±«Óătv

1. In Kingston upon Thames, men on average live to be 78. In Kingston-upon-Hull it is 73.

2. The Queen's got great legs (according to Helen Mirren).

3. Seventy percent of victims of police shootings are shot in the back or the side.

4. Each person sends an average of 55 greetings cards per year.

5. Cats and some other mammals are thought to navigate using magnetised cells in their brains.

6. Chris De Burgh has healing hands.

7. Kim Jong-il is an obsessive James Bond fan.

8. Joggers who run with their backs to the traffic are twice as likely to die as those who face oncoming cars.

9. Just one cow gives off enough harmful methane gas in a single day to fill around 400 litre bottles.

10. Eighty-five percent of women working in brothels in the UK are from overseas, where 10 years ago 85% were from Britain.

[2 – Sunday Times, 8 Oct; 5 – Daily Telegraph, 12 Oct; 7 – the Sun, 10 Oct; 8 – Glasgow Evening Times, 11 Oct; 10 – the Times, 13 Oct;] Thanks to Ruth & Ian in Marbella for sending the picture of 10 cloth nappies drying on a line. The nappies belong to their daughter Lola.

Seen 10 things?

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Re the ±«Óătv's story "workers find unexploded bomb": is there any other sort? Surely once it has exploded it is no longer a bomb of any sort.
James Carter, Manningtree, UK

Re , please may we change the terminology? Call what is considered the norm as "unethical" food, and what should be the norm, food. Why should we aspire to be "ethical" (i.e different or noble or special) when those who actively support bad business practices, through their own consumer choices, escape the labelling reflecting their behaviour?
RG, Herts, UK

So, , but at the same time .
J Rogers, Ipswich

Dear MM [ah, sweet], Being unable to locate a Letter box or suggestion of one on this day, Thursday, October 12, I have taken a liberty, and use the one displayed next to Mondays' insert. In buzzing through the Technology portion I note there are clear inferences to be drawn from the text therein, but my comment concerns the enormous number of SPAM stuff that comes across dated 2036 and 2037. Is this another attempt to infiltrate beyond the boundary of the current time(s)?
Respectfully,
Dickie, NY USA

With respect to your , please could I ask everyone in the UK under 5 foot to lose some weight? You're skewing the average results!
Tom Brownlee, Birmingham, UK

MM - are you a national secret? Or can I Freedom of Information you?
Rick P, Oxford, UK

Could Oscar of Cambridge (Thursday letters) be a bit more precise in his citation? I did a quick search of the Time archive and did not find the Sun's Korea headline. Absolutely agree though that a joke this good deserves proper credits.
Curt Carpenter, Dallas, Texas, USA

I think Prof Chris Pollack has set MM readers the ultimate unit conversion problem in his : "How much milk yield is a red squirrel worth?" story.
Jason, Ontario

Duncan, Hove: I'm weighing in on this one. If the sentence was changed to "the band" rather than the "The Darkness", wouldn't it be "is", not "are"? the people are, the band is. Depends on your perception of the grammar.
Kay, London

MM: below is the, in this case, self-incriminating relevant ±«Óătv News website style guide entry.
SINGULARS & PLURALS* (REVISED 4/03)
We treat companies, governments and other bodies as singular –including sports clubs in their role as business concerns (eg Arsenal has declared a big drop in profits). BUT: sports teams are always plural (eg Arsenal have been relegated) – and so, too, are rock/pop groups (eg The Who are to play in Eastbourne). Take care to be consistent within a story (eg do NOT say “The jury has retired to consider its verdict” followed by “The jury are spending the night at a hotel”).
Note that media* is a plural (singular, medium). Likewise, bacteria* (singular, bacterium), paparazzi* (singular, paparazzo), and criteria* (singular, criterion). However, agenda* and data* should be treated as singulars. Also: paratrooper* is a singular (the plural is paratroops); whereas water cannon* is the same, singular or plural, as is stone* (as a unit of weight).

Re PM's gender. Not only confusing Paul and Jason Ronbinsons, but finds the Indy "System failure" headline 'bewildering'(it referred to the switch to 3-5-2). Now, the offside rule...
Paul, Singapore

Has anyone considered the idea that there may be more than one Paper Monitor?
Philip, Nottingham, UK

Anyone who uses the phrase "bish-bosh" has to be a man. Is the identity of the monitor starting to slip out?
Nick, London

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It's time for the caption competition results.

