DACRE THE WISEACRE (POEM)

DACRE THE WISEACRE

July 2014. George Clooney called the Daily Mail,

(edited by Paul Dacre) “the worst kind of tabloid”

after its false claim about his coming marriage.

The Daily Mail’s a loathsome rag,           

A tissue sheet of lies;                                  

Unfit for wrapping fish and chips

And dumping inside rubbish skips,

As it attracts the flies! 

Heed not the bunkum that it writes,

To sell it every day;

To those who ‘think’ they’re ‘middle-class’

(And thus are talking out their arse)

And shop at Bonmarché.  (1)

Paul Dacre the wiseacre strives,

With all his vengeful might; (2)

To shield the Mail from what he calls

(And this is just a load of balls!)

“Those hostile to the right”.

The joke is that it’s rarely ‘right’,

One need not be a sleuth;

To fathom out most stories are

By any standard, way by far,                                      

Mere travesties of truth.

The P.C.C. confirms the Mail, (3)

Attracts twice the complaints;

Of any other tabloid print,

(And thus the Mail should take the hint)

As none of them are saints! 

The best use for the Daily Mail,

Is in the smallest room;

Where it need not be held in lieu

But can, thereafter, be flushed through,

The U-bend to its doom!

(1) A budget clothes store whose Gallic name

suggests that its products are ‘haute couture’.

(2) Stephen Fry called Daily Mail Editor Paul Dacre,

“a loathsome, self-regarding, morally putrid,

vengeful & disgusting a man as it’s possible to be”.

(3) The Press Complaints Commission.

© Richard Layton