The headline should really have been... um...

Getting the Irish Times via RSS as I do, I occasionally suffer some slight bemusement when I see a headline without context (I've sort-of mentioned this phenomenon previously). The headline on this particular occasion — Over 51,000 illegal drugs seized — caused confusion for slightly different reasons; I just assumed (but wasn't entirely sure) that it was a bad headline.

"Pah!" quoth I to no one in particular. "Fifty thousand drugs? Surely not. They must mean €50 000 worth of drugs, or perhaps fifty thousand, er..."

Okay, that's why they did it. There was no pithy way (that sprung to my mind) of saying "tablets or other similar items". The nearest I could manage was "units of illegal drugs", and that could generously be described as "inelegant" in the context of a headline.

So the sub ed failed in his job, and gave us a crappy headline.

Except he didn't.

Why do you ask, Three Cops Spanking?

Headlines are wonderful things; subheads, sometimes more so. My favourite crash blossom of all time appeared in Dublin's Evening Herald many, many years ago, but it's one that stayed with me to this day. The story revolved around rabbits' famed proclivity for reproduction, and alluded to a report that suggested that we humans were just as prolific in that department. The headline? Man Beats Rabbits in Sexual Activity. I really, really wish I'd kept a copy of that paper.

These days, though, we still have many to choose from. The tabloids aim to have the best headlines, but given that they try to have a good one every day, they inevitably fail a lot more than they succeed. The Mirror's recent front page is a case in point.

Hahaha... they said 'snow' instead of 'no'. That's brilliant. Except it isn't, and it gives the sentence a meaning that's diametrically opposite that of the intended one. Yeah, I know, no one's going to be confused, but really: is this the best they could come up with? I leave it as an exercise to the reader to come up with a better one, but shitty puns based on 'snow', 'flake', 'drift', etc, abound.

Fortunately, we have the Register to fill the void. The Reg adopts a certain tabloidy tone, but is always usually an entertaining and informative read. Their language, though, contains quite a bit of jargon; stuff that'll be familiar to long-time readers, but utterly bemusing for the rest of the populace. The occasional reference to Bulgarian Airbags, for example, could well have hapless readers runnng in vain to the dictionary, and one must take pity on the poor soul who looks for reviews of the UK's broadband providers only to come across the headline Three cops spanking in mobile user ranking. Makes perfect sense if you know how to read it.

For sheer class, though, the Reg is unparallelled in the world of the Subhead. I tip my hat to the great mind that came up with this or this.

Did You Threaten to Overrule Him?

I've been noticing for a while now a tendency among some interviewers towards a somewhat combative attitude to their guests when I'm listening to or watching political programmes. It has its place, of course, and some of Jeremy Paxman's interviews are highly entertaining for that very reason. However, it seems that all too often the point is not to elicit information but to get the guest to say something -- anything -- he doesn't want to say. And I regret to inform you that RTÉ Radio's political discussion programme The Late Debate has joined the hallowed ranks of programmes that have me yelling at the presenter rather than the guests.