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The Diaries of a Fleet Street Fox
Anonymous
Constable & Robinson, £8.99
This is being pitched as an exposé of the inner workings of tabloid newspapers, given that the author – since publication revealed to be Susie Boniface – writes for the Mirror. True, Boniface does discuss her work, and I thank her for answering a question that has bothered me since the 1980s: what happened to Michael Jackson's pet chimp, Bubbles?
She makes some perceptive observations of tabloids, such as the fact they use English words that are virtually archaic elsewhere. Have you, for instance, ever used “romp” for “sex”? Me neither. But the book strikes me less of a journalism memoir, more of a depiction of the madness of divorce. The book gets off to a gripping start, with the author in a jail cell after a scuffle with her husband’s bit on the side. Of course the insanity escalates . . .
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