I don't know if Lord Justice Leveson has a permanent mobile phone number – he's probably using burners – but if anyone has it can they give him a bell and ask if his inquiry into press behaviour will take in celebrity magazines?
I only ask because I'm looking at one of the cover headlines on this week's New! magazine – Broody Kate's Anorexia Nightmare – and the grim, confected "story" about the Duchess of Cambridge that lies therein, and wondering whether such titles will escape this opportunity to take a long hard look at what they do, before stabbing themselves in the eye with rusty knives?
It could be that New! editor Kirsty Tyler regards this sort of thing as public service journalism, peppered as her mag is with odd-sounding anonymous sources and opinions from medical "experts" who do not treat the duchess. But the fact that Kirsty has opted to run such stuff this week of all weeks suggests she's just itching for a chance to appear before a judicial inquiry to defend what I suppose we'll call her valuable work. As far as intellectually dazzling appearances before an inquisitor goes, I imagine the outing would be something akin to Ed Murrow taking on Senator McCarthy, though of course that happened on TV and not in a quasi-court. Perhaps the analogy is a United States congressional committee calling a literal muppet – Elmo from Sesame Street – to appear in 2002.
Of course, I've no wish to single out Kirsty. Lost in Showbiz has previously showcased the work of her fellow mag editors, and asked why the likes of Reveal and Heat felt moved to publish pictures of a clearly unstable Amy Winehouse taken in her own home, or to run cover stories blaring "Britney: my children or my sanity?", which contained precisely nought quotes from recently sectioned Britney Spears.
More to the point, when the then-information commissioner produced his 2007 report into the "the unlawful trade in confidential personal information", the list of titles paying private investigators contained magazines as well as newspapers. There was Best, Closer, Real – even Marie Claire. I'm sure none of us could bear such organs of the press to be the 13th fairies at the inquiry. Be a love, your lordship, and do not deny them an invitation.
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