More headlines

I am sure I must said this before but sometimes I feel like headlines are like the number 159 bus. You wait ages for one then three come along together. Today would appear to be such a day. Well actually five came along...even the number 159 doesn't do that.

The Sun carries a story, with pictures, of one-time soccer legend Paul Gascoigne vomiting out of a car window as he was being driven down the M1 by his manager. The headline, which his fellow Geordies will understand even if no one else does, is: Howay the lunch.

Also in The Sun, a story about a tiger who snatched a photographer's camera off the Bahamas is headlined: Burgle Sharkey.

Remember the 25-year-old man, Keith Macdonald, exposed by the papers a few months as having 15 children by 14 different women? He's back in the news today. Not because he has three more children on the way (which he was) but because he's been hunting for a girlfriend online. The headline? Browser Snake. Okay, it lacks a verb but it made me smile.

But headline of the day must be the story on page 23 of The Sun. A former Methodist church - complete with stained glass windows - has been converted in to a branch of Tesco Express. The headline: Sell us this day our daily bread.

Sad to see that The Daily Telegraph has at least three weak headlines today. Not only sad but surprised. The first is over a story about a teacher suspended for allowing pupils to wear make-up and listen to iPods in class. Today's lesson...iPods and make-up. No verbs and doesn't really tell us what the story is about except in the most general way.

A town council meeting in Dorset voted to scrap a children's playground because the wording on the agenda was misleading, The Daily Telegraph tells us. In paragraphs nine and ten of the 11 par story, we read a quote from a local youth club chairman. "The meeting resembled an episode of The Vicar of Dibley.

"All that was missing was for one of them to say 'No, no, no, no...yes'." This prompted a sub to write this obscure headline - well, obscure to non-watchers of The Vicar of Dibley, No, no, no, no ... yes: the Dibley bunglers".

Elsewhere The Daily Telegraph informs us "Britain is the cocaine capital of Europe after use among young adults increased by 50 per cent in five years". So what reader-grabbing, verb-including, non-punctuated headline is over this story? Britain, the cocaine capital.

I don't mind sub breaking the rules to come up with a clever headline but this just isn't one.