This week we asked you to put words to a picture of Maverick, the American Short Hair Silver Classic Tabby, playing with his laptop at the 4th Annual Cat Championship held in New York.

The winning entries are:

1 Lee Pike
I wish these '8 out of 10 cat' surveys were simpler to complete.

2 Mike
Always speak to your internet date on the phone before arranging a meet.

3 Tim Knott
Culprit in Internet phishing scandal found.

4 MJF
'Yo. I'm Dave Cameron's cat and I'm just like you.'

5 Sue Lee
CCTV footage finally cleared Ken in accounts of visiting obscene rodent websites.

6 Brian Ritchie
The cause of the systems crash at Battersea Dogs' ±«Óătv is revealed.

Due to a technical hitch, some of the non-winners cannot be published this week.

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After the poster wars and the battle of the DVDs, the Daily Telegraph is about to open up a new front in give-aways – with trails on the front page for free CDs of the Horrible History series.

This adroitly ticks a number of boxes. History always goes down well. It’s educational for the children. And we like getting free discs to stick in the car CD-player. Bish bosh.

The pictures at the top of the paper, around the masthead, are what gets seen on the newsagents counter – and they’re an important marker for the audience that each newspaper is trying to attract.

So alongside the Horrible Histories give-away, there’s a picture of Martha Lane Fox – very English, quite posh but overcoming adversity, successful in hi-tech business.

Meanwhile the Times fights back with a family-friendly feature on the masthead. Instead of a celeb’s face, there’s a plug for a league table of which cars are the most and least safe in a collision.

And the Daily Mail makes its masthead pitch with its latest romantic DVD give-away, The Vacillations of Poppy Carew. While the Guardian goes for a scatter-gun approach with pictures of Wayne Rooney, the History Boys film and table manners with Prue Leith.

If you looked at a paper from only a few years ago, these masthead pitches didn’t even exist. Now they’re becoming more and more prominent. On the Guardian, the actual headline begins a quarter of the way down the front page.

In the Daily Mirror, half of the front page is now absorbed into the masthead plugs – today featuring a beauty pull-out, a picture of a mother who fell from a balcony plus a lotto promotion.

Front pages or front covers? Newspaper or daily news magazine?

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Thursday's Daily Mini-Quiz asked how long it would take for glass and metal buildings to disappear if mankind left the planet. The correct answer, 200 years, was only unearthed by 34% of readers.

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Oh, that's harsh. Why the need for "enlarge image" on the story?
David Manley, Scotland

Re: PM's comments about the Indy poster of Maggie and Tony.
I've had a thought - it may be the first part of a cunning new give-away to top all others.
If they promise to include a free set of darts tomorrow it'll be the day's biggest seller!
Phil, Angus

Here's another pedants corner/epic grammar battle; "The Darkness... is set to continue" after leaves. Shouldn't that be "...are set to continue" since they're a band of people. Unless Lowestoft has manifested an overhanging cloud of mourning over the loss...
Duncan, Hove, UK

Isn't it quite telling that all the news articles are saying has adopted an african baby. What is Guy Ritchie doing then?
Sarah Linhart, Rickmansworth, Herts

I'd hate to spoil PM's new enthusiasm for Sun headlines, but the "How do you solve a problem like Korea" line dates from an October 2002 piece in TIME magazine. If it's been done before, it ain't worth doing again.
Oscar, Cambridge

I'm trying to decide what "the obvious" would be for the caption competition... explains why my entries never get through though.
Sarah, Edinburgh

Have we finally solved the mystery of PM's gender? Surely no men would have mixed up comedy goalkeeper Paul Robinson with innocent World Cup-winning rugby player Jason Robinson MBE.
Mandy, Leeds

Or would they...

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Nothing enrages the press pack more than a miserable performance by the England football team. So when England goalie Paul Robinson miss-kicked a back pass and watched the ball sail into the back of his net, during last night's Euro qualifier against Croatia, who won 2-0, the headline writers began sharpening their pencils (and humming a certain Simon and Garfunkel tune).

