Just a couple of weeks ago I did a post about the two significant failures of Rupert Murdoch, or as I refer to him on my adscam.blog “The Wizened of Oz.” Namely, his destruction of MySpace and his murder of The News of the World. However, to prove I am not a complete arsehole, I will give him some credit for his creation of the world’s most successful daily newspaper… The Sun. Even though it is a pathetic rag.
This achievement was primarily brought about by his hiring of my old London neighbour and drinking mate, Larry Lamb, as the editor in 1969. Before that Larry was the northern editor of the Daily Mail in Manchester. At The Sun, he single handedly pioneered the paper’s populist style, cramming page one with cretin level snappy headlines under the bright red masthead, and most famously of all established Page Three as the home of “Tits and Arse” nudes. Even though he insisted that the models should be “nice girls”, as “big-breasted girls look like tarts”. He also applied the term ‘Winter of Discontent’ to the catastrophic series of strikes over the winter of 1978–79. Within one year, he doubled the papers circulation.
All this and more should be spelled out in the just released Danny Boyle movie “Ink”, which is not about tattoo parlors, but how Lamb’s tactics flouted journalistic conventions by appealing to the working class and casting off journalism’s elite pretensions of what did and didn’t count as news. The movie is shot in the expected Boyle trademark rollicking style, featuring fast cuts, heavy accents and rock music played at ten thousand decibels. Haven’t seen it yet. But watched the trailer and I’m still deaf. However, a three martini lunch should fix that. Cheers!
