British tabloid headlines – catchy and funny but also highly sensationalised.
In this episode, we look into some of the most scandalous stories from British tabloids, the particular types of language they use, and their political allegiances.
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about The Most Scandalous Headlines in British Tabloid History.
[00:00:30] In case you missed it, in the last episode we looked at the history of the British tabloids, and how a terrible scandal took down a popular tabloid called The News of The World.
[00:00:41] And in today’s episode we’re going to go a little deeper, and look at some of the most scandalous stories from British tabloids.
[00:00:50] On this journey we’ll look at the particular type of language used in British tabloids, and learn about nationalism, sex scandals, xenophobia, royal gossip, and the political allegiances of the British tabloids.
[00:01:05] Before we start, I should say that if you haven’t listened to the last episode yet, I would advise you to do that first, as a lot of what we’ll talk about today will make a bit more sense if you have that background.
[00:01:20] OK, we’ve got a lot to get through, so let’s get right into it.
[00:01:26] In 1982, as you may remember, two unlikely countries went to war.
[00:01:34] In fact, they didn’t actually go to war, as there was no formal declaration of war, but the 10-week conflict cost the lives of 907 people, and is remembered in both countries as a “war”.
[00:01:49] If you’ve guessed it, well done.
[00:01:52] I’m talking about The Falklands War, Guerra de las Malvinas, the conflict between the UK and Argentina.
[00:02:00] As you will no doubt know, the conflict is still highly sensitive, but in this episode we’re going to try to conveniently sidestep, or avoid,
[00:02:12] Any discussion of the rights and wrongs of the conflict.
[00:02:16] This is because here we’re talking about the British tabloids.
[00:02:20] But British tabloids do not avoid conflict, they do not deal in nuance or subtlety, they do not shy away from offering their opinion.
[00:02:31] And while most British newspapers, and the BBC, reported on the war in a neutral fashion, talking about “British soldiers” and “Argentine soldiers”, one tabloid in particular came out in full support of the war, using language like “our lads” to describe British soldiers and “Argies”, as a shortened and offensive term for the Argentine army.
[00:03:00] This tabloid was The Sun, which you might remember from the last episode as one that also had a picture of a topless woman on Page 3 until it was pressured to remove it in 2015.
[00:03:14] From the very start of the conflict, The Sun published headlines in support of the British soldiers, even printing headlines like “We’ll Smash ‘Em” printed over a picture of Winston Churchill.
[00:03:28] The newspaper then launched a campaign selling stickers, claiming that the money would be used to buy missiles that would be launched at the Argentinian navy.
[00:03:39] Fine, you might say, it’s to be expected that these more populist newspapers will come out in support of military action. After all, they are simply reflecting their readers' views, and the war was widely supported in Britain.
[00:03:55] But when the first casualties, the first deaths, were reported, some people expected or thought that the tabloids, and in particular The Sun, would tone it down slightly, they would adopt a more serious and respectful tone. After all, human lives were lost.
[00:04:17] How wrong they would be.
[00:04:19] On May 4th, 1982, it was reported that a British submarine had sunk an Argentinian ship, and initial reports suggested that up to 1,200 Argentinian soldiers had been killed.
[00:04:38] The Sun did not mince its words, it was not respectful.
[00:04:43] It's headline was simple: GOTCHA, which is a contraction of “got you”.
[00:04:51] Clearly, it lacked any sympathy for what was a horrific loss of life, and indeed it was very controversial, with subsequent editions of the newspaper having to be changed to “Did 1,200 Argies drown?”
[00:05:08] It turned out however that this position, of undying support for the war and rejoicing in any British military victory, was hugely profitable for The Sun, and it overtook its long-time rival, The Daily Mirror, selling more than a million copies more than The Daily Mirror every single day.
[00:05:30] The Mirror, by the way, took an anti-war stance, an anti-war position which was terrible for business.
[00:05:38] It turns out that patriotism and general anti-foreign rhetoric sold, they were real money spinners, and they still are a major theme for British tabloids.
[00:05:51] But the most common theme for British tabloids, something that you can probably find in every tabloid every single day, is a theme that you might be able to imagine or at least one that The Sun readers are confronted with as soon as they open the newspaper.
[00:06:09] Sex.
[00:06:10] And in particular, sex stories about celebrities doing things they shouldn’t be doing.
[00:06:17] There are countless examples of this, but one I want to talk about in particular involves the singer George Michael, who in 1998 was arrested for a so-called “lewd act” in a public toilet in Los Angeles.
[00:06:34] “Lewd”, by the way, means offensive in a sexual way.
[00:06:39] And to translate this into plain English, to explain what happened, George Michael was followed into a public toilet by a man, a man who turned out to be a plain clothes police officer.
[00:06:52] George Michael thought the man was suggesting that they have sex, George Michael was interested in the idea, but when he started unzipping, opening, his trousers, the man revealed he was a policeman and arrested him.
[00:07:09] George Michael was a very famous singer at the time, and it was somewhat of an open secret that he was gay, that he was homosexual.
[00:07:19] And being caught like this, this was exactly the kind of story that the British tabloids thrived on, that they loved.
[00:07:28] The story almost wrote itself, it was clearly going to be very popular.
