The Mail, Mail on Sunday and Pippa's party book

On 30 October 2011, a 'Mail on Sunday Reporter' wrote an article stating that Pippa Middleton was:

close to signing a book deal on how to be the perfect party hostess.

But, the paper warned:

The sisters' parents, Carole and Michael, were widely criticised for appearing to promote their party business on the back of the Royal Wedding earlier this year.

Pippa's advisers will also be careful to avoid the pitfalls of Paul Burrell, Princess Diana's former butler, whose book on hosting parties, Entertaining With Style, was published in 1999.

Mail columnist Peter McKay thought the venture 'distasteful'. Under the headline 'For your sister's sake, don't cash in, Pippa!', he wrote:

In a perfect world, it would be preferable if Pippa Middleton did nothing whatever that was reliant on being the sister of the future Queen Consort. But we, the reading public, have a degree of responsibility for that. Don’t buy it, if she does. Publishers obviously think that, in large numbers, we’d purchase anything by Pippa....

There is an alternative. She’ll always be Kate’s sister. Why not simply be proud of that, avoiding anything that appears to exploit this happy stroke of fortune?

A month later, the Mail on Sunday's Katie Nicholl reported that a £400,000 deal had been signed for the book.

Then, Mail columnist Jan Moir tutted her disapproval:

Pippa Middleton seems a lovely girl, but not the sort who could teach anyone very much about anything. And I can’t imagine the Queen will be best pleased that the ambitious sister of the Duchess of Cambridge has trousered £400,000 for her first book, a manual on entertaining. But never underestimate the Pippa!

A sneak peek of her hostess with the mostest party tips tome reveals the following nuggets: 1. To be a social hit, make sure you have the right equipment: a lovely big sister. 2. Get her to marry the heir to the throne. 3. Remember, bumpkins, it’s napkins, not serviettes. 4. Serve the peanuts before the pud.  5. Is there a hyphen in cash-in?  6. Can I have my money now?

Months later, Amanda Platell attacked the Middletons who, she said:

have an unsettling air of snootiness about their behaviour.

She added:

Why, for example, were Pippa and her brother James in the royal box at Wimbledon last week? Not because of their party-planning and cake-baking credentials, that’s for sure.

Pippa is now about to release her own party-planning guide, for which she’s said to have secured a £400,000 publishing deal. If it wasn’t for the royal connection, she’d be lucky to be writing recipes for the Bucklebury parish magazine.

In July, the Mail published an article (headline: 'Gold medal for cashing in goes to...' etc) about the Middleton's company Party Pieces, claiming it may have been in breach of Olympic advertising rules. When they were given the all-clear, the Mail failed to update its readers. This followed attacks on Party Pieces for their Jubilee merchandise ('could they have been a bit less tacky?') and for 'cashing in' on the Royal Wedding.

However, in yesterday's Mail on Sunday:

Exclusively in this weekend’s Mail on Sunday, you’ll find the first part of Pippa Middleton’s glorious guide to simple, creative entertaining, from her sensational new book – Celebrate: A Year of British Festivities for Family and Friends. This weekend we have 24 glossy pages of magical Hallowe’en tips and brilliant bonfire night ideas.

The Mail on Sunday may have thought it 'glorious' by the Mail's Peter McKay was still not impressed:

Can Her Royal Bottomness really have received a £400,000 advance for this tripe?

And how much more did she receive from the Mail on Sunday?

MailOnline, the Middletons and the Olympic advertising rules

On Thursday morning, the lead story on MailOnline was about the Middletons and their business Party Pieces:

'Breach of strict laws'. 'Flouting the law'. 'Criminal offence'.

It sounded serious, although the tell-tale inclusion of 'could be' in the headline suggested otherwise. The article by Rebecca English said:

Kate’s sister Pippa, who writes an accompanying blog called The Party Times, is also taking a risk with a piece entitled Celebrate The Games And Support Team GB which provides links to many of the items on sale.

And although the firm is careful to avoid the most blatant breach of the stringent code – mentioning the actual word ‘Olympics’ – if you put Olympics into Party Pieces’ own search engine it takes you to their Celebrate The Games page, which could still be grounds for action.

Just after 5pm the same day, the Guardian reported:

The party planning company owned by the Duchess of Cambridge's family has been hurriedly cleared by London 2012 organisers of infringing brand protection laws, but will be asked to make "minor changes" to its website.

Locog said it would investigate the Party Pieces website, owned by the Duchess of Cambridge's parents and featuring a blog by her sister Pippa, after it emerged it was offering a range of Olympic-related goods in a section of the site headed "Celebrate the Games" and illustrated with the Olympic torch...

But following an investigation, a Locog spokeswoman said: "There are no infringements and the products are fine. We may ask them to make a very minor change to some copy."

At time of writing, over 36 hours after the Guardian's piece was published, MailOnline has not written an update for its readers. Given the prominence they gave to the original claims, they should.  

