[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]

"Princess Grace was murdered!” says the National Examiner, explaining that an Italian mob-connected syndicate tampered with her car's brakes, and then “injected air into her veins, causing a stroke” as she lay in hospital. Presumably because they knew the crash wouldn’t kill her, and had a hit-man disguised as an orderly stationed at the hospital with syringe at the ready. Sounds likely to me.

Australian government official Simon Dorante-Day claims he is heir to the British throne, the victim of a conspiracy by the Royal Family and his parents - Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles - who cruelly gave him up for adoption 50 years ago, according to the Globe. Which would also boost his nine children ahead of Prince William in the line of succession for the crown. Sounds like a reality TV show waiting to happen.

“Bloodthirsty terrorists hiding in secret cells in North America are plotting to unleash a horrific attack on soft targets in the U.S.,” explains the Globe, which provides a helpful list in case ISIS needs some guidance finding places to strike: Disney World, the Mall of America, Washington D.C., Hollywood Boulevard, Beverly Hills, Las Vegas and New Orleans. Read the rest

[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]

What’s in Lukensia’s lunch box?

That’s the burning question on the lips of Us magazine’s crack investigative team. The hard-hitting reporters who week after week delve into the heart of Hollywood darkness to expose the handbag contents of a celebrity you’ve barely heard of, this week bring us an earth-shattering exclusive: the contents of TV fitness trainer Jillian Michaels' five-year-old daughter’s lunch box.

“She just likes snacks,” says Jillian, in a revelation sure to break the Internet and push Isis bombers off the front page. “Crackers and popcorn, cheese sticks and beef jerky.” Lukensia - her name supposedly means “bringer of light,” and let’s face it, sounds better than calling your daughter “Bic Lighter” - carries it all in a Frozen lunchbox, with a Doc McStuffins thermos.

Is this a new low in celebrity journalism? Perhaps, but I’m confident that with dedication, Us mag can stoop even lower. They tell us that Diane Kruger and Rita Ora wore it best, and the stars are still just like us: they dine out, stroll on the sand, they walk and talk - in other words: they’re boring. Read the rest

[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]

The stars are just like us - they ride bikes, pump gasoline and shop for kitchenware. It’s a perennial conceit at Us magazine: celebrities are just regular folk like you and I/

It’s why Us mag says in this week’s cover story that Britain’s Prince William and wife Kate are giving their two children “a normal childhood.”

Because what could be more “normal” than escaping from your ten-bedroom English country mansion to vacation in the French Alps in a six-story, seven-bedroom rental home with a nanny, ski instructor and security squad? Nothing says “normal childhood” more than a holiday home’s indoor pool, game room and movie theatre. If Prince George behaves well on outings with his mother, “Kate will usually buy him a small, inexpensive toy,” because nothing is more “normal” than parental bribery. And when William and Kate travel to India next month, what could be more normal than dumping the kids on his in-laws, while the Prince and his Duchess tour the Taj Mahal and Mumbai?

What’s “normal” for the stars?

As Us mag demonstrates, celebrities also go to jail (reality TV’s Joe Giudice), come out as transexual (director Lilly Wachowski), and deny they are being held prisoner against their will (fitness guru Richard Simmons.)

People magazine devotes its cover to TV’s polyamorous Bachelor star Ben Higgins, who dated 27 women simultaneously, slept with three of them, said “I love you” to two, and now says of new fiancé Lauren Bushnell “She was always the one” - which makes one wonder if the entire show wasn’t just a giant waste of everyone’s time. Read the rest

[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]

If Werner Heisenberg were still alive, at 114 years old, by now the German physicist would surely have developed his celebrity uncertainty principle.

Put simply, a celebrity cannot be observed and accurately reported simultaneously. The act of observing a celebrity makes accuracy impossible, and conversely getting to the truth of a celebrity makes observation impossible, most likely because they’re locked behind closed doors.

This week's peer-reviewed scientific journals known as the supermarket tabloids and celebrity magazines ably demonstrate Heisenberg’s celebrity uncertainty principle in action. The stars are just like us, proclaims Us magazine: they ride bikes, go shopping and eat snacks at L.A. Clipper games (though I can’t remember the last time I had courtside seats, to be honest.). But the act of observation has changed these celebrities: they have dressed with care, brushed their hair, and take each step in public knowing that they may be stalked by paparazzi. Actress Minka Kelly, seen walking her dogs in Us mag, has donned her tightest body-hugging leggings and hidden her eyes behind sunglasses knowing that photographers lurk.

When Taylor Swift tells Us mag “25 things you don’t know about me” spread over two vacuous pages, revealing that she kept hermit crabs as childhood pets, has double-jointed elbows and can’t spin cartwheels, she exposes nothing of herself, aware that she is under observation. Read the rest

[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]

Marilyn Monroe’s body has been exhumed, the Easter Island statues were made by aliens, and it is now “statistically impossible” for Donald Trump not to win the Republican presidential nomination.

