NO PUN IN CRAP HEADLINES

What is it about power that turns people blind?

Occasionally men and women of principle become MPs and within months they’ve got their snout firmly in the trough.

Those few men and women who become leaders of their countries can’t see the small print for the looming legacy they hope will be written in the history books. So they meet to show their concern about the plight of the world’s starving – and tuck into a multi-course banquet with 18 dishes on offer.

Or some become editors and rightly kick up a stink about the aforementioned banquet. And then can’t see the world’s worst pun when someone shoves it in their face (unless he or she wrote it in the first place, of course).

The headline in today’s Daily Mirror was HYPOCREATS, with the EAT in red just in case you didn’t get the pun (the red trick being a sure sign that a pun is crap).

When is an editor or one of his minions at the Mirror going to march up to the back bench and rant, ‘Who wrote this shite!? Write a proper headline or get out!’

There’s a fine line in writing punning headlines. An editor should be able to see it.