APPARENTLY there is an imminent documentary to be screened on Channel Four regarding a number of put-up jobs devised by the channel to see if the red-tops believed their lies about celebrities.
Mayhem
Actors for the show phoned the show-biz pages with made-up stories of mayhem at certain celebrity home-parties, for example.
And what they found was not only did the journalists on these publications not check the validity of these tales but they also added made-up quotes from ‘a chum’ or ‘a friend’.
Mistake
What I cannot get over is this: does Channel Four think we do not know this already? A mistake the media sometimes make - is that they think that the public is stupider than they are.

WHAT a shocking story the Canoe Couple turned out to be!
ITV1’s documentary, One Man and his Canoe, the John Darwin Story, revealed some very sad facts about the depths John Darwin and his wife, Anne had gone to in order to secure life insurance money.
Crimes
I’m sure we’ve all experienced money issues at some point in our lives but to get into so much debt and then to commit the fraud of faking your death, lying to your family, taking on the identity of a dead baby, the crimes go on and on…
Dying for money
Flicking through The Week this morning I saw that police in New Mexico had to revisit an assumed homicide case after finding a gun, tied to some helium balloons near the body of Thomas Hickman.
At first it looked like he had been murdered beacuse his mouth was taped up with a bullet lodged in his head.
Discovery
But after watching an old episode of CSI Miami, where a man conceals his suicide by tying his gun to balloons to float it away from the scene ~ they then discovered that by making his death look like murder, Hickman had hoped his family could gain $800,000 in life insurance.

I WATCHED part of a docu-programme last night about shameful secrets of celebrities and society in general. And this is what the show revealed ~
People in the public eye like Geri Halliwell and Cherie Blair are lonely souls. One way the rich and famous have defeated this, is to employ the (astonishingy expensive) services of a life-style guru, who becomes their confident, mentor and general style-councellor.
This explains the rise of the ‘life-coach’, a role never before heard of until the tabloid tales emerged on Cherie’s guru Carole Caplan.
Greasy Spoon Cafe
Next shameful secret was the death of the good old British hang-out of ‘the cafe’. Before US sitcom ‘Friends’ introduced the concept ‘coffee culture’, Britons up and down the country met up with their mates, either in the pub or at the local cafe, where for £2.50 you could get a full English breakfast with all the trimmings ( and a ‘cuppa tea’ of course).
But since Friends took the nation by storm in the late 90s, so did coffee shops. Take any UK high street today and you will notice an abundance of Starbucks, Cafe Nero, Coffee Republics…
Let’s Pretend
Lastly, the show highlighted the rise of cockney speaking middleclass boys. These are blokes like Madonna’s fella, Guy Ritchie and 90s band Blur’s front-man Damon Albarn, who have Lords for parents and have gone to posh paid-for schools but speak… with a cockney accent?!
The simple reason behind this idiosyncracy is the simple reason, cockney is ‘cooler’ than Received Pronunciation. Boys will be boys!

BLIMEY! Did anyone watch Crime Watch last night? Talk about making you want to curl-up with a cuppa and never leaving your house ever again!
While it was on, I received the following text message from my little sister: “Guess what? Phil is here watching Crime Watch. I hate Crime Watch, it scares me! Ahh never mind… Big Brother is starting soon so she’ll turn the channel!”
After the programme I spoke to my man’s mum. She said: “I’ve been watching Crime Watch. What I don’t understand, are the horrendous murders which take place for no apparent reason what-so-ever! I have drawn the curtains and instructed FiFi Cat to stay indoors!