Ned Sherrin and Ronnie Hazelhurst in a day, bad time for eighties nostalgists. The Guardian reported that Ronnie wrote “Reach for the Stars” by S Club 7 (although I’m sure that it was a Cathy Dennis /Bloke from Mud composition). Wikipedia said he did at the time of the article, but it wouldn’t have taken much research to get a bit past that. “Oh dear”, as noted West Brom fan Christopher Biggins might say.

Oh dear.

The meerkat photograph hoax review - which UK newspapers admitted online to being duped? - currybetdotnet - 12 September, 2007

If you’ve read my rantings on ’survey culture’ on the BiNS blog, or heard me go on about it as part of the reason for Talk Like A Brummie Day, you might not be surprised to see me link to this article - which is about how a ’survey’ for Veet (which is Imac - am I right?) was constructed and then ‘backed-up’ by buying a team of experts.

The press release they sent out even dissregareded their paid experts - and this sort of thing goes on ther whole time, and the press swall evey time. So when you see an article saying that ’something is the top, or bottom, for something’ or ’something has been voted..’ just read the article down to the bit where it tells you who’s paid for the ‘research’ - and then dismiss it as the shite that it is.