The Daily Mailstrom

My Grandmother is 88 and over the last year, managed to give cancer a kicking. What a gal. I always go to see her bearing some gifts, a big shiny bunch of gerbera or a rather excessive cream cake; her bracelet that needed fixing or some new photos from my travels. Of course I don’t mind doing her shopping for her, but the last time I did it, she stopped me short as I pulled out a tub of her normal brand of butter. She was convinced that it was the root of all evil. It clogged your arteries, gave you deep vein thrombosis and funded Columbian drug rackets. Even though she spread the same brand across scones, crumpets and new potatoes for 88 years, from that day forth, it would never let it touch her lips again.

And who was responsible for laying it on so thick? Where had all this grease come from? It was all because she had read an article in the paper.

The Daily Mail (often referred to as the Daily Hate Mail)  is often guilty of spoiling my pleasant afternoons with Grandma in the rose garden. For those who do not know, the Mail is responsible for instigating moral panic and firing up hate campaigns across the UK with a scary combination of leading headlines and sensationalised statistics. In the Mail’s world, all young families deal in drugs and wield machetes, and the beds that are not being  overrun by bloodsucking bedbugs are the unholy places of fornication for gay priests and Nigerian models. Well at least the latter were about to get married….

Because of the Mail’s handiwork, my Grandma is convinced that the morals of the world are rotten to the core. Even Stan Over The Road becomes a suspected paedophile, and she always hides her handbag from the health visitor. Lord knows what she thinks i’m up to. I just hope she never sees my suspicious face grinning back at her on p.17…..

I came across a fantastic site the other day by Chris Applegate that takes all of the scare tactics out of the Mail and turns them into the big joke they really are with the genius that is the “Daily Mail Headline Generator’. Mail panic tags such as ‘single mothers’ and ‘homosexual’ are mashed up to create hilarious headlines such as ‘has the human rights act turned the Queen gay?’ and ‘will Dumbing Down give your pension Swine Flu?’ The frightening thing if you saw these headlines on the front of the Mail, you really wouldn’t bat an eyelid, (although my Gran would).

On further inspection, I was glad to find out that Chris Applegate is also a talented blogger; his site certainly warrants a click or five. I think it will make you laugh.

I am sorry to say that Grandma’s staple diet of Mr Kipling’s French Fancies and pineapple juice is very likely now a thing of the past thanks to the Mail’s handiwork- but nevermind, that means there’ll be more left for me….!