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The Feral Beast: If you can't stand the heat...

Sunday 15 November 2009 01:00 GMT
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So much for the sisterhood. The Observer's outgoing political editor, Gaby Hinsliff has been roundly condemned by colleagues after signing off with a 4,000-word piece about how the job ruined her family life. "I was very saddened by this," sniffed Guardian columnist Jackie Ashley on a podcast, "she has basically quit because she can't manage it." "I wasn't totally sympathetic to the thrust of the piece," chimed Obs columnist Catherine Bennett. "Lots of other jobs are infinitely harder to juggle than journalism." As Gaby may now discover.

No comment from Greenslade

A bad week for The Guardian. On Monday the Press Complaints Commission dismissed its story of phone-tapping at the News of the World. On Wednesday it announced 100 jobs were to be axed, and on Thursday it was fined by an Iraqi court. Oddly, resident media commentator Roy Greenslade had nothing to say about the job cuts, as one reader noted: "I am sure he will turn his analytical mind to The Guardian and ask hard questions of those who run the company, of the editor and his senior colleagues who earn hundreds of thousands of pounds, whose decisions to spend tens of millions of mad projects have brought the company to its knees." In your own time, Roy.

'Lite' stays weighty to the last

So it's farewell to London Lite, which printed its last copy on Friday. As is traditional, staff were banged out, not just by their own people but by the Evening Standard, with whom they share a floor. Earlier in the week, staff were rumoured to be cooking up fake stories to run in the last edition, on the basis there could be no comeback from celebs. But an insider dismisses that as 'nonsense'.

Wadley: gone but not forgotten

Has the Evening Standard got it in for its old editor? A piece about the tussle between Veronica Wadley and Liz Forgan (right) put Ben Bradshaw's description of Wadley as "a Tory patsy" in the headline. Then, at the Standard's glittering "Influentials" party, Wadley wasn't there while Richard Desmond, bitter opponent of her husband, Tom Bower, was. Even the list of Influentials appeared to have a dig: Boujis nightclub co-owner Matt Hermer was in, but his partner, Jake Parkinson-Smith, who happens to be Wadley's nephew, was out.

Lewis too naughty for bedtime

Roger Lewis has drawn rave reviews for his new book Seasonal Suicide Notes, a scabrous attack on cultural philistinism. The Mail bagged a serialisation, although editor Paul Dacre is said to have baulked on reading the copy. Now I learn the BBC has passed it over for Book at Bedtime for being too politically incorrect and sweary. The book uses some choice words to describe Clive James and Andrew Roberts. "Everyone at the Beeb is jittery since Sachsgate," whispers a mole. "The irony is that Roger's book has become a victim of cultural philistinism itself."

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