When I started out in this daft business the first lesson hammered into me by my first sports editor was that when you wrote a headline the words had to be reflect what was in the intro. The second was that you always include a name.
Whichever Sunday Times sub came up with England Can't Cut the Mustard to illustrate England's one-day cricket defeat by New Zealand got it right on the second point and wrong on the first. Mustard wasn't mentioned until the third or fourth par and the story wasn't about him.
But which sub could resist the possibilities offered by his name?
There are obviously sportsmen and women who lend themselves to abuse by production journalists stricken by pun fever - and Mustard is one of them. Other prime examples are anyone called Bird, Rose or King. The former Celtic player Rafael Scheidt also comes to mind. There are just as obviously other names that will remain immune to puns, notably Mustard's team-mate Dimitri Mascarenhas and Celtic's Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink.
The greatest news pun headline never written (as yet) is the one to announce the passing of Archbishop Desmond Tutu - Ta Ta Tutu.
The greatest sports pun we will never see - regrettably since their careers did not overlap - concerns the dream scenario of a punch-up between two psychotic second row rugby fowards, Danny Grewcock of England and Jean Condom of France.
The Englishman is a karate black belt and would undoubtedly have won, but I guarantee the headline, Grewcock Fills In Condom, wouldn't have appeared in the Sunday Times.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Strangely, as I read your piece, I was listening to the lines from Echo and the Bunnymen, 'Spare us the cutter, couldn't cut...the mustard.'Spooky. (Or is it 'spare us the gutter'?)
Keep up the good work.
Huw, www.runflux.com
PS Motty lost it years ago, watch it with the mute button on
Post a Comment