CityLife

Justin Moorhouse: A wry eye on a mad world

Justin Moorhouse

DESPERATE times call for desperate measures.

In times of war, the government, for our own benefit, have had to ration food and supplies to ensure we made it through.

When Britain faced an energy crisis in the early Seventies, the country endured the three-day week.

Now as we entertain economic uncertainty (I don't know why they call it uncertainty - it's a bit obvious we're all doomed) the new powers that be - namely the media - have begun to provide us with sustenance to keep us going through those long dark days ahead.

Tittle-tattle and pointless news stories. Have you noticed they are everywhere? Rubbish dressed up as news.

Take, for instance, the story that appeared this week in The Sun that six astronauts will spend more than 18 months together in a sealed isolation chamber as the first step in planning a space mission to Mars.

This is according to the European Space Agency. Yes that's right, the European Space Agency. No, I'd never heard of it before. There is about as much point to a European Space Agency as there is to a Dutch Mountain Rescue team or the University of Chester.

I'll tell you what the European Space Agency consists of, about four or five bearded academics that one lazy, hazy summer day in about 1985, after listening to Dark Side of the Moon one too many times, decided to ask for some funding to realise their dreams of space travel, man.

No one was more surprised than they when they got funding from Brussels and decided they'd probably best spend it on something more than Hob Nobs and Rizlas. Thus the Agency was formed.

Frenchman

The article tells us that a Frenchman, German and four Russians will be tested for stress, mood and health levels as they live in a cramped compartment for 520 days. Listen up Euro-boffins, save your money, I can tell you that at the end of it they definitely will be stressed, moody and a little unhealthy. Those that survive that is, my money is on at least one of the Russians eating the French guy.

The Sun then tells us that The ESA experiment - which starts at a special facility in Moscow next month - will show whether humans can survive further than man has ever travelled before.

The last sentence of the article is a joy. Written it seems with the thought that 'hang on, I think we will need to explain to our readership just how far Mars is away'.

Mars is between 34 million and 250 million miles away, depending on the position of the planets.

You can almost hear the mouth-breathing relief from the population can't you. "Blimey Frank, all this talk of a Mars mission, I thought it was a lot closer than that - seems it is miles away. I never knew, I thought it might have been just up the Jubilee line."

All that fades into insignificance with my favourite tabloid fantasy - sorry, news story of the week.

On Sunday the News Of The World (an aptly named title if you want your news to generally be about C-list celebrities and the world for you exists in a 50ft radius from Faces nightclub in Essex) hit the jackpot with this humdinger: Brave Chelsy is to make a play for Prince Harry by inviting him on to the infamous Leeds University Otley Mile pub-crawl.

Bullseye

All this on the back of rumours that he had been flirting with Natalie Imbruglia. Bullseye.

I think they pressed every button there: Celebrity. Binge drinking. The Royal Family. Immigrants (though to be fair she is a white African, so that probably doesn't count) - if only one of them was homosexual or had something to do with Simon Cowell then it would be too perfect.

The story suggests that, after being dumped on Facebook, the former girlfriend of the third in line to the throne plans to woo the Prince by inviting him on to a pub-crawl in Yorkshire, which involves loads of alcohol and fancy dress.

You can't imagine him going down well in Yorkshire. It's not as though he's anything like those folk - aloof, widely despised for being a part of the country no one really likes, boorish, potentially borderline racist and dressing inappropriately while consuming a large amount of alcohol - is it? What could she be thinking?