Paper Monitor
10:52 UK time, Wednesday, 2 December 2009
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
After news of Simon Cowell's personal grooming regime earlier this week, both the Mail and the Mirror set out to put a price on the pop mogul's routine... and come up with wildly different figures.
The Mirror on his hair, "Simon is known to spend up to £300 every four weeks on getting his barnet chopped". That's £3,900 a year.
Fascinating stuff, especially for the Mail, which comes it at a substantially more modest £600 a year.
But if the Mirror over-estimates the music magnate's salon spending, it underplays the amount he shells out on his gnashers when compared with the Mail's figure.
Cowell, says the Mirror, spent £10,000 on his teeth and "maintaining them costs a pretty packet too". How much? £27 a day, or £9,855 a year.
Over at the Mail, however, the figure is twice that - "a cool £20,000 of dentistry" a year.
And there's still no concord on Cowell's Botox - he's admitted he is a devotee, says the Mail - spending either. The Mail says it's £400 a year, the Mirror makes it £1,000.
And so it goes on. The Mail eventually tots up a final sum of £24,700 a year; the Mirror makes it somewhere north of the £400,000 mark. In mitigation for HM Press, the metrics are not exactly comparable - the Mirror includes things like loo paper and food costs while the Mail sticks to personal grooming.
But on the basis that an on the lifestyle expenditure of TV's Mr Nasty is unlikely to succeed, Paper Monitor is none the wiser.
The 