This comes less than two weeks after an attack on the Middleton family by Mail columnist Amanda Platell, who seemed very upset Pippa had been seen in the royal box at Wimbledon. The Middleton's now 'have an unsettling air of snootiness about their behaviour,' she said.

(Hat-tip to Jonathan Haynes)

Mail admits Amanda Platell column went 'beyond fair comment'

The 'Clarifications and corrections' column in today's Mail apologises for comments made by Amanda Platell when she attacked some of the core participants at the Leveson Inquiry:

A column by Amanda Platell on 17 September 2011 referred to Sheryl Gascoigne as a ‘gold digger’ and as ‘sleazy and degrading company’ for the other participants in the Leveson Inquiry. We now accept that these allegations are entirely unfounded and went beyond fair comment. We have sincerely apologised to Ms Gascoigne in court for the distress caused and have agreed to pay her substantial damages and costs.

That darn cat!

After two years and one political spat, the claim that a cat saved a man from deportation refuses to go away.

It dates back to a Sunday Telegraph article from 17 October 2009 which had the headline 'Immigrant allowed to stay because of pet cat'. The following day, the Mail, Express, Sun and Star all ran the story, the Express going with the headline 'Got a cat? OK, you can stay'.

The story was then repeated by columnists including Richard Littlejohn, Amanda Platell, Sue Carroll and Eamonn Holmes, who stated:

If you are an illegal immigrant facing deportation from the UK then don't worry - just tell the authorities that you have a cat and they will let you stay.

Except, they won't, because - as Dominic Casciani makes clear - that isn't what happened. The Telegraph's Tom Chivers explains:

There never was someone who could not be deported because he had a pet cat. It goes back to a Bolivian student (not an illegal immigrant) who applied to stay in this country. In his application, he does indeed mention a pet cat. But he was granted leave to remain in Britain as "the unmarried partner of a person present and settled in the United Kingdom", not as the owner of a British cat. Under UK Border Agency rules (not the Human Rights Act), if a couple has lived together for two years in "a genuine and subsisting relationship akin to marriage", they have a right to stay, regardless of whether they're married.

Yet the cat has popped up occasionally since 2009. In March 2011, a text to the Daily Star made a 'joke' of it. It was mentioned again in the Star on 14 July, in the Mirror on 13 June and in a Daily Mail editorial on 20 June.

And on Tuesday, Home Secretary Theresa May said:

“We all know the stories about the Human Rights Act...The illegal immigrant who cannot be deported because – and I am not making this up – he had a pet cat.”

As Kevin Arscott noted, she was right to say she wasn't 'making this up' - instead, she was repeating something that wasn't correct that had appeared in several newspapers.

But it had been debunked. The lawyer in the case, Barry O'Leary, was quoted saying the cat was 'immaterial' - including on on Radio Five Live - but this was either ignored or overlooked.

As Adam Wagner of UK Human Rights Blog, writes:

Put it this way. If I had a client who was facing deportation and I wanted to show that the simple fact that he had a cat meant that he should stay, and I tried to use the Bolivian cat judgment as a precedent, I would be laughed out of court.

Following May's speech the Judicial Communications Office reissued their two-year old statement which pointed out:

"This was a case in which the Home Office conceded that they had mistakenly failed to apply their own policy - applying at that time to that appellant - for dealing with unmarried partners of people settled in the UK.

"That was the basis for the decision to uphold the original tribunal decision - the cat had nothing to do with the decision."

But that didn't stop today's Daily Mail claiming it had the 'truth':

A judge allowed an illegal immigrant to dodge deportation because he feared separating him from his cat risked ‘serious emotional consequences’, it emerged yesterday.

The human rights ruling, obtained by the Daily Mail, vindicates Home Secretary Theresa May over the ‘cat-gate’ row with Justice Secretary Ken Clarke at the Tory Conference.

She claimed that the cat, Maya, was a key reason behind the decision to let the man, a Bolivian national, stay in Britain

They were so sure of their version of events, they put it on the front page.

Yet on page 17, even their own columnist wasn't even convinced. Stephen Glover said May was:

partly misinformed as well as uninformed

Back to the front page article, however, and there was the inevitable clarification towards the end, in which the Mail admitted:

the Bolivian – whose name is blacked out in the court documents – won on different grounds at a later hearing which found the department had not followed its own rules.

Today, Barry O'Leary has issued a lengthy riposte to the Mail and others. He says:

The Judicial Office has already made a statement in this matter and I wish to give my support to that statement.

The case referred to was not decided on the basis of ownership of a cat. It was decided on the basis of a Home Office policy which the Home Office themselves had failed to apply. This was accepted by the Home Office before the Immigration Judge. The Home Office agreed the appeal should be allowed. The ownership of a cat was immaterial to the final decision made. Any press reports to the contrary are not based on fact.