[00:07:34] The only question now was how to create a catchy headline, what should the headline of the story say?
[00:07:43] By this time British tabloids had developed a reputation for writing funny, catchy headlines, often involving puns or plays on words.
[00:07:54] And once the journalists at The Sun heard about this story, they got to work.
[00:08:01] So what did they come up with as a headline then? Well, when it comes to singers, headlines often use the names of their famous songs, and this was where they looked first in the case of this story.
[00:08:15] George Michael’s first number one hit was a song called “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go”. So what was the headline for this story?
[00:08:25] “Zip Me Up Before You Go Go”
[00:08:28] Zip, in case you didn’t know, is the device with sliding teeth that you open or close on a pair of trousers.
[00:08:36] Catchy, right?
[00:08:38] Now, moving onto our third headline, another popular theme of the tabloids is anti-European feeling.
[00:08:47] As you will no doubt know, the UK has a mixed relationship with the rest of Europe - it never joined the Euro, Brits tend not to speak European languages, and of course the country voted to leave the European Union.
[00:09:02] And the rest of Europe, and in particular the European Union, were and still are frequent targets for the British tabloids.
[00:09:13] The two examples I want to give you here actually use the same headline format, but come 27 years apart.
[00:09:21] And in fact, they are both again from The Sun, the tabloid behind the Falklands War headline and the George Michael headline.
[00:09:31] So, what’s the first one?
[00:09:33] Well, in 1990, the President of the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, was a Frenchman called Jacques Delors, or “Jacques Delors” if you’re saying it with a British accent.
[00:09:48] The EU at this time was developing plans for a common currency, which The Sun thought was yet another example of the French trying to interfere in British business.
[00:10:01] In reaction to this, the tabloid published a story with the catchy headline “Up Yours Delors”, in which it gave its readers a long list of the problems that the French have caused people in Britain over the past thousand years.
[00:10:17] Now, this term, “Up Yours” is worth expanding on a little bit, because even though you know what “up” and “yours” mean, you might not know what they mean when put together.
[00:10:29] It’s an insult, essentially, and is short for “shove it up your arse”, “put it up your bottom”.
[00:10:36] So, there you go, a British newspaper telling the president of the European Commission to put his single currency up his bottom.
[00:10:46] And The Sun, yes The Sun again, would go on to do something even worse, or insult even more people, 27 years later, during the Brexit negotiations.
[00:10:59] Specifically, there were the negotiations about what would happen to Gibraltar, the British Overseas Territory and tiny rock to the south of Spain.
[00:11:09] The Sun, as you might be able to guess by now, was fiercely in support of Gibraltar keeping its British connections, and not going it back to Spain.
[00:11:21] So, what did the headline say?
[00:11:23] Well, it used the same format as back in 1990 with Jacques Delors.
[00:11:29] This time the headline went “Up Yours Senors” - “senor”, in case you weren’t aware, is the Spanish word for Mr, and with this headline the paper was insulting the entire population of Spain.
[00:11:45] Now, with the exception of the story about the Falklands War, you might say that these headlines are a bit of harmless fun, a way of making a bit of a joke about current affairs, to sensationalise the news a little bit.
[00:12:02] But now I’d like to highlight a few occasions where the true power of many of the tabloids shines through, and where the political biases of the newspapers, and their owners, is clear to see.
[00:12:16] The first thing to state is that having the support specifically of the tabloids is a hugely important thing for a British political party. They are the most popular newspapers by circulation, and they make their political views abundantly clear to their readers.
[00:12:36] Some tabloids always have the same political leanings, they stick with the same political party - The Mirror has supported The Labour Party since 1945, and The Daily Mail has almost always supported The Conservatives.
[00:12:53] The Sun, on the other hand, has switched sides several times, initially being a right-leaning newspaper, then supporting the Labour Party in 1997 with Tony Blair, and then switching back to The Conservatives in 2010.
[00:13:11] And during the general election in April of 1992, most surveys, most polls, suggested that the Labour Party would win, and that a man called Neil Kinnock would become Prime Minister.
[00:13:26] The Sun newspaper, which, remember, was Conservative-supporting at the time, was not particularly enthusiastic about this.
[00:13:35] Its three and a half million daily readers picked up their copy of the newspaper on the morning of the election and saw the headline “ If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.”
[00:13:51] As in, if the Labour party wins, everyone should leave the country because it will be such terrible news.
[00:14:00] If you’re thinking, hang on, I don’t remember Neil Kinnock and wasn’t John Major Prime Minister around then, then you’d be right.
[00:14:09] Neil Kinnock lost, to the surprise of many commentators.
[00:14:15] Did The Sun swing the election in the favour of The Conservatives?
[00:14:21] Who knows, but it was the most popular newspaper in the country at the time, making its way into one in seven households at the time of the general election.
[00:14:32] It was a powerful force indeed, and whether it swung the election in the Conservatives favour or not, it was a very strong message that no doubt made some of its readers change their mind.
[00:14:47] Fast forward 20 years, and the tabloids were prepared to get even more personal with their political attacks in the run-up to another general election.
[00:14:57] And this time we’re talking about The Daily Mail, a paper which has been staunchly supportive of The Conservatives throughout its history.