0-2 to you, Misses Robinson - the Daily Mirror

Here to you… misses Robinson - the Express

It's down to you, misses Robinson - the Sun (back page)

APPAULING - the Sun (front page, early edition)

ROBBISH - the Sun (front page, later edition)

Robinson Clouseau - the Daily Telegraph

Horrible bobble, toil and trouble - the Times (Robinson later blamed the blunder on the ball bobbling over a divot in the turf.)

It was the clod's fault, but which one? - the Guardian

Never a good pun zone, the FT plays it straight with "Old faults betray new England". The Independent, meanwhile, opts for the bewildering "System failure". Clearly the Indy's got better things to be getting on with, such as its free double-sided glossy print of classic photography. Today's subjects are Tony Blair and, on the other side, Margaret Thatcher. Somehow, Paper Monitor can't imagine readers reaching for the Blu-Tack.

The Telegraph has no freebies to speak of, but is following a growing trend among the qualities in using its pages to advertise its own extra-curricular commercial activities... in this case the launch of its music download website. "At the Telegraph site you'll now be able to buy music from a catalogue of more than half a million tracks, from Slayer to Sibelius." Slayer! My how times have changed at the Telegraph.

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On Wednesday, we asked who is the country's least favourite choice for a boss? Michael Winner took 48% of votes, but the answer, according to a recruitment agency survey, is Gordon Ramsay, guessed by 34% of Magazine readers. Today's DMQ is on the .

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I would like to congratulate Madonna for presenting a experienced daily by those in Africa: live in America instead.
Becky, Watford

I'm sure I won't be the only one to answer the question posed by Christine Bowles, but as I've gone to the trouble of working it out here goes. A 35g walnut whip contains 5% walnuts, or 1.75g; thus you will need to eat 16 of them to provide the 28g (1oz)required to elastify your arteries for a day. Juglandicious!
Tim Evans, Bristol

Shouldn't the use of the word "juglandaceous" be accompanied by a health warning: "May contain nuts"?
Paul Greggor, London

In your walnut headline, the wonderful archaic reference to 'a slap-up meal' comes straight from the likes of the Beano. But what does it mean? Perhaps MM readers can provide some insight into what is either 'slap' or 'up' about such a lipid-rich feast.
Steve, London

I think you're all very unfair to The Dear Leader, after all he's just furthering his .
Kip, Norwich

Has the world gone topsy-turvey? No Princess Diana on the front of The Express for a few days now!
Dave Smith, Manchester

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The rules for this little game are simple. We choose a story and you lovingly create a punning headline to go with it. Send your headlines using the comment form below, and we'll choose the best on Wednesday.

This week's story is about the iguana of Bodmin. RSPCA officials have found the four foot lizard-type thing on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, and think it must have been dumped there by a collector of exotic pets. They've called him Igor (photograph is posed by a model). The RPSCA's Felicity Cross is cross. "Whoever did this must know iguanas need tropical temperatures to stay healthy."

The results

A tropical zoo of cold-blooded punmeisters for us all to gawp at this week and then set free to freeze to death.
Keith gets off to a shaky start with "Iguana need this beast no longer, iguana need this beast no more". Mark Wrighton show's he's no passenger with Iggy drop. And old chum Candace is back in town with Binned Lizzy. (This commentary is golddust, you know.)

Newcomer Bob is in good company with punner extraordinaire Kieran Boyle, both of whom suggest Ig of the Dumped.

Sarah from Dartmouth is skipping along with We're off to free the lizard.

But Graeme wins the booby prize by unaccountably shoehorning a Smiths reference into his pun, with Devon knows I'm mis-reptile now. (Bodmin Moor's in Cornwall, Graeme. Cornwall.)

Losers to follow...

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A celebration of the riches of the daily press.

More pondering in today's papers on Korea, but there's still a slight element of journalists trying very hard to tell the story with flourish.

The Sun, which impressed us all yesterday with its "How do you solve a problem like Korea" headline, today by producing a complete set of lyrics for the song.

If Paper Monitor reveals that the best line is "A dog kebab to takeaway", then you'll get an idea how dire the rest of it is. The paper also trails a video of the song being sung, which only goes to show that the headline wasn't the Sun's joke in the first place. (Meanwhile all's well on Daily Mail Island where there is today no mention at all of Korea.)

