It's got to be a joke, surely? (Daily Express)

Member Name: worst_trip

Product:	Daily Express
Date:	02/07/09 (46 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Only costs 40p

Disadvantages: Isn't worth 40p as consists of barely nothing apart from endless printed ads

Cards on the table: I don't usually buy the 'Daily Express' but when I was a cleaning lady in the early 1990s one of my colleagues brought it with her to work every day - and I used to regularly read the second hand copies while we were skiving together in a downstairs broom-cupboard. That's a good thing about tabloid newspapers in general I've found: the content is such that usually it makes very little difference whether you read them on the day of publication, or not. Back then my 20-odd year old self at least, thought 'the Daily Express' was all right. Didn't it use to have a 'Dilbert' or a 'Calvin & Hobbes' cartoon or something? Whatever it was, I found that was a real highlight. But sadly, they don't seem to print that in the paper any more.

So I bought one of these in addition to my usual paper last Tuesday, to give me something disposable to read while waiting for an appointment at the local health centre. My choice of 'Daily Express' I admit was largely motivated by cost considerations - and size; in such a setting I like an easily-handle-able tabloid-shaped newspaper and as at 40p the 'Express' was the lowest-priced tabloid that wasn't 'the Sun' or 'the Star' or anything with overtly unsavoury content like that I picked one up.

I shan't be bothering with 'the Daily Express' again as it took me only about 15 minutes to read through the main section of the paper twice.

I'm aware it's the so-called 'silly season' when newspapers are generally short of news items, but even allowing for that this was ridiculous. In Tuesday's 'Daily Express' pages 1-23 (and this includes the health pages of the newspaper) formed the main part of the newspaper before the letters page and sports sections, and more than half of that - bearing in mind I had ample time, while waiting at the doctor's, since I arrived slightly early, and my appointment took place slightly late, to tally this out pretty accurately - consisted of full and part-page commercial advertisements for shops and other businesses etc.

Which leaves us, at a generous estimate of about 12 pages in the 'Daily Express' (including photos and health pages) that actually carried written news items plus relevant material, and other articles. Come on, Michael Jackson's not long deceased - every other paper, even the broadsheet ones, must still be getting at least a six-page spread out of that ongoing material.

Much of the less than half of 23 pages of content in the 'Express' I read was far from earth-shattering - for example there's a heat wave in Britain at the moment, and one of the 'articles' I've included as a 'news item' from Tuesday's paper actually consisted largely of a three-quarter page photo of some cute piglets keeping cool under a garden hose, plus one paragraph of accompanying text (which in the preceeding description, I've more or less reproduced verbatim - well, the sense of it, anyway) - but to be fair, this is exactly in line with what you see in other similar papers at this time of year. It's just that in Tuesday's 'Daily Express' there was a lot, lot less of it. I don't necessarily want to look at silly frivilous pictures of wet pigs in newspapers, etc. but when I buy a paper I do want to be able to use it to kill a little time, and the 'Express' I bought.....expressley...didn't deliver in this respect.

I'm even now wondering, on re-reading this review if perhaps I could've accidentally left half of Tuesday's 'Daily Express' behind me in the shop. But no, the pages I did have were in fact consecutively numbered, and nothing appeared to be missing so that's no use as an excuse.

Pathetic!

Summary: Where did it all go wrong?