Trollied Tuesday: Shackleton's stash of scotch

This is one of the most worthwhile pieces of scientific research I have heard of in a long while:

A whisky that sustained explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated expedition to the South Pole a century ago is to be brought back to life by drilling a bottle out of the Antarctic ice.

Whisky giant Whyte & Mackay has asked a team of New Zealand explorers to bring back a long-lost sample of McKinlay and Co whisky during a January polar expedition.

Two crates of the long- defunct "Rare Old" brand are frozen in the ice 97 miles from the pole, discarded by Shackleton and his men when they abandoned their 1909 polar mission.

It is possible, of course, that had they decided to drink the stuff rather than burying it under ice, they might have reached the Pole. No matter. The blend is described as "heavy and peaty" in accordance with tastes a hundred years ago. I must say, it sounds just the job for the Antarctic climate.

A pity too that people lost the taste for that type of drink - it makes contemporary blended whiskies sound rather bland in comparison. But a note of a caution here: there are a great many whiskies that have died out - if you consider some of the ones that survived there is no reason to assume that the ones that didn't were any good.

One should consider the wise words of Al Fastier, who is leading the expedition. He insisted he had no wish to taste the whisky, saying: "It's better to imagine it than to taste it. That way it keeps its mystery."

The romance attached to this worthwhile venture transcends mere curiosity about how the Scotch might taste. Rather, it is the possibility that tasting it will perform a sort of osmotic time travel that will transport you back to last great age of exploration, an era of undiscovered frontiers when no self respecting explorer would set off without a stock of tweeds and a crate of whisky to sustain him. An age, moreover, when the (now-defunct) Dublin Evening Telegraph could greet Shackleton's return with the wonderful headline "South Pole Almost Reached By An Irishman".

Imagine how disappointing it would be if his drinks cabinet turned out to have been filled with cheap rot gut.

Archduke Found Alive: World War a Hoax

What's the secret of a good headline? It's both art and craft you see; the craft comes in telling you what the story's about, but there's poetry too. (I've lazily stolen a famous spoof from the 1920s that nicely illustrates the way it works, largely because I can't think of a suitable one to go at the top of this piece).

Don't believe me? Why not have a read of Prof Stanley Fish on the matter. In his praise of New York Post style headlines (eg Headless Body Found in Topless Bar), he observes that beneath a pithy gag there can be layers of meaning expressed with an economy and precision equal to the best of modern poetry.

How ironic, though, that it appeared on the New York Times website. If there is one thing the NYT is bad at it's writing headlines: leaden, pompous, portentous and dull, dull, dull.

It says something that the most memorable one produced by the Gray Lady was a comical howler (which, incidentally, highlights the gratuitous use of commas to add needless sub-clauses.)

The headline announced that US soccer captain John Harkes was joining what was, at the time, one of England's top teams:

Harkes To Sign For Sheffield, Wednesday.

Some of laconic wit and brevity that you will find even at the higher end of the British media would go down well in the headlines of America's most august journals. A little art to make the functional task of telling the reader what a story is about does, in a small and subtle way, enhance the readers' appreciation.

On the other hand: the tabloid need for constant gags and puns can become wearing and somewhat infantile. Or, in the case of this effort, you end up with a contender for worst headline of the year.

Six words (more or less)

Further to the six-word short story game below, it strikes me that some of my favourite newspaper headlines are six-worders. Coincidence, possibly, but it illustrates nicely why headline writing is such a particular art.

He lied and lied and lied

(The Graun on Jonathan Aitken)

Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes Minister

(The Daily Mail on Steve Norris's five mistresses. It was illustrated with a great picture too, but I can't find the original online. Just to show I'm not making it up, the New York Times remembers it too).

Fog In Channel. Continent Cut Off

(Possibly apocryphal, but an (unintentional?) classic of Little Englander-ism).

There are, of course, great headlines with one more or fewer words (Super Caley Go Balistic, Celtic Are Atrocious or Freddy Starr Ate My Hamster both from the Sun, as it happens) but the point about great headlines telling a story in a few words holds. As my favourite spoof one: 'Archduke Found Alive. World War A Hoax' illustrates.

A bedbath for the soul

At last, a refuge from puritanism, finger-wagging and sanctimony. I need to think of a way to spend a couple of weeks or so in a hospital.

You might have thought that lying on your back being tended to by a group of dirty, debauched girls would be the stuff of dreams; but apparently not. It's noteworthy that it's the sexual angle to Lord Mancroft's comments that really caught the imagination – why else mention it if, as he claimed, he was worried about their failings in a professional context? It does capture the attention, of course, which is why the story was followed up the way it was; Nurses: we do seduce our patients is a classic of the pretending to be shocked genre.

