Bill bother

Hot on the heels of the complaint about my baseball posting, I've had an email from another unhappy reader.

The lady in question isn't complaining about the Advertiser itself, but about the news bills we put out every week - in particular the one last week that stated 'Mum gang raped.'

She feels this was overly-lurid and the Advertiser is now 'as bad as the South London Press'. (I'll take most criticism on the chin, but that's a particularly low blow!)

For once, I'm not really sure how to respond to this one.

Yes, it was quite a hard-hitting bill but they are designed to grab people's attention, and it's pretty difficult to describe a gang rape as anything but that.

This week's Croydon front page is also pretty hard-hitting. The Sian Simpson murder trial was looking like the obvious splash this time yesterday, but something even more attention-grabbing came in. (Oh, and advance warning to the council's press office that they seem to be getting a particularly hard time this week.)

Finally, and still on the subject of front pages, I've just been flicking through the splashes on other titles in our group and one of them has the marvellous headline 'Pet fish in fight for life.' I'm off to read that now.