Sunday, April 01, 2012

Gordon in the morning on Sunday: Jokes and trains

Today, Gordon reports on Rihanna's love affair with the London Underground:

Tube gets a Jubi-Rih line
Rihanna is obsessed with the Underground
It's what you'd expect - random old nonsense, held together by an unsourced and clearly made-up quote:
The Bajan singer, who has been in London this week to promote her new film Battleship, has made a wish list after browsing through the Transport For London online gift shop.

She dreamed up the idea after necking a few glasses of wine while watching several episodes of BBC2 TV series The Tube on the iPlayer with a girl pal.
Understandably, the rubbish doesn't stand up to any examination; indeed, almost as soon as it was published, Going Underground's blog trashed it to within an inch of its life.

There is one thing, though: today is April Fool's Day. Could it be that this pile of unlikely sounding bollocks is meant to be unlikely sounding? Could this be Gordon trying to do a joke?

The trouble is, when every day you run obviously false stories supported by blatantly invented quotes from transparently non-existent people, how would you flag up when your readers are meant to be in on the joke?

On this day, readers are well-advised to approach newspaper stories with enough salt ready to cure a haddock. But every day is like that for the Bizzare column.

[Thanks to @jamesthegill for the tip]


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