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The Feral Beast: Caught out

Sunday 23 August 2009 00:00 BST
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The staff of London Lite were sad to see Bo Wilson leave 10 days ago. A reporter on the free-sheet – though not on staff – she had also stepped up to a desk job when needed. Understandably, she jumped at the chance when offered a staff job elsewhere as a deputy news editor, and duly trotted off on holiday. Sadly, though, her break was interrupted by a text telling her that her new home, Rupert Murdoch's thelondonpaper, was to close. Commiserations.

Glee writ small

Suggesting that the demise of thelondonpaper bodes ill for its rivals might pop a few bubbles. The mood among staff at the Lite was one of jubilation when the closure was announced. Their sister paper, the Evening Standard, splashed on the story and the Lite nearly did so too. But it was decided that a headline saying "We won!" would be more triumphal than seemly.

Swift riposte

It seems that under new editor Catherine Ostler, Tatler is in danger of becoming genuinely witty. After last month's tongue-in-cheek version of the previous years' most invited list, the top people's magazine has replaced the social editor. Out goes the impeccably posh Lady Emily Compton. In comes Isaac Bickerstaff which, Sindy readers will recognise, was one of Jonathan Swift's noms de plume.

Vicious circle

It's all getting a bit unseemly on Twitter. On his TV show the other day, Charlie Brooker called NHS-bashing MEP Daniel Hannan a lot of names. James Delingpole jumped to his friend Hannan's defence, accusing Brooker of lapsing from his normally high standards of satire. Brooker replied on Twitter, calling Delingpole "a clueless, rat-faced, simpering, humourless, piss-writing, fuck-of-a-shit". Delingpole countered: "Oi. Less of the rudeness. I was coming at you from a position of love and admiration." But then he spoiled it by calling Brooker "ungrateful" and "warthog-faced" and using a very rude word. Not quite the Algonquin, is it?

Stalker-mail

While some people are struggling with Twitter, others are still trying to come to terms with fame. Put the two together? Nightmare. Boy George tweeted that he was off to see Jeff Koons at the Serpentine recently. Today he is regretting it: "Don't ever twitter where your (sic) going because people you don't want to follow you, follow you."

Perfect radio?

Hardeep Singh Kohli is serving a six-month ban from BBC1's The One Show for "inappropriate behaviour", but can work elsewhere for the corporation. So he will have appreciated the enthusiasm of the Spectator's radio critic, Kate Chisholm, for his Radio 4 series Tea and Biscuits. It is, she writes "perfect radio of an old-fashioned kind". Nothing, we're sure, to do with Kohli being a contributing editor to – the Spectator.

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