The Mail claimed:

Yesterday it was revealed that the Bolivian not only argued that he would suffer from being separated from his cat, but also that his pet’s quality of life would be affected.

But O'Leary replies:

I stress that it was not argued at any point by this firm, nor by my client, that he would 'suffer from being separated from his cat' nor that 'the pet's quality of life would be affected.' Our arguments were based on the long-term committed nature of the couple's relationship. Their ownership of a cat was just one detail amongst many given to demonstrate the genuine nature of their relationship.

He continues:

It was, in fact, the official acting on behalf of the Home Secretary who, when writing the letter of refusal, stated that the cat could relocate to Bolivia and cope with the quality of life there. This statement was not in response to any argument put forward by this firm or my client (and was, frankly, rather mischievous on behalf of the official).

The appeal against the refusal was successful and, when giving judgment, because the reasons for refusal did refer to the cat the judge commented on the couple's cat. It was taken into account as part of the couple's life together. However, it was not the reason for allowing the appeal. The appeal was allowed because of the couple's relationship, and the judge also relied on the Home Office policy that had not been applied.  

There is one further problem with the Mail running this story today. When the paper mentioned the cat on 20 June, a complaint was made to the Press Complaints Commission. The complainant stated that as Mr O'Leary had already made clear the cat was 'immaterial', the article breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Code of Practice.

As the complainant was a third party, the PCC contacted Mr O'Leary who told them that his client did not want to make a complaint about the article. Without the participation of the subject of the story, the PCC did not feel able to adjudicate on the complaint.

But in its conclusion, it said:

The Commission fully acknowledged the concerns raised by the complainant in regard to the accuracy of the article...

While it emphasised that the complainant’s concerns were indeed legitimate, it did not consider, in the absence of the participation of the Bolivian man or his representative, that it was in a position to investigate the matter, not least because it would not be possible to release any information about the outcome of the investigation or resolve the matter without the input of the man.

That said, it recognised that the complainant had raised concerns which had a bearing on the accuracy of the claim made in the article and, as such, it trusted that the newspaper would take heed of the points raised in the complaint and bear them in mind for future coverage. 

Today's Daily Mail goes to prove how much the paper 'takes heed' of what the PCC says.

(More from Channel 4 Fact Check, Full Fact, David Allen Green, Alan Travis, Adam Wagner, Alex Massie, Ed West and Minority Thought)

Sorry we said you claimed make-up on your expenses

Today, the Mail published the following apology to MP Jo Swinson, following inaccurate claims made by Amanda Platell last month:

An article in Platell’s People on July 30 wrongly repeated a suggestion that Ms Swinson had claimed for make-up on her expenses. We are happy to make clear that she had not made such claims and apologise for suggesting otherwise.

This is now the fifth correction/clarification/apology published by the Mail in the last two weeks.

Platell needs to learn more about Moore

In her Mail column last Saturday, Amanda Platell sneered:

The rabid anti-capitalist film-maker Michael Moore, director of the global warming propaganda movie Fahrenheit 9/11, is suing his backers, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, claiming they cheated him out of £1.67million in profits. And there was me thinking he did it to save the planet.

In this latest example of the fine research undertaken by Mail columnists, she appears to have confused Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 with An Inconvenient Truth.

As Mr Mordon at the Mailwatch Forum notes, she 'probably got thrown by the word fahrenheit.'

(Hat-tip to Mailwatch Forum)

Ban Twitter users from voting, says Mail columnist

Last week, Amanda Platell wrote about the non-existent Government immigration 'plot' in her Mail column. She said:

Thanks to newly revealed documents, we learn it was a deliberate act to make the country more multi-cultural (and thus more likely to vote Labour).

Platell complaining about immigrants coming here to affect the outcome of elections? Seems odd, given she's an immigrant from Australia who was an advisor to William Hague and worked to get the Conservatives elected in 2001.

But you don't really go to Platell for common sense or intellectual rigour.

And this week, she surpassed herself:

A survey purports to show that many more people would vote in a General Election if they could do so on Twitter. In a civilised democracy, the idiots who use Twitter should be banned from voting altogether.

Yes, because everyone knows that the mark of civilised democracies is that they arbitrarily ban thousands of people from voting for no reason whatsoever.

How much do the Mail fork out for such dim, juvenile observations?

Previously, she had dismissed Twitter as:

the domain of the inane, the insane and the desperate.

Platell - like all Mail columnists - has to be a professional hater. Everything's crap, everyone needs to be criticised, nothing is ever any good.

Particularly Twitter, because a) it's modern; and b) it was all nasty about Jan Moir boo hoo hoo.

Never mind that the Mail constantly uses Twitter for celebrity gossip and other stories.

Never mind that people such as Oscar-nominated Thick of It creator Armando Iannucci uses Twitter. Let's not celebrate his achievements. Let's call him an insane idiot who should be disenfranchised instead.

