TV shock-horror probe into pun-dits

On the heels of such television schedule fillers as The 100 Greatest Albums and The 100 Greatest Movie Stars comes a countdown show designed to unveil The Greatest Tabloid Headlines ever written.

The words "barrel", "bottom of" and "scrape" spring to mind. But writing a headline that remains seared in the reader's memory long after the story it sat on has become history is a very big trick.

Sorting out the 30 tabloid classics from which the show's journalistic "experts" could choose, the makers of The Greatest Tabloid Headlines admit they were spoiled for choice.

Former editors Piers Morgan, Andrew Neil and Roy Greenslade, broadcasters John Sergeant and Ann Leslie, PR guru Max Clifford, and politicians such as Roy Hattersley and Ann Widdecombe will nominate their favourites.

Noticeable by his absence is ex Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie, possibly the most accomplished headline-writer.

Contractual difficulties apparently ruled him out of the judging, although certainly not out of the running.

Of the 30 original nominations, 19 were from the Sun, many produced during MacKenzie's rumbustious editorship.

Of the remainder, nine were from the Daily Mirror, one from the Daily Express, and one from the Sunday Sport, whose editor-in-chief, Tony Livesey, was also on the judging panel (one of my favourites, Sunday Sport's - "I FOUND FACE OF JESUS ON MY FISH FINGER" - did not make the cut).

Bad taste did not debar a headline from being included.

Hence the infamous "GOTCHA!" - the Sun's celebration of the attack on the General Belgrano, with considerable loss of life, during the Falklands war - makes the top 30, as does "UP YOURS DELORS", from the same paper.

So, too, the Daily Mirror's offensive "ACHTUNG SURRENDER!", for which Piers Morgan may well have voted since he wrote it.

The smart money for the winner would be on "FREDDIE STARR ATE MY HAMSTER" (the Sun, via a poker-faced Max Clifford).

This headline is truly great, in that it will almost certainly perpetuate the name of a comedian whose claim to lasting fame otherwise is no greater than that of ... well, of Piers Morgan's, I suppose.

The 1992 "IF KINNOCK WINS TODAY, WILL THE LAST PERSON TO LEAVE BRITAIN PLEASE TURN OUT THE LIGHTS" has its admirers, and the Sun's front page on singer George Michael's famous Los Angeles indiscretion, "ZIP ME UP BEFORE YOU GO-GO", is brilliant lavatory humour. (The Daily Star originally ran with the same heading, but changed it to "WHAM BAM FLASH IN THE PAN", which is almost as arresting.)

Given that some of the cleverest headlines are obnoxious ("HOP OFF YOU FROGS" - the Sun), or patently rubbish ("WORLD WAR 2 BOMBER FOUND ON MOON" - Sunday Sport), is television behaving responsibly in celebrating them?

I think so: how else will critics of the press learn that among the dross can be found intelligent thinking, as in "ALL CHANGE" (the Daily Mirror's front page on the day decimal currency was introduced) and even prominent apologia: "SORRY ... WE WERE HOAXED", which followed Morgan's departure from the Mirror for publishing the apparently fake Iraqi prisoner pictures.

* Bill Hagerty is editor of the British Journalism Review

- INDEPENDENT