The Official Newscorp/UK end of season finale/Rebekah Brooks did 9/11 thread

if there was chick lit of a sexual nature i'd be reading more of it

I honestly don't think they could fit many more nudge-nudge-wink-wink phrases in there if they tried.

anybody who's been to ronnie scott's with nigel kennedy has probly suffered enough

Well done on the hypocrisy front, The Guardian, for continuing to flog Bagshawe with that "OMG, writes chick lit" snideness in the news section, while expressly spelling out exactly how sexist and demeaning that label actually is buried away in the gender section, three drill-down clicks down in the "life and style" section. Yeah, you're damn right that sticks in the throat.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jul/21/sneering-chick-lit-female-authors if I mucked up the tags on that link.

totally agree but don't a bunch of these authors play the game a fair bit?

and it's right to say that there's been some fucking horrible hornby-esque "lad lit" or "sensitive can't write for shit doe-eyed geezer" lit that targets its own set of stereotypes. sure don't get snobby about genre fiction but please nobody try and pull a "shopaholic writer is the 21st century jane austen" puhleese?

Will be interesting to see who the investigator turns out to have been working for. It's clearly going to backfire hugely, if it can be linked to any of the participants in the hacking affair directly.

I'm amazed at the leniency of the fines they've received in the Christopher Jeffries case. I would have liked to see a couple of people doing jail time for that as well.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/29/sun-daily-mirror-guilty-contempt

Career Girls (1995)
The Movie (1996)
Tall Poppies (1997)
Venus Envy (1998)
A Kept Woman (2000)
When She Was Bad... (2001)
The Devil You Know (2003)
Monday's Child (2004)
Tuesday's Child (2005)
Sparkles (2006)
Glamour (2007)
Glitz (2008)
Passion (2009)
Desire (2010)
Destiny (2011)

In fairness looking at these titles I'm not exactly expecting Virginia Woolf here.

Monday's Child (2004)
Tuesday's Child (2005)

well?

Actually the last six were the names of her children.

Shallow writing is shallow writing whether it's "Career Girls" or "Spies and Guns Shoot Em Up" but it is completely sexist to imply, as that "chick lit" label does, that it's the gender of the writer and *perceived* consumers that inherently causes the shallow.

But whatever. This is not the thread.

It's more the fact that even despite writers IN THEIR OWN NEWSPAPER pointing out that actually, this is kind of a sexist term, they just go on sniding about it. Really fucking hate that about the Guardian. Just bury "womens concerns" like, you know, gender and sexism down there in Life and Style, under the shoes and sherbet receipes, where no one ever has to, you know, pay attention to it. Like "chick lit".

shd start a spin-off?

and y'know, consistency and no middlebrow snob bullshit in the Graun? come on

I dunno, the vast majority of novels these days are marketing primarily at women, we're talking about more than "novels by female writers marketed at women" otherwise we'd be writing off Lorrie Moore or Isabel Allende or whoever as chick-lit.

I am suddenly sad that Andy McNabb has not yet pursued a career as a Tory MP though.

no i do think there's something in the "fact?" (in my head) that no chick lit author will ever be given the critical respect that some of the guns and spys and boys own adventure authors are given by the broadsheets

including dancing on a dance floor, whilst drunk

:D

Are boys own adventure types treated more seriously when they try to enter the political sphere? Jeffrey Archer and Ken Follett would suggest that they're not, though that doesn't stop the underlying point from being valid. xp

if i was her i'd be embarrassed that my life was so squeaky clean that "dancing on a dance floor" is apparently one of the three most scandalous events in my life

A self-described investigative journalist called David Jones

haha this is great

Yeah that's true although I tend to think that most Sunday Times or Telegraph readers/cultural journalists are basically Mark Corrigan and therefore not to be trusted.

I think "dancing on a dance floor" is lacking the implied "having taken a big bag of cocaine".

"Leaving work early" and "missing the odd day at work" along with "inappropriate dress" were the reasons quoted to me.

i think this is the best bit of her responses, anyhow

^^^^^People get fired from record companies for any of these reasons? News to me, frankly...

I think she's implying these were spurious excuses given for her sacking?

Mensch and Watson are showing every sign of loving every single minute of this anyway. Can't blame them.

Sparkles (2006)
Glamour (2007)
Glitz (2008)

imagining marih carey pitching a hissy fit on the publication of each of these. "that was gonna be MY next album title"

I'm assuming the Weekday's Child series was discontinued on the advice of Will Young's lawyers.

I'm honestly interested in picking up one of those titles based on her conduct the last month.

A self-described investigative journalist called David Jones accused Mensch of ... taking drugs in the company of violinist Nigel Kennedy at Ronnie Scott's in Birmingham "including dancing on a dance floor, whilst drunk, with Mr Kennedy, in front of journalists".

That 'including....' part is very strangely worded. It makes it sound as if 'dancing on....etc, etc.... journalists' is a type of drug which she took. Even ignoring that, it makes it sound like being drunk is an example of the drugs she took. And even if it was worded correctly, accusing someone of dancing (on a dancefloor!) (while drunk!!) seems incredibly lame.

assume "drunk" was a cop-out meaning "ripped to the tits on Bolivian disco talc"

Yeah come on this is NIGEL KENNEDY we're talking about.

can't imagine how many hallucinogens you'd have to neck to find him tolerable company

Oh come on this is a TORY MP we're talking about.

i mean maybe he is a secret massive Varèse enthusiast but i'm thinking no

she's a quite hot Tory MP tbf and in these circumstances the Tory MP bit sort of adds to the hotness for some of us pervs

Maybe it was during her Labour year.

nigel kennedy a legendary caner, TRUFACT

True. Thinking this would be in The Brix Smth Years as well...

After leaving The Fall and disbanding The Adult Net, Brix... became romantically-involved with violinist Nigel Kennedy, and they collaborated on a cover of Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man" which was released as a single in 1993

Boy do I wish that was on youtube.

Hmmm:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2011/07/news-corp-tells-new-york-post-to-save-documents-hacking.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/cartoon/2011/jul/30/josie-longs-alternative-universe#zoomed-picture

that raises a lot of questions about the guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/02/phone-hacking-scandal-new-arrest

^ here we go again

James Murdoch please.

Stuart Kuttner apparently, former managing editor

xxp amelia hill has just added on twitter that it's believed to be stuart kuttner, former managing editor.

Kuttner has been for over 20 years the whip-cracking schemer who always knew how to get what he wanted for the paper, who knew every trick in persuading hacks to misbehave, chiselling informers out of promised fees, covering up for the illegal activities of journalists and editors.

It was he who, with cold calculation, duped former Private Investigator, Glenn Mulcaire into taking extra payments in cash, direct from the royal editor, Clive Goodman for royal stories harvested by hacking into Prince Harry and Prince William’s voicemails. That way, when Mulcaire was caught, as he was absolutely bound to be, Kuttner and then editor Andy Couslon could claim they knew nothing about it.

http://www.peterburden.net/archives/233

BBC saying it's a 70-year old man - does that fit?

yeah

can imagine an awesome OJ/glove courtroom scene in which he proves he is unable to even call his daughter using a mobile phone

kuttner played a bit part in the paper's famous harry potter/september 11 tapes. reporter charles begley tells him why he's been signed off work with stress:

CB: There were a couple of events which brought things to a head. A few hours after the attack on the World Trade Centre, I was asked by Rebekah to dress up as Harry Potter. She wanted me to dress up and go to her office in the middle of the newsroom.

SK: Which date was that?

CB: That was on Tuesday, September 11.

I feel bad for laughing at that.