Still, good job the newspaper Platell writes her drivel for is above all this Twitter nonsense.

And to see exactly how much they hate it, go to their Twitter feed at @mailonline.

Links

Who knew?

Migrationwatch are advertising for a Director of Research. An opportunity to earn £45,000 for emailing press releases to the Mail explaining how there are too many evil immigrants in the UK, it sounds like very easy money.

Anton Vowl's application is here. 5CC can always be relied upon to take apart Migrationwatch's 'research'.

Some personal favourites from this blog: the stupidly worded poll (makes that polls), the million failed asylum seekers joining the NHS queue (which was plucked out of the air), and the amazing assumptions behind 'Each illegal immigrant to cost us £1m'.

Migrationwatch say they are:

recognised as the leading source for independent expert commentary on matters relating to migration into and out of the United Kingdom.

Apart from by themselves and the tabloids, who 'recognises' them as that?

Also from Anton, the Express gets into a 'fury' about @dianainheaven on Twitter. Good.

Over at Angry Mob, Uponnothing reveals how the Mail changed a headline on an anti-Gordon Brown story when the comments turned against them; and another classic example of the Mail choosing to highlight crime based on race.

The Daily Quail looked at Melanie McDonagh's unbelievable defence of Jan Moir, whose infamous column about Stephen Gately was, apparently:

off-message but factually truthful.

This despite the fact the coroner had said the death was natural and Moir said it wasn't. Still can't blame McDonagh for missing that news - the Mail buried it at the bottom of page 36.

Also worth reading is a post on the Beer Blog of Pete Brown (via Jeff Pickthall) - a look at how the media distorted figures on children and alcohol.

Meanwhile, 5CC has looked at why the Mail seems to have fallen out of love with Julie Spence.

Talking of the Mail and love: look - it's Kim Kardashian wearing two dresses in one night.

That article included yet another example of 'look what [insert name] has posted on Twitter', which the media seems to lazily rely on for celebrity gossip these days.

A particularly curious example of this was when The Sun took a jokey tweet from pop singer Katy Perry and turned into an actual article about her 'skipping work to watch porn'. But they hid some of what she said with this exceptionally cryptic bit of censorship:

*** ***** *****

Any guesses?

Back to the Mail and their oh-so-consistent coverage of swine flu continued with this article:

It's official, the swine flu 'pandemic' is over (shame it cost us £1billion and scared thousands witless)

'Scared thousands witless'? Good job the Mail wasn't involved in any of that. Oh:

How swine flu could be a bigger threat to humanity than nuclear warfare

That was another gem from Michael Hanlon, the Mail's Science Editor, who also produced this astonishing piece of scaremongering nonsense:

Killers in your kitchen: Gender-bending packaging, exploding floor cleaners and toasters more deadly than sharks...

'Gender-bending packaging'? Really?

Over on the evil Facebook, Hugh has created a list of all the things the Mail says give you cancer, from bras to chips, peanut butter to talc, and, of course, Facebook itself.

Another Mail obsession is ageism. When Arlene Phillips was replaced as a judge on Strictly Come Dancing, the Mail was delighted to bash the BBC over claims of ageism and wrote lots of supportive articles about her.

Until she dared go outside without make-up on. Then she looked:

washed out

and:

ensured she looked her 66 years.

With friends like that...

In Amanda Platell's unsurprisingly useless review of 2009, she called Alesha Dixon, Phillips' Strictly replacement, 'Clot of the Year'. She wrote she was:

Nicknamed 'Ditto' Dixon because of the hopeless way she drearily parroted her fellow judges' comments

Dixon was, of course, nicknamed 'Ditto' by, err, Platell. That doesn't really count.

And Platell's unjustifably nasty attacks on women (and they almost always are on women) continued into 2010, when she turned on Andy Murray's mum for no apparent reason at all:

Of course I'll celebrate if Andy Murray wins tomorrow's Australian Open final, but does he really have to grimace like a savage?

You wonder what makes a young man so full of ugly, uncontrolled rage - and then you see his fishwife mother screaming from the sidelines.

Charming.

(Hat-tip to the contributors of the Mailwatch Forum)

Platell: still a hypocrite and just unbelievably lazy

If it's Saturday, it must be another feeble column from Amanda Platell in the Mail.

What does she write about today? Sex education in schools (covered in the Mail on 6 Nov), Fern Britton doing a religious chat show on BBC (covered in the Mail on 5 Nov), Drew Barrymore in a frock (covered in the Mail on 5 Nov), the U2 Berlin concert (covered in the Mail on 6 Nov), an attack on Helen Goodman over expenses (covered in the Mail on 6 Nov), Wayne Rooney celebrating the birth of his son until 6am (covered in the - gasp - Sun on 5 Nov), a sex discrimination case (covered in the Mail on 4 Nov), Gordon Ramsay's viewing figures (covered in the Mail on 5 Nov), an attack on Obama over Fort Hood (which appears to be straight from Fox News) and something about Slavica Ecclestone and the Dalai Lama (covered in the Mail on 4 Nov).

