Paper Monitor
11:40 UK time, Tuesday, 22 April 2008
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Habitues of Paper Monitor will know of its fondness for the occasional forays newspapers make into writing about their own titles - usually an exercise that accompanies a relaunch ( perhaps being the high watermark of this particular genre).
But what of when papers write about each other? Broadsheets are grown-up enough to do so with a degree of detachment, but the tabloid tradition has tended to be a solipsistic attitude whereby each paper believes it stands alone; there is no competition. Rivalry is in their blood, but taking on another paper is done through witty allusion rather than head-on attack.
But these days the Daily Express doesn't have much truck with subtle allusion and Fleet Street traditions of gentlemanly conduct. Hence yesterday's p2 broadside at the Daily Mail, for a multitude of sins including raising its price to 50p and campaigning against plastic carrier bags while packaging its weekend editions in polythene bags (a point previously noted by Private Eye). Not to mention the pollution caused by its free sister paper, Metro.
"Day in, day out it produces thousands of trashy free newspapers which nobody wants and which clog up our streets and our public transport until they end up in a landfill site."
Ouch. The Express is unrepentant, today goading its mid-market tabloid rival with a banner across the front emphasising how it is 10p cheaper than the Mail.
Meanwhile, over in Red Top Land, there's an all-out battle to bond with the kidz by latching on to the Bafta winning comedy Gavin and Stacey. But how to follow up the show's awards success?
"We're the REAL LIFE Gavin and Staceys" - Daily Mirror.
"We're the real-life Gavin & Stacey" - the Sun.
Paper Monitor is having a bit of a Spartacus moment. Will the real, real-life Gavin and Stacey please stand up. Actually, the Mirror pips its rival here as one of the couples it has is called Gavin and Stacey although evidence for the claim that "they based the show on us" is decidedly thin.
The Sun however, won't be winning any awards from eating disorder campaigners for its sensitive tackling of the John Prescott bulimia tale. After the ex-deputy PM said he used to think about eating his way through the entire menu of his favourite Chinese restaurant, the Sun despatches a heroic scribe to attempt just such a feat. He fails.
A final word for the headline in the blissfully unreconstructed Daily Telegraph, about how Jaguar's design boss has started a relationship with Ford's head of PR. "Jaguar chief has designs on Ford model".
Women, isn't liberation sweet?
The 
