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June 25, 2007

Daily Star reporter leaves in dispute over Victoria Beckham knickers stunt

By Press Gazette

Daily Star journalist Linda Harrison has left the paper following a dispute over an assignment involving dressing up as Victoria Beckham in a corset and knickers.

Acccording to sources at the paper, Harrison parted company with the title on Monday after senior staff asked her to go out wearing the outfit worn by the former Spice Girl to the Glamour awards to gauge public response. The journalist at first asked for a model to be sent on the assignment.

When this was refused, she agreed to do the assignment, but unhappy at having to wear her smalls in public, she wore hotpants to save her blushes.

Afterwards, Star editor Dawn Neesom is said to have been unhappy with the pictures which came back from the assignment and scrapped the feature.

On hearing of the editor’s displeasure, Harrison believed she had been fired and left the office last week. After taking legal advice, she opted to hand in her resignation on Monday.

Daily Star management were unavailable for comment at the time of going to press.

The dispute comes shortly after a former editor of soft porn magazine Men Only won a victory at an employment tribunal after claiming ‘artistic differences’with his bosses over the type of models they used led to him being fired from his £50,000-a-year job.

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Pierre Peronne had tried to target a different market by using slightly older models in the Paul Raymond Publications-owned title.

But managing director Mark Quinn insisted Peronne should use younger-looking models and also ordered him to make the content more explicit, with bigger and more graphic photos, the tribunal heard.

The tribunal upheld Perrone’s claims that their ‘artistic differences led to him being demoted, then axed in a sham redundancy”.

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