The only bit of her column that hasn't appeared somewhere else in the last three days is praise for Margaret Thatcher. And that can hardly be called 'new'.

Does she have an original thought in her head? And that doesn't include the lies. Any moron could flick through the papers, find a few stories to re-heat and add some unamusing insults.

And clearly, any moron does.

Let's start with Gordon Ramsay. She writes:

Ramsay's celebrity The F Word attracted just 1.8million viewers, with even BBC2's science series Horizon beating him with an aptly titled show called Who's Afraid Of A Big Black Hole? - into which we can all now hope the foulmouthed Ramsay will finally disappear.

If she feels that strongly about stopping media exposure for Gordon Ramsay, she should complain to the newspaper that just yesterday published five recipes from his latest 'brilliant book'. That would be the same newspaper she writes for.

On to her comments about Barack Obama, who she clearly hates. In recent weeks she has said he has no charisma and criticised Michelle for hula-hooping. And now? This about Obama's press conference - a few hours after the event and without all the facts - on the Fort Hood shootings:

He seemed very slow to react and spent much time initially ignoring the tragedy, thanking staff for organising a conference in Washington that he'd been attending.

It was only some time later that he spoke of the 'horrific outburst of violence'. His performance reminded me of President Bush's numb response when he was first told that two jet airliners had flown into the Twin Towers on September 11.

Now this is what really happened. He was indeed at a conference, as the BBC reported:

The first annual White House Tribal Nations Conference brings together one delegate from each of the 564 federally recognised American Indian tribes.

It is the first time in US history that they will all meet a sitting president.

So when Obama got up to speak he wasn't 'ignoring the tragedy' but thanking the organisers and attendees for this historic event. He gave a shout-out to a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient who was there, and gave a 'solemn guarantee that this was not the end of a process but the beginning of a process' on Native American rights.

What Platell calls 'much time' before he addressed Fort Hood was in fact - wait for it - 113 seconds.

When she claims it was 'only some time later that he spoke of the 'horrific outburst of violence'' was in fact 31 seconds into his remarks on the shootings and within three minutes of beginning his speech.

Not that the events on 11 September and at Fort Hood are comparable but Platell seems to forget Bush carried on reading 'The Pet Goat' for seven minutes after being told of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center. And then he went...where?

Is she really so pathetically biased that she thinks those two reactions are the same?

As usual, there are also some bitter attacks on women who are more successful and popular than she is. She refers to Fern Britton as:

The Big Fat Fibber

who was:

so unpopular with viewers that ratings for ITV's This Morning have soared since she was replaced as a presenter

Yes, the Mail (who else?) did report viewing figures have risen by 150,000 but how much of this is down to a new presenter and re-launched programme? And if she was 'so unpopular', how come she was presenting the show for eight years, and still managing to pull in nearly a million viewers?

But maybe with unpopular fibbers, it just takes one to know one...

And then there is a nasty and gratuitous attack on Drew Barrymore:

Drew Barrymore's appearance, wearing Posh's purple £1,750 Giral dress, made her look like a leading lady all right, but not the A-lister she hoped - more the poisonous cross-dressing Rosa Klebb in the James Bond movie From Russia With Love.

Aside from the factual error of calling Klebb a 'leading lady', this is what Drew looked like:


And this is Rosa Klebb:


Identical, as you can see.

The Mail, a few days earlier, had said Barrymore looked 'stunning' at the same event, although that might be to make up for stupidly saying she looked like a lapdancer the last time she was at a premiere.

But remember last week when Platell complained about Frankie Boyle's Rebecca Adlington joke as:

cruel, unfunny - and, above all, unjust.

Apparently, comparing the 34-year old Barrymore - whose recent directorial debut has been very well received - to a notoriously unattractive, 65-year old, poisonous, cross-dressing assassin, is totally just and completely hilarious.

Poisonous indeed.

Amanda Platell: inane, hypocritical and apparently, not racist

After last week's dismal Amanda Platell column, would this week's be any better? It doesn't start well. Here's the first paragraph:

Andre Agassi was always one of the most popular tennis champions on Centre Court. With his 17 major title wins, he was also one of the most successful players.

17 major title wins? That's certainly an interesting 'fact'. Agassi won 17 Masters Series Titles - which remains a record - but he also won eight Grand Slams. So that would be 25 major titles.

Having once again displayed her inability to do basic research, she thunders into a rant against Agassi for his admission he used drugs and lied about it during his playing days:

No mention that crystal meth destroys your brain and your life. No shred of remorse in his confession. No warnings to vulnerable children. Just a despicable bid to flog a few books.

