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January 8, 2004updated 22 Nov 2022 1:28pm

Dog watches dog 08.01.04

By Press Gazette

Pierce description is ancient history

After complaining to Dog last year that the Daily Express’s Day and Night diary was copying some of his best lines, Tim Walker, The Sunday Telegraph’s Mandrake, now has a bone to pick with Andrew Pierce, editor of The Times’s People diary.

Mandrake, 21 December, on the television historian Tristram Hunt: “He has all of the gravitas but none of the wrinkles of Schama and Starkey.”

People, 26 December: “He has all of the gravitas but none of the grey hairs of Starkey and Schama.”

Says Walker: “I was going to write grey hairs myself funnily enough, but it was pointed out to me that Schama isn’t yet grey.”

They come to praise Caesar, not bury her

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It must be hard to be taken seriously as a business journalist when your name is Julia Caesar – but filling your website with photographs of yourself all glammed up and pouting like a celebrity wannabe surely can’t help matters.

Her site contains countless colour pictures of the blonde queen of the Footsie, who can be seen early in the morning on World Business Report on BBC One and BBC World as well as on BBC News 24.

Dog can reveal that Caesar’s fame is spreading. She now has a page to herself on the website Current Buns: The Infobabe Website (“The Female Current Affairs Presenters Site”).

And what’s more, she is gaining a following in the US, as can be seen from this extract from the website of one Terry Wong. He

describes what he discovered when driving his Dodge truck through the desert of Baja in California last March.

“I usually stay up pretty late. I like listening and watching the news. Because of these two characteristics, I made an important discovery. Around 3am, you can catch Julia Caesar on ABC news here in the Bay Area.

She reports on financial news and for obvious reasons (if you’ve watched), her reports make you smile. I get happy, silly happy that someone can be so entertained, and entertaining, when reporting on the FTSE index.”

Echo plans hit the wall

The Dorset Echo’s plan to boost pre-Christmas sales backfired somewhat, Dog hears. Despite heated protests from editor David Murdock, staff were told they would have to buy the paper if they wanted an Echo 2004 wall planner.

Even advertisers who came in to pick up a wall planner (free every other year) were told the same. So in stepped opposition paper the Western Gazette, which sent a batch of its own wall planners for Echo staff to use and was immediately inundated with requests for around 40 more.

The result is Echo walls plastered with rival charts. This is from the David Brent school of management, Dog believes.

Dog’s story of the Sevenoaks Chronicle reader (Dog, 19 December) complaining that she couldn’t fold the paper easily enough reminded Littlehampton Gazette editor Roger Green of a visit from one of his readers.

It was prompted by the paper’s generous decision to give away a packet of flower seeds to all its readers.

“It’s about these seeds,” the old boy began. “They are no good for my soil. I’ve got clay soil, and the packet says they shouldn’t be planted in heavy soil.”

Apart from calling out the Ground Force team, Green could think of no other suggestion than giving away the seeds to a friend or relative with the right kind of soil.

“Rarely has a gift horse felt so spurned,” says Green.

Dog can’t quite imagine BBC business editor Jeff Randall attracting such interest among the Californian trucking community, somehow.

Yes m’lady

In the light of Harry Evans’s knighthood, the question they are now asking at CNBC, the station that broadcasts his wife Tina Brown’s weekly chat show, is: “Do we now have to call her Lady Evans?” And curtsy?

Mirror image: Ormesher’s shot

Top of the snaps: Robinson’s pic

Who took the winning photograph?

Sunsport photographer Mark Robinson is officially top of the snaps, crowed The Sun the day after the What The Papers Say Awards last month in which its man had become Sports Photographer of the Year.

For illustration it used Robinson’s “incredible” picture of Martin Keown looming over Ruud van Nistelrooy at the bad-tempered game between Manchester United and Arsenal earlier this season.

But what’s this? Two days later, in the Daily Mirror’s Football Confidential supplement, a page of the year’s best pictures included the self-same image.

But this time it was credited to Mirror staffer Bradley Ormesher.

How can this be, Dog wonders. A captioning error? Or the Golden Scissors Club – whose members swap negatives to save them getting a bollocking from their respective picture editors – swinging back into operation? Either way, Dog would like to know whose finger was really on the shutter for this award-winning picture.

Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog

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