The Daily Telegraph adds a few details to what we learned yesterday (ie that the "Dear Leader" believes people who are ignorant about music are among the "main fools of the 21st Century"). A New Zealander who had worked in Pyongyang reveals: "I have been asked what a club sandwich is, who is Robbie Williams and what a chart is and how you get to be top of it. I regret to say that pop music to them means Celine Dion, and a little bit of the Carpenters."

A little bit of the Carpenters for a Wednesday lunchtime? Can't be a bad thing.

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Tuesday's Daily Mini-Quiz asked readers when the supermarket trolley first rattled down the aisles - with the correct answer, 1937, identified by 53%. No sign of early fallers there, even though the first trolley was seen at the Humpty Dumpty store in Oklahoma City.

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At least The Sun (to whom serious props) resisted the more bellicose "How do you solve the problem? nuke Korea."
Chris, Witney, UK

Re: . Just how many Walnut Whips do I need to eat to get an ounce of walnuts?
Christine Bowles, Milton Keynes, England

Dear MM, I must say how pleased I was to read today's juglandaceous article , if simply because it gave me an excuse to use the word juglandaceous, which means 'pertaining to walnuts'.
Kind regards,
Daniel Hayes, St Albans, UK

Wow! Misquoted by the ±«Óătv! I feel so special. On the front page of the Magazine you have "Your Letters: Robin, Edinburgh: "I know De Burgh's secret". I never said this, but I'm very pleased to make on to the actual Magazine front page.
Robin, Edinburgh

Re: Graham from Munich's letter about bullets in water - it's just a shame we can't use the swimming pool to confirm these facts - as it is presently filled with old telephone boxes...
Mark Leonard, Docklands, London

Could somebody please clear up the bullets and water issue? I need to know how deep to dive next time I am being chased in an implausible movie scenario?
David Manley, Scotland

I have conducted a test to see how far bullets actually can penetrate water. I chartered a boat to the middle of the Atlantic and fired a bullet into the sea. It penetrated nearly 4 miles of water before coming to rest on the bottom. End of debate.
Colin Main, Berkhamsted, UK

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Well, the world might be one step closer to a nuclear conflagration, but there's always an amusing headline to while away what remains of our days. Cue the Sun, and its front page tribute to Kim Jong-il: "How do you solve a problem like Korea?" When the world's crumbling around us, what better way to cheer everyone up that with a Sound of Music gag? Shame about that world peace thing, though.

At least the Sun has the manners to put the story on the front page. You have to get to p8 in the Daily Mail to learn about the explosion as large as the Hiroshima bomb which has irrevocably changed our geopolitics. But once there we learn: "Even though most starving North Koreans probably couldn't tell a golf ball from an egg, they know that the Dear Leader has supposedly scored the lowest round of golf in history - 38 below par with five holes in one."

The Daily Mirror can't match the Sun's cracker, but does have "Kim Wild" on p1, with this inside: "[A] Russian envoy travelling with him on a 24-day train trip - Kim hates flying - said he had live lobsters sent to him daily, and ate only with silver chopsticks."

And let's go back to the Sun, which reveals a grasp of the finer details of the international diplomatic scene which we might not have previously associated with the paper. "Kim is a James Bond obsessive who had numerous political enemies put to death and his propaganda machine insists he is an expert horseman." Paper Monitor doesn't quite follow the link, but never mind, there's more: "He quite smoking in 2003 and promptly encouraged his people to do likewise. Smokers, he pronounced, are one of the 'three main fools of the 21st Century', along with people ignorant about music and computers."

So Kim likes films and music. At least that means the Sun's headline won't be wasted on him.

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Yesterday we asked what Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips read at lunchtime, alongside the boys on community service. Only 11% of Magazine readers correctly guessed he flicked through The Sea by John Banville, as he ate his home-made sandwiches. It was his workmates who read The Sun - the answer that 61% went for. Try today's DMQ on the .