Like the northern white rhinoceros and Yangtze finless porpoise, facts are a perilously endangered species in this week’s tabloids.

The late novelist Jackie Collins’ $30 million Beverly Hills home is up for sale, and in a full-page feature the Globe magazine describes her in its opening sentence as “The Valley of the Dolls writer.”

In this era of Wikipedia and search engines, how does a reporter, and subsequently a sub-editor, fail to know that Valley of the Dolls was penned in 1966 by that other Jacqueline - Susann, not Collins? Mind-boggling.

“I killed Elvis,” confessed George ‘Dr. Nick’ Nichopoulos on his deathbed last week, claims the Globe. Except he didn’t. Guaranteed. Dr. Nick spent the last 38 years denying that he had contributed to Presley’s death by overprescribing drugs. The tabloids routinely quote unidentified “sources,” “insiders” and “pals” to lend faux credibility to statements that are often plucked from thin air. Read the rest

[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was “murdered by a hooker,” reports the National Enquirer, while Robert Wagner finally gave a “murder confession” admitting to slaying Natalie Wood, according to the Globe.

Only one small detail is missing from these stories. Facts.

They have as much plausibility as the two women who tell this week's Enquirer that they had babies following sex romps with space aliens (expect Donald Trump and Ted Cruz to call for the infants’ deportation), and the 17th century English prophet Thomas Totney’s predictions of space travel reported (belatedly, some might say) in the Examiner.

The facts: Scalia suffered from coronary artery disease, diabetes and other ailments, routinely slept with a breathing apparatus and was propped up on three pillows when he died, according to his family and police, who found Scalia's bedsheets crisp with no sign of a struggle, though a pillow had slipped down over the top of his head, but not enough to obstruct his airway.

But because Scalia’s family rejected an autopsy the Enquirer assumes a cover-up, reporting that a “2,000-a-night” prostitute employed by the CIA "injected Scalia with a needle filled with poison in his buttocks” in a bid to reshape the Supreme Court. Read the rest

[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]

Proving that the tabloids have more to offer than just Bat Boy and alien abductions, this week’s masters of stretched plausibility plunge into American politics with their traditional commitment to accuracy and credibility.

The U.S. presidential race in the eyes of the National Enquirer is reduced to a series of dubious allegations: Marco Rubio was busted by police at a “notorious ‘cruising’ spot for gay guys” when 18, and partied in an all-male “foam party.” Bernie Sanders in his youth wrote questionable sexual fiction about “a woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused.” Ted Cruz’s wife Heidi was once picked up by police sitting “with her head in her hands” feet from a Texas expressway, where officers feared “she was a danger to herself.” Hillary Clinton “turned a blind eye” when her husband sexually assaulted other women (Well, that’s certainly a revelation.)

And what shocking scandal has the Enquirer unearthed about Donald Trump?

“Donald Trump has been hiding a secret,” it declares. “He has even greater support and popularity than even he’s admitted to!”

Their investigative team must have dug really deep for that insight, though it’s hard to imagine that Trump could ever be accused of underestimating his own popularity. Read the rest

[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]

Why let facts get in the way of a good story?

Princess Diana was assassinated with a lethal injection administered by a British agent on the orders of Prince Charles, who could face murder charges, concludes an “explosive new autopsy” conducted “after her body was exhumed last year,” reports the Globe.

Only one problem with the story. Diana’s body has never been exhumed. So there’s no new autopsy report, and no murder charges. In fact, her grave has been allowed to grow over with foliage and return to nature, giving the lie to any “secret” exhumation.

The Globe's laissez-faire attitude to facts is summed up in its story on the CIA’s “X-Files” allegedly proving that “UFOs are visiting Earth.” Tucked away in the final paragraph is a so-called "intelligence insider” saying: “While these reports don’t actually confirm the sightings - they sure don’t disprove them either.”

It’s a philosophy evident in the Globe's “world exclusive” interview with fugitive jet hijacker D. B. Cooper, missing for 44 years since he parachuted from a plane over Oregon with $200,000 in ransom money. Read the rest

[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]

It’s America’s worst nightmare.

Faced with the existential threats of terrorism, global warming, nuclear proliferation and Donald Trump, the National Enquirer reports that “America’s worst nightmare” is . . . the possibility that jailed Unabomber Ted Kaczynski may have secretly fathered a child.

Sure, that’s what keeps me awake at night.

There’s a wealth of speculative, fanciful, thin-as-air and barely-there shock-horror stories in this week’s tabloids.

Bernie Sanders could be a Russian spy, “flipped" during a 1988 visit to Moscow, says the Enquirer. “Vlad's been pulling Bernie’s strings for decades,” a former Secret Service agent, evidently on first name terms with Russian premier Putin, reportedly tells the Enquirer.

