You turn your back for a second on a room full of journalists and look what happens. (Well, if you've got your newspaper open, look at page 31 to see what happens.) A picture the size of a continent and as cheesy as a continental delicatessen – that was never in the deal. When we waved goodbye to the photographer we envisaged a little cut-out outline pic tucked away in a corner somewhere. Red faces at breakfast. Oh, well. At least our grandparents are happy. If you don't know what I'm talking about ... well, there's still time to go out and buy a paper.
As is perhaps obvious, I had left the building before the newspaper went to press, so there is some catching up to do. I see we decided to splash with Michael Howard's comments on abortion – a nice agenda-setting political piece, and given exclusively to us as a sneak preview from a feature interview all of the main party leaders have given to Cosmopolitan magazine.
The rest of the front page didn't change too much over the night, the main difference between the late edition and the one I'm looking at from last night (after hurrying out at 11pm to see marriage feature shame in print) is that photographic evidence of Prince William following in his father's footsteps – should that be hoofsteps? – and taking a polo tumble replaced an earlier politics pic.
On which subject, as promised yesterday, Gaby and Martin, who were at parliament for the Terror Bill ping pong match on Friday delivered the reporting goods in style. Jason, meanwhile, our resident terror guru, gives a frank analysis of the real threat, as indeed he promised he would do on the blog last week. People of their word, Observer hacks. Jason also got us this magnificent scoop on the explosion of drug use world wide.
The only surprise for me (apart from that photo) was the page 3 number – the slot for dramatic features with a cultural flavour – which went in the end to football referee Anders Frisk's decision to quit the game after getting death threats from Chelsea fans. A fascinating, but of course terribly sad sorry – and an important one since it says so much about how we behave as a nation. Denis Campbell, out sports news correspondent, is a great reporter so I look forward to reading the piece. Might go and do that right now in fact.
I'm also looking forward to by this intruiging-sounding item – which I read about on the newslist last week, but which I haven't yet grasped in print.
Puts kettle on for second time that morning.