[00:15:07] An election was coming, and The Daily Mail had been publishing anti-Labour stories most days.
[00:15:14] In 2013, a year and a half before the election, The Daily Mail published its biggest attack on the Labour Party.
[00:15:24] But it wasn’t on the party in general, or against its leader, Ed Milliband.
[00:15:30] It was against his father, a man called Ralph Milliband, who had died 20 years beforehand.
[00:15:39] The headline read: “The man who hated Britain”, and the story described how Ed Milliband’s father hated Britain and that his son, the leader of the Labour Party, wanted to bring back socialism to honour his dead father.
[00:15:57] To many, this was repulsive - the paper was attacking the dead father of a politician for nothing other than his political beliefs.
[00:16:08] But it worked, or at least, Ed Milliband lost the election, and The Daily Mail sold millions of copies in the meantime.
[00:16:17] And our final theme of scandalous tabloid headlines is one that, for some tabloids at least, has been an almost constant source of news stories and scandal.
[00:16:30] And this is the Royal Family.
[00:16:33] Now, starting with Prince Charles and Diana in the early 1980s, then the divorce, the death of Diana, and now the scandal surrounding Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Royal Family has provided plenty of material for the tabloids.
[00:16:50] If you remember from the last episode, Prince Harry called them “ the devil”, blamed them for his mother’s death and for their constant attacks on his own wife, Meghan.
[00:17:02] Why? Well, there are almost too many stories to choose from.
[00:17:07] A British tabloid called The People published an intimate phone call between Prince Charles and Camilla, multiple tabloids published photos of a man sucking the toes of Prince Andrew’s wife, and Princess Diana was followed everywhere by the tabloid press when she was alive.
[00:17:27] Indeed, to illustrate the hypocrisy of one particular tabloid, one called The Daily Express, it published an article shortly before Diana’s death calling for her to “stay out of politics”, to stop interfering, yet in the 25 years since her death there has barely been a week since it has published some kind of story about Diana.
[00:17:53] So, there it is telling her to stop talking to journalists, yet this newspaper has likely made tens, hundreds of millions of pounds since then printing stories about her, despite her having died several decades ago and clearly there not being any real “news”.
[00:18:12] Now, it’s very easy to point fingers at the British tabloids and suggest that they are responsible for all manner of bad things.
[00:18:21] But, of course, journalists only investigate and write these stories because they know people will read them.
[00:18:28] And in Britain, like all over the world, scandal sells.
[00:18:34] People want to read stories about sex and gossip, they want news embellished and made more exciting, they want to read stories about humans not statistics, and they want to see their own opinion reflected back at them in a news article.
[00:18:53] Other newspapers might complain about this, they might stamp their feet and write opinion pieces about journalistic standards, and protest that tabloid journalists aren’t “real” journalists.
[00:19:06] But one thing is undeniable: whether it’s The Sun, The Daily Mail or The Mirror, British tabloids have decades of experience in writing catchy headlines, reporting on sex, scandals and gossip, and delivering exactly what their readers want to read.
[00:19:26] And at the end of the day, the numbers speak for themselves. The British tabloids certainly know how to sell newspapers.
[00:19:37] OK then, that is it for today's episode on The Most Scandalous Headlines in British Tabloid History.
[00:19:43] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that this was an interesting follow-up, that it shone a bit of light on what you’d actually see if you picked up a copy of The Sun.
[00:19:53] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:19:57] How are tabloids different in your country?
[00:20:01] If you live in a country with a royal family, are they the subject of such scandal and intrigue?
[00:20:07] Who do your tabloids normally take aim at?
[00:20:11] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started. You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:20:23] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:20:29] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about The Most Scandalous Headlines in British Tabloid History.
[00:00:30] In case you missed it, in the last episode we looked at the history of the British tabloids, and how a terrible scandal took down a popular tabloid called The News of The World.
[00:00:41] And in today’s episode we’re going to go a little deeper, and look at some of the most scandalous stories from British tabloids.
[00:00:50] On this journey we’ll look at the particular type of language used in British tabloids, and learn about nationalism, sex scandals, xenophobia, royal gossip, and the political allegiances of the British tabloids.
[00:01:05] Before we start, I should say that if you haven’t listened to the last episode yet, I would advise you to do that first, as a lot of what we’ll talk about today will make a bit more sense if you have that background.
[00:01:20] OK, we’ve got a lot to get through, so let’s get right into it.
[00:01:26] In 1982, as you may remember, two unlikely countries went to war.
[00:01:34] In fact, they didn’t actually go to war, as there was no formal declaration of war, but the 10-week conflict cost the lives of 907 people, and is remembered in both countries as a “war”.
[00:01:49] If you’ve guessed it, well done.
[00:01:52] I’m talking about The Falklands War, Guerra de las Malvinas, the conflict between the UK and Argentina.
[00:02:00] As you will no doubt know, the conflict is still highly sensitive, but in this episode we’re going to try to conveniently sidestep, or avoid,
[00:02:12] Any discussion of the rights and wrongs of the conflict.
[00:02:16] This is because here we’re talking about the British tabloids.
[00:02:20] But British tabloids do not avoid conflict, they do not deal in nuance or subtlety, they do not shy away from offering their opinion.
