It’s always curious to see how my profession works. On November 8, I wrote this silly article, headlined “River Monster Alert”, for the Sunday Express:
Probably because it was buried on p27, only a few “weird and wonderful” websites and the East London Advertiser followed it up.
However, yesterday the same story with the exact same quotes I’d got from Mike Wells, was the main lead story on page 3 of The Sun no less. Even page 3 girl Amii, 25, from Birmingham, felt compelled to comment in the News in Briefs section:
AMII says: “It’s a worry to hear that a snake or alligator could be on the loose killing geese near the Olympic park. I’m reminded of the late, great conservationist Steve Irwin who said, ‘You can touch a stick of dynamite, but if you touch a venomous snake it’ll kill you so fast it’s not even’ funny’.”
Since then, the story has been picked up by the Telegraph, the Guardian, the Daily Mail, the Huffington Post, the BBC, LBC Radio and many others.
I don’t know what the moral of all this is; perhaps it’s that I’m first for bollocks.
UPDATE – Dec 14, 8.50pm
The Guardian’s Dave Hill tells a commenter on his blog thinks the mystery is solved: otters. See here.
Trial by Jeory 
It’s Christmas, the journos have all been to their Xmas drinks dos, they’ve got to fill up the space somehow, they haven’t got time to research and write their own story so in time-honoured tradition they’ll nick somebody else’s wholesale. Comforting to see some things never change.
But the thought of a Page Three girl even thinking of Steve Irwin, let alone referring to him as a ‘late, great conservationist’ and quoting him directly is a great work of fiction.