Actress and singer Cher “shares her dying secrets” in a new memoir, and the National Enquirer has all the details - except she hasn’t written the book yet.

The unwritten memoir also reportedly reveals “why she didn’t have sex with Elvis Presley and Marlon Brando.” Hopefully we can look forward to sequels in which Cher reveals she didn’t have sex with Albert Einstein, O.J. Simpson, and Bernie Sanders. Read the rest

[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]

A sensational medical breakthrough means you’ll never have to go to a doctor or psychiatrist again for an accurate clinical diagnosis.

How else does one explain the extraordinary medical assessments of the stars in this week’s supermarket tabloids, based on just a photograph or two?

AMA could learn a few things from these tabloids medical experts.

TV’s Friends star Matthew Perry is suspected of a “drug relapse because the actor “looks horrible,” says Dr. Stuart Fischer, “who has not treated 46-year-old Matthew but reviewed recent photos of the actor,” according to the National Enquirer. “He looks ill-kempt and homeless,” says the doc, which as any dedicated tabloid reader will tell you, is a dangerous medical condition.

Angelina Jolie is an “anorexic wasting away,” alleges the Enquirer, riding one of its favorite rail-thin hobby horses. They enlist Dr. Art Mollen of Arizona to determine, based on photographs, that Angie needs hospitalization “immediately,” plus a team of “psychiatrists, cardiologists, nutritionists and even the family” to save her life. The Enquirer adds, in stark red headlines almost two inches tall, that she weighs "82 lbs” - an assessment that can only mean they are now hiring former fairground hucksters who used to “Guess Your Weight” at carnival midway stands. Read the rest

[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]

“Hollywood Death Mysteries Solved!”

Natalie Wood, Bruce Lee, Sonny Bono, and David Carradine were all murdered, and Richard Burton was beaten to death.

That’s according to the expert forensic authority known in academic circles as Globe magazine.

Solved?

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Those of us who thought Sonny Bono died after skiing at high speed into a tree were evidently fooled by brilliant “drug assassins” who beat him to death and planted his body on a ski slope. Because what could be easier than dragging a dead body up a mountain in deep snow?

Autopsy photos “could reveal Natalie Wood’s death was a murder.” Because even though medical examiners, police and prosecutors have viewed the photos, the truth won’t be known until the Globe’s pet attorney has seen the pictures. There you go – solved!

Richard Burton got into a bar brawl two days before he died. Though officials ruled that long-standing illnesses killed the actor, the Globe assures us it was the fight that killed him. Read the rest

When the National Enquirer goes on the warpath to expose your deepest, darkest secrets, you know you’re in trouble - unless you’re Donald Trump.

The Enquirer uncovers Trump’s “secret life,” revealing “the Donald Trump nobody knows.”

A team of crack investigative reporters blow the lid off the presidential candidate’s greatest scandals: Trump “has quietly donated a huge chunk of his fortune to charity - and is a doting dad to his young son.” I’m shocked, shocked I tell you.

Enquirer stablemate the Globe offers equally fair and balanced reporting, under its headline “Impeach Obama!”

The president is accused of “bungling and treachery,” which certainly sounds like constitutional grounds for impeachment to me.

It’s another fabulously fact-challenged week in the tabloids. The Globe claims that Queen Elizabeth is "flat broke” after squandering her $2 billion fortune on “covering up scandals and feeding (her) horse racing addiction.” Not to worry – she can always make a few quid selling her story to the tabloids.

The Globe also informs us that aviatrix Amelia Earhart not only survived her 1937 plane crash in the South Pacific but lived out her days hiding under an assumed name – Craigmile Bolam – in Bedford, New Jersey, until her death in 1982. Read the rest

[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]

Bill Cosby “will die in jail,” J. Edgar Hoover’s “Kennedy blackmail files” have been revealed, and Jennifer Lopez reveals her “secrets for staying young,” which inexplicably doesn't include being born with her parents’ DNA and acquiring several million dollars to maintain one's looks.

But if we’re looking for logic and facts, this week’s tabloids aren't the best place to find them.

Angelina Jolie has adopted a seventh child “behind Brad’s back,” claims the Enquirer. You think he might notice, sooner or later?

Elvis Presley was murdered to prevent him from running off with an alleged lover he bedded 24 years earlier, the Enquirer also claims.

And to complete its trifecta, the Enquirer claims that Kurt Cobain was murdered because the fatal shotgun shell was found to the left of his body though the weapon’s chamber ejects shells to the right.