Of course, since Agassi's autobiography hasn't actually come out yet, she has no idea if any of these things are in it. She selectively quotes this bit:

He said he felt 'a tidal wave of euphoria that sweeps away every negative thought. I've never felt so alive and hopeful - and I've never felt such energy'.

Without mentioning this bit:

But the physical aftermath is hideous. After two days of being high, of not sleeping, I’m an alien. I have the audacity to wonder why I feel so rotten. I’m an athlete, my body should be able to handle this.

Which hardly sounds like someone:

bragging about the illicit thrills.

Who does she target next? Kate Moss. Yes, another one of those younger women she seems to loathe so much. She's upset about Moss' new dress:

Why?

A neckline so scooped it touches her navel and a skirt only just long enough to cover her modesty? Perfect for the office Christmas party - if you work in a lapdancing club.

Yes, it's not as if Amanda would ever wear something with a low neckline, is it?


No, never.

Ahem.

But why is it that any woman who wears a low cut, short length dress is instantly a stripper. Does she hate women that much?

Well not all women. After all, last year when Liz Hurley went to an Elton John party with a low cut dress and cleavage everywhere, Amanda said:

Leave her be...long may Liz do so, heaving bosom and all.

It's almost as if she is using her column to attack anyone she doesn't like, whether it fits in with what she has previously argued or not. Imagine that.

And, incidentally, if she had bothered to look further than a very carefully posed publicity shot, she would see the dress in question is nothing like as revealing as she is claiming:


Next!

In a week when there's a famine in Ethiopia, 132 dead in suicide bombings in Baghdad, 100 killed in a market blast in Pakistan and 12 murdered in Kabul, what does Foreign Secretary David Miliband talk about? Why Tony Blair should be President of Europe, of course.

Interesting. The Presidency of Europe has been one of the big stories of the week, so it would be incredible if the Foreign Secretary hadn't talked about it. In any case, he had probably been asked about it.

Funnily enough, Amanda herself doesn't discuss any of those events other than that passing mention. And that was after the bit about a sequin dress. Still, at least the paper she works for covers such big news stories prominently:

OK, so Monday it was something about grandparents. Must be on Tuesday's front page:

Oh no, that was the one about the scandal of Daily Mail readers becoming criminals because they break the law. How dare the law!

Nope not Wednesday or Thursday either. They'd have to do one of those tragic events on Friday rather than, say, some complete non-story about a rock star's daughter wearing lipstick:

Oops.

Next it's the weekly pop at immigrants. And don't forget - Amanda is Australian. Because she seems to sometimes:

A mother who objected to ethnic minority staff being present at the birth of her child may be charged under the race discrimination laws.

I deplore racism and am aware our NHS would collapse without its army of fine foreign nurses, but perhaps the mother had a similar experience to me when I was last in hospital.

Or, perhaps, the mother was just a racist. Still at least we know Amanda

deplores racism

which come as a surprise to anyone who remembers this column of hers. And that's the second time she has said she deplores racism this month. Does she think people might think otherwise?

She then goes on to refer to a plan to

flood Britain within immigrants.

Obviously, because she deplores racism, that must be one of those good 'floods'. And then:

all they have really succeeded in doing is alienating the white working class, landing our schools with unmanageable numbers of non-English-speaking pupils and opening the door to the vile BNP.

Funny, but that sounds very familiar. Has Amanda been reading Jon Gaunt's thrilling new daily blog? Because on Monday he wrote:

I am no racist...

I and thousands of other Brits are having sleepless nights in between queuing for hours to see a doctor or a dentist, and to get a our kids into a school where the majority speak English and not a variety of languages from round the globe due to the tsunami of immigrants you have allowed to swamp Britain.

Again, that must be one of those good tsunamis and a totally positive use of the word 'swamp'. Because he's not a racist either.

The two are exactly the same. Referring to floods of foreigners taking your place in the healthcare line, suggesting your kids' education is suffering (although the difference between not speaking English and not speaking English as a first language is wilfully ignored) or in other ways suggesting immigrants are benefitting where you aren't is exactly the language the BNP uses.

But Gaunt and Amanda - they're not racist. Oh no.

Moving on, she celebrates the success of Today and Woman's Hour but suggest they wouldn't be commissioned today because:

Three hours of news and politics, with no screeching celebrity presenters? Unthinkable!

This from someone who loves Strictly Come Dancing (except Alesha Dixon) - a two hour programme of celebrities twirling around to elevator music.

And also from someone who presented the not-at-all missed news and politics show Morgan and Platell with Piers Morgan. How horrific is the thought of those two on television at the same time? Although she would probably claim as former newspaper editors they were serious journalists. Stop laughing at the back.

Anyway, she is really making another point that's well worth making:

As for Woman's Hour, it would be renamed Persons Of Unspecified Gender Hour.

