What on earth was the Daily Star thinking of?
Journalists at the Daily Star are a tolerant bunch. Day in, day out, they are happy to put a good deal of rubbish into the paper, including a fair bit about women with large breasts. But last week their good humour snapped when around 12 members of the National Union of Journalists plus five other journalists called an emergency meeting because they objected to a spoof “Daily Fatwah” page. As a result of their protest it was pulled. One might suppose the idea was dreamt up by a couple of subeditors after a long lunch, and was never destined to see the light of day. Not at all. The page had the approval of the editor, Dawn Neeson, who had gone home when the row broke out. Other senior executives were relaxed about it. Richard Desmond, proprietor of the Daily Star, apparently expressed no objections. The idea was to show “how Britain’s fave newspaper would look under Muslim rule”. Among the items on the imaginary front page of the “Daily Fatwah” were a leader headlined “Allah great”; a c