[00:02:31] And while most British newspapers, and the BBC, reported on the war in a neutral fashion, talking about “British soldiers” and “Argentine soldiers”, one tabloid in particular came out in full support of the war, using language like “our lads” to describe British soldiers and “Argies”, as a shortened and offensive term for the Argentine army.
[00:03:00] This tabloid was The Sun, which you might remember from the last episode as one that also had a picture of a topless woman on Page 3 until it was pressured to remove it in 2015.
[00:03:14] From the very start of the conflict, The Sun published headlines in support of the British soldiers, even printing headlines like “We’ll Smash ‘Em” printed over a picture of Winston Churchill.
[00:03:28] The newspaper then launched a campaign selling stickers, claiming that the money would be used to buy missiles that would be launched at the Argentinian navy.
[00:03:39] Fine, you might say, it’s to be expected that these more populist newspapers will come out in support of military action. After all, they are simply reflecting their readers' views, and the war was widely supported in Britain.
[00:03:55] But when the first casualties, the first deaths, were reported, some people expected or thought that the tabloids, and in particular The Sun, would tone it down slightly, they would adopt a more serious and respectful tone. After all, human lives were lost.
[00:04:17] How wrong they would be.
[00:04:19] On May 4th, 1982, it was reported that a British submarine had sunk an Argentinian ship, and initial reports suggested that up to 1,200 Argentinian soldiers had been killed.
[00:04:38] The Sun did not mince its words, it was not respectful.
[00:04:43] It's headline was simple: GOTCHA, which is a contraction of “got you”.
[00:04:51] Clearly, it lacked any sympathy for what was a horrific loss of life, and indeed it was very controversial, with subsequent editions of the newspaper having to be changed to “Did 1,200 Argies drown?”
[00:05:08] It turned out however that this position, of undying support for the war and rejoicing in any British military victory, was hugely profitable for The Sun, and it overtook its long-time rival, The Daily Mirror, selling more than a million copies more than The Daily Mirror every single day.
[00:05:30] The Mirror, by the way, took an anti-war stance, an anti-war position which was terrible for business.
[00:05:38] It turns out that patriotism and general anti-foreign rhetoric sold, they were real money spinners, and they still are a major theme for British tabloids.
[00:05:51] But the most common theme for British tabloids, something that you can probably find in every tabloid every single day, is a theme that you might be able to imagine or at least one that The Sun readers are confronted with as soon as they open the newspaper.
[00:06:09] Sex.
[00:06:10] And in particular, sex stories about celebrities doing things they shouldn’t be doing.
[00:06:17] There are countless examples of this, but one I want to talk about in particular involves the singer George Michael, who in 1998 was arrested for a so-called “lewd act” in a public toilet in Los Angeles.
[00:06:34] “Lewd”, by the way, means offensive in a sexual way.
[00:06:39] And to translate this into plain English, to explain what happened, George Michael was followed into a public toilet by a man, a man who turned out to be a plain clothes police officer.
[00:06:52] George Michael thought the man was suggesting that they have sex, George Michael was interested in the idea, but when he started unzipping, opening, his trousers, the man revealed he was a policeman and arrested him.
[00:07:09] George Michael was a very famous singer at the time, and it was somewhat of an open secret that he was gay, that he was homosexual.
[00:07:19] And being caught like this, this was exactly the kind of story that the British tabloids thrived on, that they loved.
[00:07:28] The story almost wrote itself, it was clearly going to be very popular.
[00:07:34] The only question now was how to create a catchy headline, what should the headline of the story say?
[00:07:43] By this time British tabloids had developed a reputation for writing funny, catchy headlines, often involving puns or plays on words.
[00:07:54] And once the journalists at The Sun heard about this story, they got to work.
[00:08:01] So what did they come up with as a headline then? Well, when it comes to singers, headlines often use the names of their famous songs, and this was where they looked first in the case of this story.
[00:08:15] George Michael’s first number one hit was a song called “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go”. So what was the headline for this story?
[00:08:25] “Zip Me Up Before You Go Go”
[00:08:28] Zip, in case you didn’t know, is the device with sliding teeth that you open or close on a pair of trousers.
[00:08:36] Catchy, right?
[00:08:38] Now, moving onto our third headline, another popular theme of the tabloids is anti-European feeling.
[00:08:47] As you will no doubt know, the UK has a mixed relationship with the rest of Europe - it never joined the Euro, Brits tend not to speak European languages, and of course the country voted to leave the European Union.
[00:09:02] And the rest of Europe, and in particular the European Union, were and still are frequent targets for the British tabloids.
[00:09:13] The two examples I want to give you here actually use the same headline format, but come 27 years apart.
[00:09:21] And in fact, they are both again from The Sun, the tabloid behind the Falklands War headline and the George Michael headline.
[00:09:31] So, what’s the first one?
[00:09:33] Well, in 1990, the President of the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, was a Frenchman called Jacques Delors, or “Jacques Delors” if you’re saying it with a British accent.
[00:09:48] The EU at this time was developing plans for a common currency, which The Sun thought was yet another example of the French trying to interfere in British business.
[00:10:01] In reaction to this, the tabloid published a story with the catchy headline “Up Yours Delors”, in which it gave its readers a long list of the problems that the French have caused people in Britain over the past thousand years.
