emotion.
No, but as great as this ‘man-of-the-people’ shtick is, a press pass does stop you being lumbered with the proletariat you claim to connect with so much, and instead gets you into a delicious press box. But that’s not to say it’s an emotional void. Tensions can really flair up there. I heard there was a particularly heated debate once about the best place to golf in Southern Spain. Smoked salmon hors d’oeuvres and lattes were flung everywhere. That just the uncontrollable emotion that these guys have towards……soccer.
The last NOTW was quite honestly a horrendous mess of an edition that was the literal equivalent of their assorted columnists masturbating into a mirror, wailing ‘fuck, I’m awesome!’. There was such sparse mention of any reason why this paper was shut down, and instead the emphasis was on just how bruddy brilliant it was. Sorry, it wasn’t. It was a pointless mess of a publication that appealed to the lowest ebb of society. Not a single section of it was anything better than rubbish. Its columnists were reactionary idiots. Its showbiz reporter was a fame hungry hanger on. Its sports sections were nothing more than faux ‘working class grit’ mixed with agent tips and fabricated drivel. This newspaper made its name via underhand dealing and devious reporting, and was shut down because of its underhand dealing and devious reporting. The final copy should have simply said; ‘We were twats who did twattish things. It was never gonna last, lol’.
And so, the NOTW ends, and we close a chapter on the tabloid history of Britain. Well, not really. The Sun is reportedly going 7-days shortly, filling the void left by the NOTW. And the NOTW had a dwindling readership anyway, and plans to scrap it were already in place. So in a sense, nothing has changed. At all. And this whole article was a waste of time. Bugger.
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Amazing that they have 7.5m readers when apparently all 4m copies sold out on Sunday, so either they’re aware that more the average NOTW household has 1.85 literate people inside it or they forecast that people wouldn’t touch the paper with a bargepole.
Funny you say that they talk as if they were Mother Teresa, when Mother Teresa’s dirty secret was that she truly believed that suffering and pain was the best medicine for her patients. So their philosophies weren’t so different.