Paper Monitor
12:10 UK time, Thursday, 19 June 2008
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Another day, another judicious deployment of fruit to tell the story of the credit crunch.
Yesterday it was melons in the Daily Star (literally as well as figuratively); today it's bananas in the Sun. "Shine your shoes with a banana and beat the credit bunch crunch," the paper's resident Scrooge suggests. ("It helps if they're slip-ons." Boom boom!)
Other tips include storing tights in the freezer to make them last longer and getting off the bus a stop early to save money. Now pricing structures vary around the UK, but in Paper Monitor's neck of the wood, a ticket to ride is a flat rate.
Meanwhile, it's all change at the Independent. For the first time in however long, there is no poster front page, no "CRUELTY" headline (although the teaser to Johann Hari's column does read: "My mother stopped breastfeeding me when I wrote her a note"). Instead the front page follows the familiar Times formula - big photo (hat bedecked Ascot race-goers) next to completely separate news story ("GM crops needed in Britain").
But you know what? Enough of news. Let's flick right now to page 31, where the baby-faced Master Hari tells us all about his mother.
"My mother breastfed me until I was nearly three; she only stopped the day I wrote her a note saying I expected to be breastfed that afternoon."
But wait, there's more. "Today, whenever I have a success" - the award-winning journalist is now 12 - "she clutches her breasts and exclaims: 'It's thanks to these!'"
Forget any potential ribbing one might receive from one's school chums about "bitty"; surely there is a special circle of hell reserved for mothers who embarrass their offspring by grabbing their own boobs.
But Master Hari is made of sterner stuff, and is a planet brain to boot. He chastens those who are conditioned to view the female body as for titillation (geddit?) rather than nutrition. You don't get to be a columnist on the Indy while still in reception class for nothing, you know.
Pesumably attracting his ire is Chris Martin, quoted in the Times's People waxing lyrical about how he used to think "I'm going to burn in hell if I like other guys or marry someone Jewish". What solved the guy/girl condundrum? "Boobs. Let's face it. They're fantastic." Such a sensitive soul...
The 