[00:10:17] Now, this term, “Up Yours” is worth expanding on a little bit, because even though you know what “up” and “yours” mean, you might not know what they mean when put together.
[00:10:29] It’s an insult, essentially, and is short for “shove it up your arse”, “put it up your bottom”.
[00:10:36] So, there you go, a British newspaper telling the president of the European Commission to put his single currency up his bottom.
[00:10:46] And The Sun, yes The Sun again, would go on to do something even worse, or insult even more people, 27 years later, during the Brexit negotiations.
[00:10:59] Specifically, there were the negotiations about what would happen to Gibraltar, the British Overseas Territory and tiny rock to the south of Spain.
[00:11:09] The Sun, as you might be able to guess by now, was fiercely in support of Gibraltar keeping its British connections, and not going it back to Spain.
[00:11:21] So, what did the headline say?
[00:11:23] Well, it used the same format as back in 1990 with Jacques Delors.
[00:11:29] This time the headline went “Up Yours Senors” - “senor”, in case you weren’t aware, is the Spanish word for Mr, and with this headline the paper was insulting the entire population of Spain.
[00:11:45] Now, with the exception of the story about the Falklands War, you might say that these headlines are a bit of harmless fun, a way of making a bit of a joke about current affairs, to sensationalise the news a little bit.
[00:12:02] But now I’d like to highlight a few occasions where the true power of many of the tabloids shines through, and where the political biases of the newspapers, and their owners, is clear to see.
[00:12:16] The first thing to state is that having the support specifically of the tabloids is a hugely important thing for a British political party. They are the most popular newspapers by circulation, and they make their political views abundantly clear to their readers.
[00:12:36] Some tabloids always have the same political leanings, they stick with the same political party - The Mirror has supported The Labour Party since 1945, and The Daily Mail has almost always supported The Conservatives.
[00:12:53] The Sun, on the other hand, has switched sides several times, initially being a right-leaning newspaper, then supporting the Labour Party in 1997 with Tony Blair, and then switching back to The Conservatives in 2010.
[00:13:11] And during the general election in April of 1992, most surveys, most polls, suggested that the Labour Party would win, and that a man called Neil Kinnock would become Prime Minister.
[00:13:26] The Sun newspaper, which, remember, was Conservative-supporting at the time, was not particularly enthusiastic about this.
[00:13:35] Its three and a half million daily readers picked up their copy of the newspaper on the morning of the election and saw the headline “ If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.”
[00:13:51] As in, if the Labour party wins, everyone should leave the country because it will be such terrible news.
[00:14:00] If you’re thinking, hang on, I don’t remember Neil Kinnock and wasn’t John Major Prime Minister around then, then you’d be right.
[00:14:09] Neil Kinnock lost, to the surprise of many commentators.
[00:14:15] Did The Sun swing the election in the favour of The Conservatives?
[00:14:21] Who knows, but it was the most popular newspaper in the country at the time, making its way into one in seven households at the time of the general election.
[00:14:32] It was a powerful force indeed, and whether it swung the election in the Conservatives favour or not, it was a very strong message that no doubt made some of its readers change their mind.
[00:14:47] Fast forward 20 years, and the tabloids were prepared to get even more personal with their political attacks in the run-up to another general election.
[00:14:57] And this time we’re talking about The Daily Mail, a paper which has been staunchly supportive of The Conservatives throughout its history.
[00:15:07] An election was coming, and The Daily Mail had been publishing anti-Labour stories most days.
[00:15:14] In 2013, a year and a half before the election, The Daily Mail published its biggest attack on the Labour Party.
[00:15:24] But it wasn’t on the party in general, or against its leader, Ed Milliband.
[00:15:30] It was against his father, a man called Ralph Milliband, who had died 20 years beforehand.
[00:15:39] The headline read: “The man who hated Britain”, and the story described how Ed Milliband’s father hated Britain and that his son, the leader of the Labour Party, wanted to bring back socialism to honour his dead father.
[00:15:57] To many, this was repulsive - the paper was attacking the dead father of a politician for nothing other than his political beliefs.
[00:16:08] But it worked, or at least, Ed Milliband lost the election, and The Daily Mail sold millions of copies in the meantime.
[00:16:17] And our final theme of scandalous tabloid headlines is one that, for some tabloids at least, has been an almost constant source of news stories and scandal.
[00:16:30] And this is the Royal Family.
[00:16:33] Now, starting with Prince Charles and Diana in the early 1980s, then the divorce, the death of Diana, and now the scandal surrounding Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Royal Family has provided plenty of material for the tabloids.
[00:16:50] If you remember from the last episode, Prince Harry called them “ the devil”, blamed them for his mother’s death and for their constant attacks on his own wife, Meghan.
[00:17:02] Why? Well, there are almost too many stories to choose from.
[00:17:07] A British tabloid called The People published an intimate phone call between Prince Charles and Camilla, multiple tabloids published photos of a man sucking the toes of Prince Andrew’s wife, and Princess Diana was followed everywhere by the tabloid press when she was alive.
[00:17:27] Indeed, to illustrate the hypocrisy of one particular tabloid, one called The Daily Express, it published an article shortly before Diana’s death calling for her to “stay out of politics”, to stop interfering, yet in the 25 years since her death there has barely been a week since it has published some kind of story about Diana.
