Paris, Paul Dacre and Jeff Whitley’s confessions

Whatever the French can do, the English do better. Or just differently.

You heard earlier this week about Clément Koch’s black comedy for the Parisian stage, entitled and set in Sunderland and owing something to his observations while a student at Durham.

Since Salut! Sunderland‘s piece appeared – see here – it has been in The Times and Independent and on the Today programme – Sunderland apparently described there as being on Teesside – as well as on Ready To Go and the Newcastle pages at not606.com

The BBC rang me early from Newcastle to do a short interview on a breakfast programme. Last I heard was that it was being discussed by Hawksbee and Jacobs on TalkSport.

Imitation is a great form of flattery but M Salut trusts that commissions are in the post. There is one journalist who need not pay since he alerted me to the play in the first place, but I had better not name names in case my article appeared before his.

And now Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, has enlivened the Leveson inquiry into press conduct, defending tabloid and mid-market newspapers’ conduct in these terms:

“The Hampstead liberal with his gilded life-style understandably enjoys The Guardian, a paper that deals with serious issues. But does he or a judge have any right to deny someone who works 10 hours a day in a Sunderland call centre and lives for football, the right to buy a paper that reveals the sexual peccadilloes of one of his team’s millionaire married players – a player who uses his celebrity to sell products to him and his children?”

Clearly he was not talking about Jeff Whitley, who has admitted to snorting cocaine when at Cardiff City (though not while playing, merely after being given paid leave because of his drinking). But if it wasn’t cocaine, what exactly was he on when he took that kick – if it can be described as a kick – in the penalty shoot-out in the promotion playoff v Crystal Palace?

We must surely be told.

Monsieur Salut