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An addendum to today's Paper Monitor on David Blunkett's diaries, if you don't mind. The Daily Telegraph has the headline: "Prescott looked at me with hatred, says Blunkett".
Alice Geller, Chester

Chris De Burgh . If De Burgh tried to touch me for 20 minutes I think I'd claim I was healed, no matter the injury, just to get away.
Robin, Edinburgh

- was this under pressure from Jack Straw?
Malc Goring, Scarborough UK

If , Caribbean themed parties will be very dull.
Ralph, Cumbria

With regards to the story on a , wasn't this story reported before? On 22nd August 2005, 8th August 2005, 14th May 2004, 6th August 2001, 15th March 2000, 13th September 1999. Need I go on?
Sarah B, Southampton, UK

Thanks Ian (Your Letters, 6 October). Now the Monitor is going to be bombarded with emails questioning whether an infinite number of monkeys have the capability to write the complete works of Shakespeare! (or is that 'has the capability'?)
Jerry, London

Your states "Cocaine" was dropped in 1987. So how come it's included on the "Live on Tour 2001" recording, "One more car, one more rider"?
Adrian Orrom, Sevenoaks, Kent, UK

Re 10 things we didn't know last week about bullets not penetrating more than 2 metres of water is not, necessarily correct. There are many factors involved, such as bullet shape, material, speed and angle to the surface of the water. At 90° to the water's surface, a sharp-nosed bullet, travelling sub-sonically, will travel almost certainly more than 2 metres. At the other extreme, at 23° from the horizontal, almost all super-sonic rounds, including the NATO-standard .223 and the .50" BMG rounds (FMJ's), disintegrate on contact with the surface. There is an episode of the American TV programme "Mythbusters", which deals with this very subject and, if I remember rightly, a standard 9mm pistol round (at 90°) penetrated 8 feet.
Graham, Munich, Germany

Re the missing wafer in a Kit-Kat. Maybe it's just gone a wafer the weekend. Sorry.
Mike Jefferies, Edinburgh

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A weekly guide to names and words in the news, from Lena Olausson of the ±«Óătv Pronunciation Unit.

"This week's pronunciations are related to the killing of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Her name is pronounced AN-uh puh-leet-KOF-skuh-yuh, and the newspaper she worked for, Novaya Gazeta, is NOV-uh-yuh guhz-YET-uh. A frequently mispronounced name, which is likely to be mentioned in the same context, is Vladimir Putin. The stress on the first name falls on the second syllable, and there is no "pew" sound in the surname: vluh-DEE-meer POO-tin."

(For a guide to our phonetic pronunciations, click here.)

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

"Have you been healed by Chris De Burgh? Give the Sun newsdesk a call on…" Yup, the Sun is on the case after the famous Irish balladeer told yesterday how he once cured someone in the West Indies who couldn't walk simply by laying his hands on him.

David Blunkett could do with a spot of such miracle working, judging by the build-up the Daily Mail gives to its serialisation of his diaries.

"Blunkett endured months of relentless media attention and harrowing emotional turmoil," notes the Mail, referring to the time when his personal life was splashed across the media a couple of years ago.

But in publishing "The Blunkett Tapes" – it was an audio diary – as the Mail brands the serialisation, the paper has entered into a curious compact with the former home secretary: not to name the woman at the centre of the story.

"Blunkett never names the woman involved, and steadfastly declines to discuss the details of their relationship… The private, he says, must remain private – and the Daily Mail has agreed to respect that wish in all that follows."

To which Paper Monitor, along with the reading world and his wayward wife, can't help but scream in unison: KIMBERLY QUINN!

Indeed, the paper itself mentions her by name three times on the front page (see picture, right), even carrying a picture of the pair, with the caption: "The lovers: David Blunkett and Kimberly Quinn during their affair."

Still, it’s heartening to hear of the Mail's new-found discretion in handling sensitive personal stories. So no chance of it reporting on how a certain married Russian billionaire, well known to English football fans, has allegedly been enjoying a "close friendship" with a "beautiful socialite 16 years his junior."

Hold on - what's this splashed across pg9 of today's Daily Mail...

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On Friday we told you teenager Carl Griffiths' feet have grown to a whopping size 18. But only 20% of Magazine readers guessed the world record, held by the late US actor Matthew McGrory, was size 29 (29.5 in US sizes) while 46% went for size 25. Today's DMQ is on the .

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