The best headlines implore you, almost force you, to read the story beneath them. Sometimes the best way to do that in the headline is to summarise the whole article and, in the words of Trevor Chaplin in The Beiderbecke Affair, “make up something so completely weird he’s bound to believe it”. Without further ado, here’s the creation of an inspired subeditor at the Daily Mail:
“Police probe hotel sting after secret camera falls off ceiling in room where Cameron cutie had tryst”
Absolutely brilliant. As with many headlines, the lack of punctuation adds to the absurdity of it all. It’s as though someone has breathlessly ran into the room and frantically described what’s just happened.
So, fantastic headline. Shame about the story. According to Private Eye it’s a very large Consignment of Geriatric Shoe Manufacturers:
The tale of Special Branch watching Nokes and Dinsdale in flagrante is diversionary nonsense, dreamed up by Tory spin-doctor Andy Coulson to switch the focus from the hypocrisy of “Nooky” Nokes – signatory to a Christian declaration against extramarital sex – to the sleaziness of redtops, a subject on which he has some expertise.
So there you are – a fantastic headline and a glimpse into Andy Coulson’s spin machine, all in the same blog post. And they say men can’t multitask.
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