'Red Tops' Should Be Red Faced

Hello readers. I'm meant to be on holiday and enjoying myself, but thanks to two very insensitive, celeb-hounding daily publications, I'm wound up. So thank you, you inconsiderate bastards.*

Why am I so wound up? Well, I popped down to the local offey to get some holiday essentials (I'm only in Portsmouth and it's pissing it down, yay Britain) and I noticed something was amiss on the cover of not one but two 'red-tops'.

You probably saw it yourself. If you did, congratulations for not screeching in fury and rending said article in twain. If you didn't see it, let me explain: identical pictures of Cheryl Cole, obviously screenshots from recently shot footage from the X Factor show, obviously leaked from some degenerate who works there. She was slumped on her desk, presumably unconscious, and in case you had any doubt ("Oh, she's just resting or crying or something, they'd never print a picture of a seriously ill person mid-collapse. Would they?") there was even a massive headline reading "SHE'S OUT COLE".

Oh, hilarious. Very well done. I'd have liked to have been sat next to the moron who thought that was acceptable as a headline, mainly because I'd have liked to have cuffed them around the neck and forced them face first onto their desk.

Speaking of someone regularly faints, it is a horrible experience. One minute you're up and about, next minute you wake up on the floor and don't know a thing. Often there are people staring at you. It's scary and humiliating. It's been widely put out in the last few months that Cheryl is in a fragile state after contracting malaria; and who can blame her when the press is hawking this sort of shit about.

Imagine if you will what it must be like to be her, or Robbie, or Kerry, or Jordan. Disregard whatever opinion of them you already have and imagine that in the back of their minds there's this shrill little voice going "She's ill! Ill! Her husband is cheating! She's going to lose jobs! She's too thin! She's with this man! Now she's with this man!"

What would that be like in your own life? Imagine being followed by "He's no good at his job!" "She's too fat!" "His girlfriend cheats!" "She can't get a boyfriend!" Although the stars mostly maintain a dignified silence, and have really good agents who can field most of the horrid press, I'm sure some gets though. Read Kerry Katona's column in OK, Peter Andre's column in New!, Alex Reid's column in Star. There's a designated slot for denying stupid rumours.

I must still be relatively naive, because when I last checked it wasn't OK to gawp and giggle at unconscious women. If Cheryl was a non-famous bystander who collapsed, would there be this mass interest? Maybe, if it had happened to a nobody like me at a celeb hangout or during a prime-time TV audience slot. Then the headline would be on Page 28 and would read "WOMAN FAINTS AT PLANET HOLLYWOOD: LITTERS FLOOR WITH FILTHY PLEBEAN BODY".

My advice is stop funding it. Stop reading. I was going to buy the paper to research it, but then how does that make me better than the moron who goes "Oh my GOD, wait 'til I show everyone in the office THIS."

*Actually, it didn't ruin my holiday. It was lovely.