Haha! Do you see? Because three sentences earlier she referred to 'Harriet Harperson'. It's about 'political correctness gone mad'!

It's also about some dismal, overpaid, know-nothing hack coming up with feeble jokes about the week's events. And this is just after she attacked someone else for being unfunny. Yes, really.

She targets Frankie Boyle for his Rebecca Addlington joke on Mock the Week (note to whingers: the clue is in the title):

While I'm all for free speech, Boyle's jibe was cruel, unfunny - and, above all, unjust.

So she believes in free speech, but not for people who tell jokes she doesn't think are funny? That'd be like saying, 'I'm not racist, but look at all these foreigners flooding here to ruin the education of white kids'.

Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Funny is clearly a matter of taste, but when did comedy have to be safe and just? Or is cruel and unjust fine, as long as it is funny?

Presumably it's not cruel or unjust to say someone is 'vacuous,' 'asinine' and has a 'chainsaw laugh'?

It's hypocritical to complain about pretending you can't say 'woman' and 'man' any more, but then saying certain jokes shouldn't be told.

Week in, week out, we see Amanda's pathetic attempts at comedy (and journalism) and yet she is trying to tell comedians what jokes they should tell.

Imagine her in another time, writing angry letters to Groucho Marx for:

Why don't we get married, and take a vacation? I'll need a vacation if we're going to get married. Married! I can see you now, in the kitchen, bending over a hot stove. But I can't see the stove!

Cruel. Unjust. Funny.

But cruel is having to suffer her drivel every week. Unjust is how she gets work in the media and other people - people with talent - can not.

And funny? Nope, can't think of anything funny about her.

Amanda Platell and her rubbish column

Amanda Platell. Sigh.

Guess which new myth about immigration she repeats in her column today?

That's right. It's that bloody cat again:

Only this week a court ruled that an illegal immigrant should not be deported as it would breach his human right to a family because he and his girlfriend now had a cat together. Such cases make a mockery of the British courts.

No, Amanda - such cases make a mockery of journalists who can't be bothered to do the slightest bit of research.

So that's three times this week that claim has been made in the Mail - once with the story, then with Littlejohn and now her. Given the lawyer involved has made it clear it's not true, why keep repeating it? Either it's a deliberate attempt to lie about immigration, or they're all a bit thick.

Probably both. But maybe it's more to do with laziness than stupidity. After all, if Amanda was really thick, she'd think 19 was a higher number than 24.

She does? Oh yes:

Commons Leader Harriet Harman has rewarded Parliament with the longest Christmas break since records began.

This year's Christmas break for MPs is 19 days. Last year it was 24 days. So not even the longest break since last year.

Still at least the former Conservative Party advisor wouldn't just indulge in partisan political points. Would she?

'Parliament is not yet fit for the 21st century,' thunders the Prime Minister. Why not? Because we don't have enough 'lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender candidates'.

So that's where it all went wrong then, Gordon. Not the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the banking collapse, the failing schools or corrupt MPs, but the sexual diversity quotas in Westminster.

What planet is he on?

Oh, she would. Maybe it's a planet where 24 days is longer than 19 days? But that's a fairly twisted interpretation and Brown never claimed that was 'where it all went wrong' or anything like it. More to the point, as Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg all said much the same things about the need for more MPs who are not white men, why pick on him alone? Cameron said:

under-representation of women and ethnic minorities was a 'real problem for Parliament and it's been an even greater problem for my party'.

And the Liberal Democrat leader said:

'Our Parliament pretends to represent modern Britain but it doesn't have modern Britain in it.'

Still, while she's having petty partisan pops at political folk she doesn't like, she might as well needlessly attack the Obamas again. A couple of weeks ago she curiously referred to Barack as having:

about as much charisma as a packet of cheese and onion crisps.

Barack Obama has been accused of many things but a lack of charisma? Still, she'd know all about politicians with charisma, having worked for, er, William Hague.

Today, it's Michelle she doesn't like. Why? Because she has done some hula-hooping. How dare she!

Am I the only one who, on seeing the picture of Michelle Obama swinging a hula-hoop around her hips, accompanied by a quote from the President saying 'My wife is the best hulahooper I know', felt more than a little nauseous?

Err, yes, you are.

She's supposed to be the First Lady, for heaven's sake, not a children's TV presenter.

Yes. How dare Michelle have a little bit of fun at a Healthy Kids Fair - designed to encourage kids to exercise more and eat better. And she did manage 142 hoops which, at a guess, is more than green-eyed Amanda can manage.

She also drips her bile on Alesha Dixon, who she infamously called a 'chocolate labrador', and who she still wants sacked from Strictly Come Dancing. After the ridiculous media over-reaction against Dixon following her first appearance as a judge on the show, the papers have hardly said a word. Not Amanda:

If a ratings-boost is required by the BBC, the solution is simple - bring Arlene back, and put Alesha 'Ditto' Dixon back on the dancefloor where she belongs.

