Paper Monitor
12:03 UK time, Monday, 24 May 2010
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Lavish spending. Teetering debts. Accusations of reckless fiscal irresponsibility.
No, not those budget cuts. What really excites Paper Monitor is Fleet Street's reaction to the news that the Duchess of York allegedly accepted cash from an undercover reporter for an introduction to her ex-husband.
The Daily Telegraph's coverage is, after all, a masterpiece of hauteur, with every column inch visibly shuddering, Nancy Mitford-fashion, at each alleged transgression of decorum.
It itemises, with visible horror, Sarah Ferguson's decidedly spending habits: the £50,000 shopping sprees, the £200,000 unpaid bills, the staff of 12 ("including a butler, a dresser and personal assistant").
On the comment pages, Melanie McDonagh asks herself which aspect of the whole sorry episode says the most about Sarah Ferguson. "For me," the columnist concludes, "it was probably the stupidity."
It all calls to mind Lord Charteris's best-known characterisation of the Duchess: "VULGAR, VULGAR, VULGAR."
But elsewhere, Paper Monitor detects traces of grudging sympathy. True, the Daily Mirror does not neglect the opportunity to republish its photograph of the Ferguson big toe being sucked by financial adviser John Bryan.
But it runs an opinion piece from its former Royal correspondent James Whitaker arguing that her former in-laws only have themselves to blame for sanctioning a "truly mean" divorce settlement of £15,000 a year. Even the Daily Mail allows itself a moment of pathos, noting that the Duchess looked "drained and despondent" in the wake of the latest scandal.
And the Independent expresses no less disdain than the Telegraph - except it's directed at the News of the World, the paper which carried out the sting. Phillip Knightly, a former member of the Sunday Times's Insight investigations team, sniffs that undercover entrapment is a "cheap form of journalism" which attracts reporters "seeking to become heroes of their own stories".
Perhaps the tabloids just can't get the staff these days.
The 
