The article written by Mariella Frostrup in The Observer concerns her friend, Angus Deayton, and his redundancy after, in May 2002, the News of the World reported that Deayton had nights of cocaine and sex with a prostitute, Caroline Martin, without realising she was a call girl. And on 2nd June 2002, The Sunday Mirror reported that Angus Deayton had a secret mistress, TV scriptwriter Stacy Herbert. As Frostrup is Deayton's friend, the article seems rather one-sided; she does not go into any depth of what Deayton actually did to be made redundant, she refers to what happened as a 'tawdry affair' and goes into no further detail.
The article is written informally, it is easy to read and cuts to the chase. Frostrup does not tread carefully when talking about sex or television channels, unlike many repo
...rters she dives straight in, perfectly okay with saying 'Channel 4 gives us endless sex docs dressed up as reportage. ' At the beginning of the article, she uses her boldness to create an image of a perverse country where all that is shown on television are sex documentaries and shock horror programs.Frostrup throughout the article tries to put down the people who fired Deayton, saying that the producers of Have I Got News For You would be rubbing their hands together with glee at the 'surge in ratings' while threatening Deayton that if he does not 'clean up his act', he will be fired. Frostrup also attacks the reporters following Deayton and his partner, describing them as 'men in cheap raincoats brandishing pens instead of pistols'.
Describing how they are too feeble to attack Deayton as a person, bu
attack his character and his television-self. Frostrup next attacks Deayton's fellow presenters, saying that Paul Merton was not fired because of his 'party lifestyle', and that Merton and Hislop both sided with the producers against Deayton, devoting a whole show to putting him down. Describing how they were doing it to protect their 'six-figure salaries'. Showing that these two individuals care more about money which they do not need than protecting a twelve-year relationship.The article now goes on to describe that fame is very much temporary for most people, and that all it needs is to be in a tabloid paper once and the press are hounding you to find a new story, which leads to some fame, and then these temporary celebrities are offered places in films and television shows.
Frostrup's article does well to evoke emotion in the reader, she uses personal experience freely and uncensored to describe how cruel the life of celebrities can be, and that Deayton's life may have been tainted by a few producers at the BBC who thought it would boost their ratings to meet the annual targets.However, Frostrup does little to illustrate the producers' point of view, maybe assuming that the reader already knows the details, or trying to make Deayton's redundancy seem more harsh and unjust than it really is. The article is written in a tabloid style, a broadsheet would most definitely have the article written by an unbiased reporter, as this article could indeed be blowing the situation out of proportion.
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