Paper Monitor
11:08 UK time, Friday, 21 August 2009
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
In Dr Strangelove, perhaps the greatest Cold War-era nuclear paranoia comedy featuring Peter Sellers ever made, there is an imaginative way of assessing if the country is in the middle of World War III.
Sellers' character switches on a radio and finds popular music playing. He concludes that if war had started, the airwaves would not be full of music.
An equivalent measure is the prevalence of pictures of comely blonde girls celebrating A-levels on the newspaper fronts. If the day after results day, they weren't there, you would know to start digging a bunker in the garden.
First to the Daily Telegraph. In the masthead there are two faintly posh-looking blonde girls. They look happy.
Turn to page five and take Paper Monitor's short quiz. Which of these three is the big picture? George Weller, 18, who swapped inner London state school for private school in Brighton? Niall Thompson, 15, who's the youngest Cambridge entrant this year? Or blonde rower Jess Fitzpatrick, 18?
Even the Independent has ceased splashing on the fate of the Yangtze river dolphin and pops blonde Cherie Gardner, aka Miss Northern Ireland, on to its blurb (the what's inside bit beneath the masthead). You have to check the other papers to find out she hasn't even passed her A-levels yet. She's just at the AS stage.
The Daily Mail has a picture of a group of young women jumping up in the air, but nothing makes the front. It seems hardly bothered. The Daily Express has a blonde on the front, but a broader representation of hair colour inside.
The Guardian bucks the blonde trend of course. When you have Germaine Greer on a retainer, you keep on the straight and narrow. The Times also behaves itself.
But if comely blondes are your thing, the best destination is the Daily Star. They find space for the aforementioned Cherie Gardner and the aforementioned Jess Fitzpatrick. And they have a nice big picture of the blonde Rebecca Thompson who has been signed up by model agency Storm.
Ahh, no need to get the tin hat out today.
The 
