Classic example of misdirection in this headline from today’s Soaraway Sun. It appears with a picture of spikey-haired homophobe and pop idol Gareth Gates standing next to Big Brother winner and general waste of space Kate Lawler. We’re obviously supposed to infer that they are getting engaged, but further reading reveals that in fact they’ve just exchanged phone numbers (so they can give each other “a ring” – geddit!) If we were feeling particularly cynical we might point out that Gareth has a new single out on Monday and that the BB3 video has just been released so this could all be a big publicity stunt. But, of course, the Sun is a serious newspaper that would never allow its front page to be used like that.

Ten years on and the frantic publicity attempts of Gates and Lawler were all for nothing. It’s years since I heard anything about either of them.

Deep in the Australian jungle (well not that deep as a 5-star hotel is only 5 minutes walk away) eight British C-list celebrities have been camping for two weeks. It’s been great TV, but it’s certainly not news. However the tabloids have all had it on their front pages every day. Today they were full of the story of how Tara Palmer-Tomkinson (who is she anyway, and why is she famous?) tried seducing Darren Day (the ‘popular’ singer) by grabbing his hand and putting it in her pants (whilst she was wearing them). And the tabloid editors think this is important enough to go on the front page. On a day when car bombs had been exploding in Kabul.

Ten years on, “I’m A Celebrity…” is still running. And the tabloids still run stories about it in preference to real news. It has, however, moved to later in the year so the 2012 series hasn’t started yet. I have no idea whether Palmer-Tomkinson and Day’s relationship ever took off (and I’m confident that you don’t care). NATO troops are still on the streets of Kabul.

It must be a good headline as both the Sun and the Mirror came up with it independently. The story is, of course, the birth of a second son to a bad singer and a sportsman. The bit that apparently makes this news (tho’ we strongly suspect it would have made the front pages even if he’d been called “Fred”) is that they’ve chosen the name “Romeo”. And, according to the tabloids, this has confused the fans. It also gives the tabloid hacks a chance to show off their education by paraphrasing Shakespeare. With the Earth Summit going on in South Africa and the US once again rattling its sabre at Iraq, it’s difficult to see this as the most important news of the day, but then we don’t run the tabloids. Here at Wasted Inches we hanker for the days when this would have been a small announcement in the personal columns of The Times.

The Beckhams had one more child and names him “Cruz”. Their skills at choosing names led comedian Stuart Francis to comment “You know who really gives kids a bad name? Posh and Becks.” TV viewers judged this to be the funniest joke at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2012.