Stories claiming that members of England's cricket team celebrated their Ashes victory by urinating on the pitch resulted in competitive puns in this morning's leading red-tops.
Funny? Clever? Pathetic? You decide.
The Sun splash (no pun intended) headline was "L.Pee.W". Its page 5 story featured the strap line: "Cricket aces in passing water-gate". The editorial offered two: "widdle stump" and "caught on a stinky wicket" while the cartoonist chose "caught short in the slips".
The Daily Mirror ran a front page blurb, "Ashes to splashes" with the story across a 6-7 spread headlined, "It's leg before weeket" under a strap line that repeated the page 1 line, "Ashes to splashes: players caught short."
Even The Times was moved to try one: "A sprinkle on the wicket mars team's Ashes victory"
The Daily Mail, however, was too outraged by the whole business to see it as a subject for humour, asking "Are cricketers now as yobbish as footballers?" But its leading article did have a pun heading of sorts: "Flannelled fools."
Well, I suppose it was a relief from the Syrian dramas (pun intended).
And Australian papers join in the pun fun
A cartoon in the Melbourne Herald Sun (and other Rupert Murdoch titles) to illustrate a news story fulminating against the "distasteful display" by England's players was captioned, "The Poms are caught slashing outside the off stump".
The Fairfax papers - the Sydney Morning Telegraph and The Age in Melbourne - chose the headline "The wee party" and also used the adjective "distasteful" to describe the incident.
