Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

When Richard Desmond dies…

...how will we be able to pay tribute?

It's a tough question, given that we need to be sensitive to the fact that he is, after all, a human being with a family and friends.

Probably the best thing to do, I've decided, would be to print a photograph of him dying - possibly already dead, who knows? - in order to pay tribute. That's what Desmond's OK magazine says it's doing this week. Not cashing in, no no. Not being macabre, no no. Paying tribute.

I know it's not the normal way that most people would 'pay tribute'. Ordinarily we use that phrase to remember someone fondly, rather than printing a ghoulish photo of the life ebbing away out of their body, but according to Richard Desmond it's the nicest way to mark the passing of a much-loved figure.

Desmond won't mind, then, as he's dying, if we stick a camera right at his dying fat fucking face and slap it on the front cover of a magazine so that everyone in the world can see that this is what a dying - or already dead, who knows? - person looks like. That would be a nice way of doing things, wouldn't it? After all, he's made it clear that's the right and proper way to deal with things.

Hang on a tick, though, what's this?

The grotesque image from the Paris car crash prompted calls for publications reproducing the photo to be banned in Britain. Around 1,000 copies of Chi, the glossy weekly magazine which carries the picture, are due to arrive in the country today, when distributors will decide whether to halt circulation of the offending issue. The Daily Express has decided not to show the photo.

Why, in that flashback to July 14, 2006, it appears that it's the Daily Express (owned by Richard Desmond, lest we forget) having a go at someone else for printing a photo of Princess Diana while she lay dying.

But but but... surely printing a photo of someone dying isn't 'grotesque'? Surely it's 'paying tribute'? No...?

Or was it just that the Express couldn't afford the Diana death photo rather than 'deciding' not to show it?

Either way, when Desmond does kick the bucket, let's all head round to his gaff with cameras to shove in his relatives' faces.

It's what he would have wanted.

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