[00:17:53] So, there it is telling her to stop talking to journalists, yet this newspaper has likely made tens, hundreds of millions of pounds since then printing stories about her, despite her having died several decades ago and clearly there not being any real “news”.
[00:18:12] Now, it’s very easy to point fingers at the British tabloids and suggest that they are responsible for all manner of bad things.
[00:18:21] But, of course, journalists only investigate and write these stories because they know people will read them.
[00:18:28] And in Britain, like all over the world, scandal sells.
[00:18:34] People want to read stories about sex and gossip, they want news embellished and made more exciting, they want to read stories about humans not statistics, and they want to see their own opinion reflected back at them in a news article.
[00:18:53] Other newspapers might complain about this, they might stamp their feet and write opinion pieces about journalistic standards, and protest that tabloid journalists aren’t “real” journalists.
[00:19:06] But one thing is undeniable: whether it’s The Sun, The Daily Mail or The Mirror, British tabloids have decades of experience in writing catchy headlines, reporting on sex, scandals and gossip, and delivering exactly what their readers want to read.
[00:19:26] And at the end of the day, the numbers speak for themselves. The British tabloids certainly know how to sell newspapers.
[00:19:37] OK then, that is it for today's episode on The Most Scandalous Headlines in British Tabloid History.
[00:19:43] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that this was an interesting follow-up, that it shone a bit of light on what you’d actually see if you picked up a copy of The Sun.
[00:19:53] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:19:57] How are tabloids different in your country?
[00:20:01] If you live in a country with a royal family, are they the subject of such scandal and intrigue?
[00:20:07] Who do your tabloids normally take aim at?
[00:20:11] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started. You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:20:23] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:20:29] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about The Most Scandalous Headlines in British Tabloid History.
[00:00:30] In case you missed it, in the last episode we looked at the history of the British tabloids, and how a terrible scandal took down a popular tabloid called The News of The World.
[00:00:41] And in today’s episode we’re going to go a little deeper, and look at some of the most scandalous stories from British tabloids.
[00:00:50] On this journey we’ll look at the particular type of language used in British tabloids, and learn about nationalism, sex scandals, xenophobia, royal gossip, and the political allegiances of the British tabloids.
[00:01:05] Before we start, I should say that if you haven’t listened to the last episode yet, I would advise you to do that first, as a lot of what we’ll talk about today will make a bit more sense if you have that background.
[00:01:20] OK, we’ve got a lot to get through, so let’s get right into it.
[00:01:26] In 1982, as you may remember, two unlikely countries went to war.
[00:01:34] In fact, they didn’t actually go to war, as there was no formal declaration of war, but the 10-week conflict cost the lives of 907 people, and is remembered in both countries as a “war”.
[00:01:49] If you’ve guessed it, well done.
[00:01:52] I’m talking about The Falklands War, Guerra de las Malvinas, the conflict between the UK and Argentina.
[00:02:00] As you will no doubt know, the conflict is still highly sensitive, but in this episode we’re going to try to conveniently sidestep, or avoid,
[00:02:12] Any discussion of the rights and wrongs of the conflict.
[00:02:16] This is because here we’re talking about the British tabloids.
[00:02:20] But British tabloids do not avoid conflict, they do not deal in nuance or subtlety, they do not shy away from offering their opinion.
[00:02:31] And while most British newspapers, and the BBC, reported on the war in a neutral fashion, talking about “British soldiers” and “Argentine soldiers”, one tabloid in particular came out in full support of the war, using language like “our lads” to describe British soldiers and “Argies”, as a shortened and offensive term for the Argentine army.
[00:03:00] This tabloid was The Sun, which you might remember from the last episode as one that also had a picture of a topless woman on Page 3 until it was pressured to remove it in 2015.
[00:03:14] From the very start of the conflict, The Sun published headlines in support of the British soldiers, even printing headlines like “We’ll Smash ‘Em” printed over a picture of Winston Churchill.
[00:03:28] The newspaper then launched a campaign selling stickers, claiming that the money would be used to buy missiles that would be launched at the Argentinian navy.
[00:03:39] Fine, you might say, it’s to be expected that these more populist newspapers will come out in support of military action. After all, they are simply reflecting their readers' views, and the war was widely supported in Britain.
[00:03:55] But when the first casualties, the first deaths, were reported, some people expected or thought that the tabloids, and in particular The Sun, would tone it down slightly, they would adopt a more serious and respectful tone. After all, human lives were lost.
[00:04:17] How wrong they would be.
[00:04:19] On May 4th, 1982, it was reported that a British submarine had sunk an Argentinian ship, and initial reports suggested that up to 1,200 Argentinian soldiers had been killed.
[00:04:38] The Sun did not mince its words, it was not respectful.
[00:04:43] It's headline was simple: GOTCHA, which is a contraction of “got you”.
[00:04:51] Clearly, it lacked any sympathy for what was a horrific loss of life, and indeed it was very controversial, with subsequent editions of the newspaper having to be changed to “Did 1,200 Argies drown?”