Anyone who saw Arlene Phillips' dismal performance on Have I Got News For You might well wonder what the fuss is about. She spoke about twice during the broadcast programme, a clear indication her contributions were hilariously unmissable. Or not.

Still, hardly a surprise that Amanda doesn't know anything about popular culture either. Because in her desperation to attack yet another more successful (and, ahem, younger) woman she turns her attention to Nicole Kidman, who spoke out about violence against women in films a few days ago. Platell sniffs that complaining about women being portrayed as 'weak sex objects' would be:

marginally more credible if Kidman hadn't taken millions of dollars for playing a succession of just such parts.

Roles such as playing a high-class hooker in Moulin Rouge, a robotic spouse in Stepford Wives, a sexually confused wife in Eyes Wide Shut, a mailorder bride in Birthday Girl and a young tart on stage in The Blue Room.

Hmm. Well, that wasn't a 'succession of parts' as there were other films in-between those ones. And in Stepford Wives she was (spoiler!) never transformed into a robotic wife, but played along to uncover the mystery. In The Blue Room she played five different roles, including a 'young tart', but neither that nor the characters in Birthday Girl and Eyes Wide Shut were exactly 'weak'. In Moulin Rogue she was only weak in the sense she was dying.

And she certainly wouldn't have taken 'million of dollars' appearing on stage. But Amanda ends:

Is Nicole really turning her back on sexist, exploitative roles? Or, now she's 42, have they turned their back on her?

Having failed to make her case, she comes to a catty conclusion. She's too old and passed it at 42 to be sexy! And yet she's ten years younger than Amanda.

Isn't it time the media turned it's back on Amanda? Not because of her age, but because she writes badly researched, superficial nonsense.

It's just a TV show

Given the extraordinary fuss created when the BBC replaced Arlene Phillips with former winner Alesha Dixon on Strictly Come Dancing, it was inevitable that the knives were going to be out for Dixon after her first appearances.

And boy, aren't they?

Dixon has been attacked in the most vicious way - called 'vacuous' and 'clueless' on the Sunday Mirror front page, 'rubbish' in the Mail - as if people are thinking she's some murderer rather than just a JUDGE ON A DANCING PROGRAMME.

There seems to be a new sport of character-assassinating Dixon and it's not a nice one to watch. If you don't like her, don't watch the show. Otherwise, leave her alone.

Unsurprisingly, Amanda Platell uses her column to stick the knife in too, although when she criticises someone else for making

asinine comments

and

even starting to rival the legendary ignorance of Jade Goody

you can't help but see the irony.

But then Platell comes up with a very curious phrase:

we want a critical, intelligent, well-informed assessment of the performances, not the judging equivalent of being licked by a chocolate labrador.

Now maybe the use of 'chocolate labrador' is innocent and just incredibly clumsy - knowing what a useless writer Platell is makes that possible.

But given that Dixon is black, it seems an very odd choice of words.

Would the point Platell was making have been any less clear without the word 'chocolate'? No. So why include it?

Amanda Platell 'forgets' she's an immigrant

It has always been a bit of a source of wonder how Amanda Platell can be considered an expert on anything given her claim to fame is her incredibly unsuccessful work as press secretary for William Hague.

Her latest outburst is related to this week's population figures. As if trying to be an offensive and inaccurate in as little time as possible, her third sentence reads:

Sadly, though, it is not the indigenous middle-class, hard-working, tax-paying population that's exploding.

She might as well have said 'we're being over-run by chavs and foreigners on benefits' and be done with it.

She blames the benefit system, suggesting:

it's not so much a baby boom we're experiencing as a benefits boom. Middle Britain, stand ready to empty your wallets.

This is ludicrous. And really unpleasant. Apparently immigrants, and immigrant families, aren't ever taxpayers in Amanda's bizarre, imagined Britain.

She asks:

how many immigrant mums have contributed anything to this country before landing us with another child to educate in our already struggling schools?

Obviously she doesn't provide an answer, because she doesn't know, but asking the question makes it sound like this must be a problem. She goes on, in typical BNP-style rhetoric to ask:

At a time when the very core of Britishness is threatened, shouldn't we be concerned about this?

What exactly is the 'very core of Britishness'? What is it being threatened by? Does anyone know what she is on about?

She also claims:

We are now the second most densely populated country in the world

despite the fact 'we' are 52nd. So that is just a blatant lie.

She goes on to display a lack of self-awareness that takes the breath away:

We're told mass immigration is crucial to keep Britain booming, that we need foreign workers.

In fact, as other figures showed this week, more than five million Brits have never worked under Labour, which suggests that far from importing workers, we need to get our own population into jobs.

At which point you just want to scream. Because, for those who don't know, Amanda Platell was born in Australia.

That would make her an immigrant. An immigrant with a job on a British newspaper. She's complaining about herself.