Let’s get real. Shell casings bounce. Presley wasn’t about to leave his young fiancé for an old hookup. And Angelina’s “adopted” son is still part of a family in Cambodia that she has reportedly helped by buying $200 worth of new clothes – a fortune in that country, but still, only $200 – which falls slightly short of the legal definition of adoption. Read the rest

Vladimir Putin is a vampire, Elvis Presley’s “seven secret love children” have been found, Angelina Jolie is suffering a “new cancer horror," and flamboyant "fitness guru" Richard Simmons is suffering a “mental breakdown,” according to this week’s fact-challenged Globe tabloid.

Accuracy, balance and logic evidently weren’t among the gifts left by Santa in the Globe's Christmas stocking this year.

Photographs of Putin look-alikes from 1920 and 1941 provoke the Globe to report that “investigators suggest he’s a vampire who has walked the Earth for a century or more!”

Barely more plausible are Elvis’s seven love children, exposed “following an exhaustive, two-year, world-wide investigation.” Or they could just have read back issues of the tabloids, where most of these claimants have previously told their stories, dating back to 1991. They range in plausibility from the offspring of women who claimed to have had one-night stands with the King, to Lisa Johansen who insists she was Presley’s daughter living with Elvis at Graceland until his 1977 death, when she was whisked to Sweden for her own safety and replaced by imposter Lisa Marie. Read the rest

[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]

Did Kim Kardashian lose 45 lbs in one day? This and other unassailable tabloid facts.

While the rest of the world is over-indulging during the festive season, weighty matters obsess this week’s tabloids and celebrity magazines.

Kim Kardashian “lost 75 lbs in 3 weeks” post-pregnancy, says the National Enquirer, while Star magazine says she lost 30 lbs in 20 days.

They could both be right, if Kardashian lost another 45 lbs on her 21st day, which seems entirely plausible.

Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton is the “Queen of Lean” and “starving herself to death” as her weight plummets to 98 lbs, says the Enquirer.

Tabloid watchers will recall that only six weeks ago the Enquirer warned that Kate weighed 99 lbs and was “wasting away,” so clearly the loss of another 16 precious ounces is cause for grave concern.

Meanwhile George Clooney’s wife Amal is “scary-skinny” says the Enquirer, though it doesn’t tell us how much she weighs because they’re too busy explaining how this brilliant human rights lawyer has transformed into "the wife from hell,” cutting Clooney off from old friends and making him sell off his former “love nests,” while she spends $4,695 on an Alexander McQueen dress and $4,000 on a vintage coat. Read the rest

[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]

Today’s tabloids never let facts get in the way of a good story. “It’s official!” screams the Globe. “Kate Crowned Queen.”

Not exactly. The last time I looked Elizabeth II still sat on the British throne and Kate Middleton was Duchess of Cambridge - unless the Globe’s “Palace insiders” know something HRH doesn’t know.

The Enquirer reveals Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s “Secret Divorce Papers!”

Except they don’t.

Photos of divorce papers splashed across the cover and inside the mag come from both stars’ previous divorces. And those weren’t secret anyway.

The purported $480 million divorce battle is about as real as Queen Kate.

“Communion Wafer ‘Bleeds’ For Three Days,” shouts an Examiner headline. “Is It A Miracle?”

No – it’s just a cracker. Get over it. Or give it to Angelina Jolie, since the tabloids are always complaining she’s too thin.

There are “Terrorist Spies Working in White House!” proclaims the Globe, which for good measure adds that President Obama is secretly Muslim and “put double agents in his Cabinet.”

Right.

This fair and balanced report shares a page with a completely impartial story headlined: “Why U.S. Read the rest

[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]

Countless wannabes are dying to be stars, so perhaps it makes perverse sense that so many stars are sick or dying – at least to judge by this week’s tabloids and celebrity magazines.

“Tumor-stricken ‘Top Gun’ hero” Val Kilmer has “three months to live” according to the Globe, which has photos of the 55-year-old actor wearing what appears to be a medical throat tube in his neck.

Burt Reynolds suffered a “heart attack drama” according to the National Enquirer, with photos of the Deliverance star sprawled on the floor – though it turns out that he merely stumbled, went straight on with a TV appearance, and it’s merely an unnamed “friend” suggesting that “Burt is a heart attack waiting to happen!”

Not to be outdone in the pursuit of medical scoops, the Examiner runs a spread on “Stars Battling Hepatitis,” which is as tasteful and sensitive as you’d imagine.

Add singer-actress Cher “dying” in the Globe, Kim Kardashian sharing details of her placenta accreta in People magazine, the Enquirer exposing Ben Affleck allegedly undergoing cosmetic surgery and an eyelid lift, and the Enquirer also recounting how Pope Francis cured a baby girl’s brain tumor with a kiss, and this week’s celebrity magazines are just like reading the American Journal of Medicine (though without the peer review, control testing, or facts.)

Speaking of facts, the Enquirer's cover reveals that there are “93 Secret ISIS Cells Here” in America. Read the rest