[00:05:08] It turned out however that this position, of undying support for the war and rejoicing in any British military victory, was hugely profitable for The Sun, and it overtook its long-time rival, The Daily Mirror, selling more than a million copies more than The Daily Mirror every single day.
[00:05:30] The Mirror, by the way, took an anti-war stance, an anti-war position which was terrible for business.
[00:05:38] It turns out that patriotism and general anti-foreign rhetoric sold, they were real money spinners, and they still are a major theme for British tabloids.
[00:05:51] But the most common theme for British tabloids, something that you can probably find in every tabloid every single day, is a theme that you might be able to imagine or at least one that The Sun readers are confronted with as soon as they open the newspaper.
[00:06:09] Sex.
[00:06:10] And in particular, sex stories about celebrities doing things they shouldn’t be doing.
[00:06:17] There are countless examples of this, but one I want to talk about in particular involves the singer George Michael, who in 1998 was arrested for a so-called “lewd act” in a public toilet in Los Angeles.
[00:06:34] “Lewd”, by the way, means offensive in a sexual way.
[00:06:39] And to translate this into plain English, to explain what happened, George Michael was followed into a public toilet by a man, a man who turned out to be a plain clothes police officer.
[00:06:52] George Michael thought the man was suggesting that they have sex, George Michael was interested in the idea, but when he started unzipping, opening, his trousers, the man revealed he was a policeman and arrested him.
[00:07:09] George Michael was a very famous singer at the time, and it was somewhat of an open secret that he was gay, that he was homosexual.
[00:07:19] And being caught like this, this was exactly the kind of story that the British tabloids thrived on, that they loved.
[00:07:28] The story almost wrote itself, it was clearly going to be very popular.
[00:07:34] The only question now was how to create a catchy headline, what should the headline of the story say?
[00:07:43] By this time British tabloids had developed a reputation for writing funny, catchy headlines, often involving puns or plays on words.
[00:07:54] And once the journalists at The Sun heard about this story, they got to work.
[00:08:01] So what did they come up with as a headline then? Well, when it comes to singers, headlines often use the names of their famous songs, and this was where they looked first in the case of this story.
[00:08:15] George Michael’s first number one hit was a song called “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go”. So what was the headline for this story?
[00:08:25] “Zip Me Up Before You Go Go”
[00:08:28] Zip, in case you didn’t know, is the device with sliding teeth that you open or close on a pair of trousers.
[00:08:36] Catchy, right?
[00:08:38] Now, moving onto our third headline, another popular theme of the tabloids is anti-European feeling.
[00:08:47] As you will no doubt know, the UK has a mixed relationship with the rest of Europe - it never joined the Euro, Brits tend not to speak European languages, and of course the country voted to leave the European Union.
[00:09:02] And the rest of Europe, and in particular the European Union, were and still are frequent targets for the British tabloids.
[00:09:13] The two examples I want to give you here actually use the same headline format, but come 27 years apart.
[00:09:21] And in fact, they are both again from The Sun, the tabloid behind the Falklands War headline and the George Michael headline.
[00:09:31] So, what’s the first one?
[00:09:33] Well, in 1990, the President of the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, was a Frenchman called Jacques Delors, or “Jacques Delors” if you’re saying it with a British accent.
[00:09:48] The EU at this time was developing plans for a common currency, which The Sun thought was yet another example of the French trying to interfere in British business.
[00:10:01] In reaction to this, the tabloid published a story with the catchy headline “Up Yours Delors”, in which it gave its readers a long list of the problems that the French have caused people in Britain over the past thousand years.
[00:10:17] Now, this term, “Up Yours” is worth expanding on a little bit, because even though you know what “up” and “yours” mean, you might not know what they mean when put together.
[00:10:29] It’s an insult, essentially, and is short for “shove it up your arse”, “put it up your bottom”.
[00:10:36] So, there you go, a British newspaper telling the president of the European Commission to put his single currency up his bottom.
[00:10:46] And The Sun, yes The Sun again, would go on to do something even worse, or insult even more people, 27 years later, during the Brexit negotiations.
[00:10:59] Specifically, there were the negotiations about what would happen to Gibraltar, the British Overseas Territory and tiny rock to the south of Spain.
[00:11:09] The Sun, as you might be able to guess by now, was fiercely in support of Gibraltar keeping its British connections, and not going it back to Spain.
[00:11:21] So, what did the headline say?
[00:11:23] Well, it used the same format as back in 1990 with Jacques Delors.
[00:11:29] This time the headline went “Up Yours Senors” - “senor”, in case you weren’t aware, is the Spanish word for Mr, and with this headline the paper was insulting the entire population of Spain.
[00:11:45] Now, with the exception of the story about the Falklands War, you might say that these headlines are a bit of harmless fun, a way of making a bit of a joke about current affairs, to sensationalise the news a little bit.
[00:12:02] But now I’d like to highlight a few occasions where the true power of many of the tabloids shines through, and where the political biases of the newspapers, and their owners, is clear to see.
[00:12:16] The first thing to state is that having the support specifically of the tabloids is a hugely important thing for a British political party. They are the most popular newspapers by circulation, and they make their political views abundantly clear to their readers.
[00:12:36] Some tabloids always have the same political leanings, they stick with the same political party - The Mirror has supported The Labour Party since 1945, and The Daily Mail has almost always supported The Conservatives.
