Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

He looks a bit fed up for some reason, doesn’t he?

Thank goodness the papers are there to give us the scoop on the vital news stories of the day. It turns out - and I really wouldn't have known this had there not been photographic proof to show me and my tiny brain - that someone whose wife has recently died is, well what do you know, not entirely delighted with the world at large. Who'd have thought it?

Thankfully those caring souls at the national newspapers have got the inside track, capturing the moment of misery and pain for the whole world to see. Because probably the first thing you'd be thinking under such circumstances would be "I really hope there's a bloke pointing a camera right into my face so that everyone in the world can see exactly how terrible I feel". Wouldn't it?

Don't get me wrong, by the way. This isn't about the Express, because they're certainly not the worst offenders when it comes to this story, although they did deem it necessary and crucial to our understanding of the nature of grief that we should see a grief-stricken person in glorious colour. There's worse out there:

It's nice to know, isn't it, that when your family is going through agony, that there will be people sticking cameras right into your face and making sure that you don't get a moment's peace as you try to deal with the shock and dismay at what you have recently been through. Of course I am only guessing at what this person is going through, of course, but why bother guessing?

I just don't see what we learn from any of this. Yes, I should imagine he is rather unhappy with the world. Yes, he is famous for being in films, but he isn't in a film now: he's in that bit in between films called real life, where sometimes there are things that happen which are so painful that other people need to take that into consideration - not exploit your grief to flog a few papers behind crocodile tears.

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