Paper Monitor
13:05 UK time, Wednesday, 14 January 2009
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Is recruiting an animal as a columnist ever a good idea?
Thunderer in the Times today is Hercules. A Jack Russell. Now that's a picture byline you don't see every day.
Thunderer is part of the Opinion strand, and bears the paper's own famous nickname - given in 1830 for its coverage of Lord Graves's death ().
This slender column of words is described as providing "Daily topical polemic and comment", and is where Katie Price held forth after being snubbed by polo's snobs. And it is here that Hercules the Fox Terrier bangs on about the Kennel Club's new rules on interbreeding.
Now call Paper Monitor a cynic, but if dogs were meant to be journalists, God would have given them two fingers with which to bash out copy and a hankering to wear a beige mac. And not even the most assiduous of breeders has managed to design in those features.
To give you a taste. His opening line is "Grrr"; he closes with a "Woof, woof." Beautifully punctuated, and more topical than Sadie's week, the Sun column by David Blunkett's guide dog.
That particular canine column is no more, Paper Monitor belatedly discovers. Sadie retired from journalism last July, "worn out with telling it as it is". And she signed off her final column with "Woof!" - the exclamation mark being a very Labrador choice of punctuation.
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