Well, somebody has to write the headlines

Last week’s column featuring memorable headlines prompted a number of readers to recall their personal favourites. It seems that everyone has a headline tucked away in their memory cells. A former Bangkok Post colleague relates that during the Vietnam War the Post received a wire copy report that US forces had discovered a Viet Cong camp in the jungle that was set up so well it even had an oven for the production of fresh bread. For the headline a Post sub-editor came up with “Victor Charlie Makes Able Baker”. I reckon that’s quite clever.

Another memorable Post headline, of an entirely different nature, occurred in the late 1990s when the newspaper informed us: “Banana accused of sex offence.” For the curious, this was not an example of a fruit going off the rails but an African politician called Mr Banana, who was accused of most un-banana-like behaviour.

One headline that definitely did not appear in the Bangkok Post was, “Dog in bed seeks divorce”, which was carried in a London tabloid. The mind boggles.

Nothing to sniff at

One reader was amused by the headline spotted in a Michigan paper which read, “City unsure why sewer smells.” Several of the headlines submitted were a bit on the saucy side. However the BBC’s “Great tits cope with warming” turned out to be an innocuous tale about how our feathered friends are dealing with climate change. Another reader opted for a headline that went around the world a few years ago which read, “Tiger Woods plays with own balls, says Nike.”

Which for no particular reason, brings us to the thought-provoking: “Porn star sues over rear-end collision.”

Hitting the right note

Playing around with song titles has long been a rich source of headlines for sub-editors. Variations of just about every Beatles song have appeared in headline form over the years. But it is not a new phenomenon.

Back in 1938, Gracie Fields had a huge hit with The Biggest Aspidistra in the World, which became something of a catchphrase. A few years later, The Guardian’s theatre critic was less than impressed by a production of Antony and Cleopatra in which Cleopatra uses an asp clutched to her breast to end it all. The critic headlined his review, “The biggest asp disaster in the world.”

But it was the unlikely territory of the sports pages which drew perhaps the most ingenious headline inspired by a song title. For the 1964 musical Mary Poppins, songwriters Robert and Richard Sherman came up with Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, something of a mouthful by any standards. Few would have guessed that a long time later, in February 2000, it was to generate one of football’s most acclaimed headlines. After underdogs Inverness Caledonian Thistle beat mighty Celtic in a huge Scottish Cup upset, The Sun came out with the inspired “Super Caley go ballistic, Celtic are atrocious”.

Marching oranges

Many headlines fall under the “things that could have been better expressed” department, as in “Sardine living in Osaka mini-hotel”. In Northern Ireland some years ago was the intriguing “Troops watch Orange march”, which brings us to the rather confusing “March planned for August”.

Then there was “Chef throws his heart into helping feed the needy”, which definitely sounds like acting above and beyond the call of duty.

Some choices of words are just plain unfortunate. Leading this category must be “Tourists split up after bus crash”. Also there must have been a better way of saying “Girls plump for new university” while “British girl has to scratch” could perhaps have been put more delicately. And probably the less said the better about “Stiff opposition to casketless funeral”.

One headline, “Women smokers have lighter children”, actually sounds like an old Tommy Cooper joke.

Law and disorder

You can always rely on the criminal world for entertaining offerings. Thus we get a court verdict which informs us “Drunk gets nine months in violin case”. Also open to interpretation is the headline “Police found safe under blanket”. As for “Spotted man wanted for questioning”, police were presumably looking for an acne sufferer. One suspects the tongue was firmly in the cheek of the headline writer when he came up with “Foul play suspected in death of man found headless, bound and gagged”. This was also possibly the case with “Marijuana issue sent to joint committee”, which appeared in the Toronto Star.

Something which could have possibly been better expressed was the following US headline: “Two convicts evade noose, jury hung.”

Believe it or not

Some headlines may seem so obvious you wonder why they were written, as when the Express Times in Pennsylvania informed us that “Homicide victims rarely talk to police”. Also hardly an eye-opener was “Federal agents raid gun shop, find weapons”.

The Winchester Star in Virginia carried the revelation that “Study shows frequent sex enhances pregnancy chances”. In a similar vein we have “Statistics show that teen pregnancy drops off significantly after age 25”. Another paper carried “Auctioneer finds body in funeral home”. That’s almost on a par with “Man found dead in cemetery”.

News of the screws

Some headline writers really earn their money. One must applaud the journalist at Maintenance and Engineering Magazine for making a dull technical article considerably more entertaining with the thought-provoking headline, “New screwing method cuts fatigue and increases productivity.”