[00:12:53] The Sun, on the other hand, has switched sides several times, initially being a right-leaning newspaper, then supporting the Labour Party in 1997 with Tony Blair, and then switching back to The Conservatives in 2010.
[00:13:11] And during the general election in April of 1992, most surveys, most polls, suggested that the Labour Party would win, and that a man called Neil Kinnock would become Prime Minister.
[00:13:26] The Sun newspaper, which, remember, was Conservative-supporting at the time, was not particularly enthusiastic about this.
[00:13:35] Its three and a half million daily readers picked up their copy of the newspaper on the morning of the election and saw the headline “ If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.”
[00:13:51] As in, if the Labour party wins, everyone should leave the country because it will be such terrible news.
[00:14:00] If you’re thinking, hang on, I don’t remember Neil Kinnock and wasn’t John Major Prime Minister around then, then you’d be right.
[00:14:09] Neil Kinnock lost, to the surprise of many commentators.
[00:14:15] Did The Sun swing the election in the favour of The Conservatives?
[00:14:21] Who knows, but it was the most popular newspaper in the country at the time, making its way into one in seven households at the time of the general election.
[00:14:32] It was a powerful force indeed, and whether it swung the election in the Conservatives favour or not, it was a very strong message that no doubt made some of its readers change their mind.
[00:14:47] Fast forward 20 years, and the tabloids were prepared to get even more personal with their political attacks in the run-up to another general election.
[00:14:57] And this time we’re talking about The Daily Mail, a paper which has been staunchly supportive of The Conservatives throughout its history.
[00:15:07] An election was coming, and The Daily Mail had been publishing anti-Labour stories most days.
[00:15:14] In 2013, a year and a half before the election, The Daily Mail published its biggest attack on the Labour Party.
[00:15:24] But it wasn’t on the party in general, or against its leader, Ed Milliband.
[00:15:30] It was against his father, a man called Ralph Milliband, who had died 20 years beforehand.
[00:15:39] The headline read: “The man who hated Britain”, and the story described how Ed Milliband’s father hated Britain and that his son, the leader of the Labour Party, wanted to bring back socialism to honour his dead father.
[00:15:57] To many, this was repulsive - the paper was attacking the dead father of a politician for nothing other than his political beliefs.
[00:16:08] But it worked, or at least, Ed Milliband lost the election, and The Daily Mail sold millions of copies in the meantime.
[00:16:17] And our final theme of scandalous tabloid headlines is one that, for some tabloids at least, has been an almost constant source of news stories and scandal.
[00:16:30] And this is the Royal Family.
[00:16:33] Now, starting with Prince Charles and Diana in the early 1980s, then the divorce, the death of Diana, and now the scandal surrounding Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Royal Family has provided plenty of material for the tabloids.
[00:16:50] If you remember from the last episode, Prince Harry called them “ the devil”, blamed them for his mother’s death and for their constant attacks on his own wife, Meghan.
[00:17:02] Why? Well, there are almost too many stories to choose from.
[00:17:07] A British tabloid called The People published an intimate phone call between Prince Charles and Camilla, multiple tabloids published photos of a man sucking the toes of Prince Andrew’s wife, and Princess Diana was followed everywhere by the tabloid press when she was alive.
[00:17:27] Indeed, to illustrate the hypocrisy of one particular tabloid, one called The Daily Express, it published an article shortly before Diana’s death calling for her to “stay out of politics”, to stop interfering, yet in the 25 years since her death there has barely been a week since it has published some kind of story about Diana.
[00:17:53] So, there it is telling her to stop talking to journalists, yet this newspaper has likely made tens, hundreds of millions of pounds since then printing stories about her, despite her having died several decades ago and clearly there not being any real “news”.
[00:18:12] Now, it’s very easy to point fingers at the British tabloids and suggest that they are responsible for all manner of bad things.
[00:18:21] But, of course, journalists only investigate and write these stories because they know people will read them.
[00:18:28] And in Britain, like all over the world, scandal sells.
[00:18:34] People want to read stories about sex and gossip, they want news embellished and made more exciting, they want to read stories about humans not statistics, and they want to see their own opinion reflected back at them in a news article.
[00:18:53] Other newspapers might complain about this, they might stamp their feet and write opinion pieces about journalistic standards, and protest that tabloid journalists aren’t “real” journalists.
[00:19:06] But one thing is undeniable: whether it’s The Sun, The Daily Mail or The Mirror, British tabloids have decades of experience in writing catchy headlines, reporting on sex, scandals and gossip, and delivering exactly what their readers want to read.
[00:19:26] And at the end of the day, the numbers speak for themselves. The British tabloids certainly know how to sell newspapers.
[00:19:37] OK then, that is it for today's episode on The Most Scandalous Headlines in British Tabloid History.
[00:19:43] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that this was an interesting follow-up, that it shone a bit of light on what you’d actually see if you picked up a copy of The Sun.
[00:19:53] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:19:57] How are tabloids different in your country?
[00:20:01] If you live in a country with a royal family, are they the subject of such scandal and intrigue?
[00:20:07] Who do your tabloids normally take aim at?
[00:20:11] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started. You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:20:23] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:20:29] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
