The Sport has a great way to fill its front page when its journalists are feeling particularly lazy (which seems to be just about all the time). They surf the web for a while looking for fake photos of some young starlet. When they find them, they print them on the front page with a story saying how terrible it is that photos like this can appear on the internet. I don’t think they can spell “hypocritical” – let alone understand what it means! Today it’s the turn of Britney Spears. They’ve found a fake that has her body attached to a large-breasted entrant from some “wet t-shirt” competition. Of course, the headline forgets to mention that the

photo is a fake. You only learn that when you bother to read the dozen or so words that constitute the “story” under the photo.

I haven’t been looking all that closely, but I don’t think we see many stories like this any more. I think that’s largely because even the readers of the lower end tabloids are so used to the internet that no-one is the slightest bit surprised when they come across pictures like these. Mind you, the Mail still likes to run “ban this sick filth” stories that are illustrated with photos which leave you in no doubt exactly how sick the filth is.

The third series of Big Brother started over the weekend. This is a godsend for lazy tabloid journalists. All they have to do is sit watching E4 all day and they can print stories about a group of complete nobodies who the public have suddenly become completely interested in. It’s interesting to compare the different approaches that different tabloids take – the Star and the Sport will just be printing as many nude pictures of the women in the house as they can

find, and on the other hand, the Mirror has declared itself the “anti-Big Brother” paper and fills it’s pages with stories of how dire the contestants are. Here at “Wasted Inches” we love Big Brother, but we really can’t see how it should be front page news. Every day. For the next nine weeks.

This seems dated now. It’s hard to believe that Big Brother was ever that popular. It’s been five years since anyone really took any notice of it. Channel Four attempted to put the show out of its misery a couple of years ago, but Channel Five picked it up and has been running it into the ground ever since. As this story says, ten years ago there would be Big Brother stories on the front page of just about every tabloid for the duration of the show. Last summer I don’t remember seeing a single front page story. And I’m embarrassed that I admitted to loving Big Brother. The interest soon wore off. I don’t think I’ve watched an episode since Big Brother 7 in 2006.

Much consternation amongst the tabloids this morning as someone from the Lottery has let it

slip that the odds are against you actually winning any money. Well, what a surprise. It’s not called the Stupidity Tax for nothing you know.

Ten years ago, the National Lottery wasn’t new, but it was still interesting enough for the tabloids to run stories about it. These days it doesn’t get a mention except for the rare occasions when someone wins a rollover.

Now this is a perfect example of exactly what is wrong with tabloid journalism in the UK. A third-rate has-been has a TV show to promote so she’s suddenly seen around town with a man less than half her age. The tabloids then print this on their front pages. In what possible world could this be considered news?

This is nothing more than a press release and it has no place in a newspaper.

If there’s one entry in the whole of Wasted Inches that I’m slightly contrite about then it’s this one. I mean,yes, of course it’s appalling that people engineer photo opportunities in order promote

TV shows. But I’m a little ashamed of describing Lulu as a “third-rate has-been”. She’s awesome, of course. I must have been feeling particularly cynical that day.

Everyone seems to think that something important happened in a football match last night. When will they learn that nothing that has anything to do with football can

ever be at all important?

Sigh. Football again. I don’t suppose it will ever go away. And I don’t suppose I’ll ever understand the attraction. I honestly can’t remember what had happened the previous night.

That’s “Kylie is Single”, not “New single from Kylie”. It seems that Kylie has split up with her boyfriend (can’t remember his name – but it’s not important, he’s a nobody). Why are all the tabloids telling us this on a day when the BNP are winning council seats?

Another day, another pointless story about a pop singer’s love life. History has failed to record who this particular ex-boyfriend

was. More happily, ten years on from this story, the BNP lost pretty much all of its councillors.

Britney’s recently dumped

boyfriend, the completely unknown pop singer Justin Timberlake, has said that, contrary to her claims, Britney is no longer a virgin. And says “I should know”. Why would anyone care about this? Will hoards of pre-pubescent girls stop buying Miss Spears’ records because she’s known the pleasures of the flesh? We can only hope.

It’s strange to remember how obsessed with Britney Spears the media was ten years ago. These days she is almost completely ignored. And remember how she used to claim that she was still a virgin? Of course, now she has two or three children. And that “completely unknown” pop singer is now probably more famous than she is.