While many a middle-aged male news editor might be eager to put these naughty girls across their knees and give them a good metaphorical spanking, they might want to reflect that being surrounded by death, illness and suffering on a daily basis would give you a graphic reminder that life is all too short; too short certainly to worry about the sensibilities of the finger-waggers and the prigs.

Not that it's just nurses, of course. Other medical staff and patients are also doing their bit to blow smoke rings in the faces of the puritans, with two thirds of hospitals flouting the the smoking ban; because in some circumstances telling people they must not smoke is probably not, in fact, going to be looking after their best interests.

It's even possible that a stay in hospital will offer the infinite comic potential of workers attempting sexual congress with a vacuum cleaner.

PS: I don't want to labour this point to inappropriate degrees, but in general it's medical staff with an over-exaggerated sense of their virtues and importance that you want to watch out for.

Language and its meaning

Surely it's not just me who was left with a very unpleasant image thanks to this Irish Sunday Independent headline.

How a boozy dinner lead Dunphy to finger Bertie

It's not, you say? Thank goodness for that.

More of the same

Italian nuns have left quite a subversive legacy. This is thanks largely to the literary labors of Pietro Aretino, a Venetian author who is today hailed as the “father of modern pornography.” In addition to his ground-breaking book of sonnets – The Sixteen Postures, which described a string of athletic sexual positions with handy engravings – Aretino penned the classic Secret Life of Nuns, whose panting prose would not be out of place on nerve.com today.

Not, sadly, something I was aware of when I wrote this. Venetian nuns seem to have been quite the party girls, a number of them were accused of "sex crimes against God".

Read more. It's always worth expanding one's stock of knowledge in this way, isn't it?

Headline of the week

Margaret Thatcher savaged by pitbull.

It might be the Telegraph, but I imagine some of the hacks derived enormous pleasure from publishing that.

The opening paragraph includes such details as:

The paper reports that "Margaret Thatcher yelped in agony as the pit bulls tore into her" body and that a man called Bob Walston "screamed for help and in pain as the pit bulls bit his arms in their frenzy to reach" Maggie, whose memorial service will be held on Wednesday.

Yup. The author is certainly loving it.

PS: I used to work as a sub doing Teletext stories. One particular skill it needs (or needed, I think the cheap halfwits they employed up north after they sacked us all have more leeway) is the ability to write a headline that is exactly 32 (or 36, can't remember now) characters long. As hacks will, we amused ourselves by abusing this skill with a contest to write the headlines we would most like to see for real. Pity no one felt brave enough to put them to air as an act of career-destroying revenge. However, the winners were:

Baroness Thatcher dies in house fire
Queen Mum dies trying to fuck horse
and, a poor third this, but it was fun on the day.
Alcoholic MP in lavender marriage

I won't tell you his name, but one part of it will no longer get me sued.

Muslim world an homogenous mass of seething lunatics

You'll realise, I hope, the irony implicit in that headline. But I add that caveat because so much reporting about 'offended Muslims' seems to work on this assumption.

Yes, I'm afraid it's more Rushdie bollocks. In this case the Beeb reports on a "Day of Pakistan Rushdie protests". So, you think, on reading the headline, tens of thousands of people who probably haven't read the book are going crazy and demanding the blood of the western infidel.

Erm.. Around 300 people in Islamabad chanted "Damn Rushdie" [I do love sub-continent English] and "Down with Britain".

Careful now. But, still, it's the capital. It's a relatively cosmopolitan place. I bet more people turned out in Karachi where all the crazies live.

Yeah: They have held small-scale demonstrations in the southern port of Karachi (pop: 15 million or so).

How small? Doesn't say, but I would be willing to bet more people turned out to complain about the cricket team.

Now, I'm of the view that a demo in Britain should be pretty bloody big before it gets any attention. So why should the Beeb cover the anger of a tiny proportion of Pakistanis (oh and a few attention seeking local politicians whom I will not dignify by quoting here) unless it assumes they are speaking for a silent majority of deranged fanatics?

>>>This is a public service announcement from the Department of Patronising Liberalism: Muslims are so irrational you must do nothing to suggest they are irrational because they will kill you if you do.

Man bites dog

Sometimes, just sometimes, what you think - hope, even - would be a statement of the bleeding obvious is actually newsworthy. In this case Irish Independent reports a curious defence from a clerical child abuse trial.

Priest 'more interested in betting than child'

A PRIEST accused of helping his friend to sexually abuse a young girl was more interested in gambling than children, a court heard yesterday.

It's a truly strange, and disturbing, case. One BBC report includes a suggestion the priest was having a sexual relationship with the man accused of carrying out the abuse.

PS: Nice to the see the Indo has finally joined the 21st century with its website. During my time at the Irish Examiner any suggestion that the website might possibly be a wee bit archaic fell on deaf ears. (Okay, it wasn't my responsibility, but I did make my views known.) Could someone there please take the hint now?