This entry was posted on
Wednesday, November 30th, 2005 at
2:15 pm and is filed
under Rupert ‘The Evil One’ Murdoch.

From today’s Media Monkey diary: Of all the possible successors to the Sun’s Richard Littlejohn, David Blunkett was probably quite a long way down most people’s lists. But the former home secretary was unveiled today as the paper’s new columnist, giving his “candid and insightful analysis” of the week’s events. Well, he’s not exactly a straight replacement – Blunkett’s column will be on Thursday, Littlejohn used to be on a Tuesday. Blunkett is mates with Sun editor Rebekah Wade, of course, and famously dined with her and hubby Ross Kemp on the night she, er, ended up in jail. Littlejohn, doubtless, will be delighted. Blunkett was always one of his number one targets (there have been a few) culminating a while back in “the secret sex diary of David Blunkett, aged 57 3/4.” Perhaps Blunkett will give us an exclusive peak into Littlejohn’s memoirs once he starts at the Daily Mail.

This has also been reported by Brand Republic: The Sun has announced that Blunkett’s “forthright and outspoken views on life and politics” will be aired in a weekly column starting tomorrow and then every Thursday. To publicise the move, Blunkett has given his first full interview to the paper. The article appears in today’s edition and recounts his resignation from the pensions brief due to “mistakes” in not disclosing a two-week directorship of DNA Bioscience, before taking up the role after the May election… It is understood that Blunkett met with Sun editor Rebekah Wade shortly after his latest resignation, by coincidence on the same night as her alleged “ginger ninja” attack on her husband, the actor Ross Kemp.

This is just one of the reasons why I wish Private Eye would use online publishing more strategically. Please excuse me as I feed this to indexing robots in an effort to correct a significant error in the echo chamber:

Sky were very careful to push the whole ‘evening with Blunkett’ thing, but the truth is that – while Wade and Kemp did meet up with David Blunkett in the early evening – they actually spent most of that night getting pissed at a party thrown by Matthew Freud and Elizabeth Murdoch.

PS – I haven’t photoshopped for a while. Today I just happened to post the following images to B3ta:

Rebekah Wade
Ross Kemp

Oh, and you simply must watch Ross Kemp and Steve McFadden dancing to Kung Fu Fighting.

(Thanks to Alan, James and Rob for the links and leads.)

How about that? I got all the way though this post without saying “You couldn’t make it u….”

Damn.

UPDATE (see comments) – Heh. OK, now is the perfect time to plug Guido’s Press Plagiarist of the Year Award. If you wish to be an informed voter, details of the final three are here.

UPDATE – And now is the perfect time to mention that Ian Hislop owes me a lunch and I aim to claim it.