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 - London, UK
A leaked document from the ITV Sports department
has today revealed the full extent of the late 80s ‘Football
Idol’ scandal. The ‘lost’ series, the precursor
to the massively successful Pop Idol show, was rumoured to have been
buried by Sky TV Executives immediately after the satellite broadcaster
gained the rights to broadcast Premiership football for fear that
it would cheapen the image of the game in England. Amongst the allegations
in the document is the revelation that Emile Heskey was the original
winner of the show and that the creators promised they could take
an ordinary young man with a modicum of ability and make him a football
star. The document also alleges that, where the Pop Idol format blatantly
guarantees a record deal and massive exposure to the public for an
average talent, the Football Idol format sought to conceal the deals
that had been done under the table, namely a guaranteed contract with
a Division 1 club which would either lead to promotion or a big name
move to one of the, at the time, top four sides in the country and
subsequently and unspecified number of games for the national team.
It is beleived by many analysts that Heskey’s agent has managed
to enforce all of these clauses despite the show never being broadcast.
An ITV insider said, ‘We were paid far more by Sky to keep the
lid on the show than it cost to make and we were allowed to keep the
rights to the format, so all in all it turned into a great deal for
the organisation not such a good one for Liverpool or England though,
but he did alright for Leicester in the first.’ Heskey’s
agent declined to comment. |
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Sacramento,
US
A spokesman for IS Software
has revealed that the total number of deaths in their Quake
series of first person shoot 'em ups has now reached 1 billion.
'We are delighted to say that that wholescale carnage introduced
by Quake and built on in Quake 2 and Quake 3 has now topped
the 1 billion corpse count across all platforms, making the
Quake franchise the single most violent in the history of gaming.'
Ian Wilson went on to tell the Las Vegas Games Expo that Quake
was well into development and will be available on mobiles and
N-gage by the end of 2004. Wilson parried questions about the
influence of Quake on America's youth but became visibly uneasy
when the ce of Josh Gibson was raised. Gibson killed twenty
students at his high school in Omaha, armed with a chain gun
and rocket launcher and his reign of terror only ended when
his attempted rocket jump onto a first floor balcony blew his
feet off. 'The Gibson v. ID Software case is yet to go to trial
and the company will not comment on it until it does.'
, Croydon,
UK
The powerful image manipulation package Photoshop 6.0 was purchased by Zoe Hislop
from her local PC World last Saturday purely to improve the 120x 100 pixel image
she uses on the dating sites match.com and udate.co.uk. Hislop told friends that
after an initial burst of interest her profile on both sites was now scarcely
browsed except by 'the standard six weirdos', she went on to confide in best
friend Emma Robson that she hoped the software, used by leading designers for
high intensity graphical work in print and online mediums' would be able to give
her small image, 'that little something extra'
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, London, UK
Marketing Manager Harry Koepke has been rewarded
with the title employee of the year by the Bentley Motor Group after
the triumphant success of his campaigns in the increasingly vital
gansta rap demographic. 'Harry has really burrowed deep into the collective
psyche of the wealthy music industry homeys and Bentley is now the
expensive motorised status symbol of choice for some of the world's
least pleasant artists.' said Bentley CEO Charles Walstein. Koepke
is reputed to have made impressive strides with sales of high margin
extra such as full Louis Vuitton leather interiors and separate velvet
lined glove boxes for jewellery. After receiving the award Koepke
was keen to get back down to work on the new Bentley Bee-H two seater
sports car.
Frankfurt,Ger
A spokesperson for the World Motorsport
Federation (WMF) yesterday reluctantly told a press conference that
the Federation was being forecd to eliminate a number of classes
of motorsport from it's roster after the latest round of oil prices
rises. Helmut Krass said, 'Much motorsport away from the glamour
of Formula One is conducted by enthusiastic petrol heads and the
uncertainty in the Middle-East has pushed oil, and hence petrol,
prices to a consistent high. With the number of fixed costs in motorsport,
from equipment to insurance to venue hire increasing in line with
inflation any decrease in attendance revenues or increase in fuel
costs was always likely to put strain on a number of the newer classes.'
As part of a general reorganisation of the sport Formula Fiat will
be scrapped entirely and the Under 18s class of Formula Fun will
be grouped reduced to a single contest instead of seven age groups.
The news has been greeted with dismay by fans with many privately
voicing concern over how Britain can hope to produce and other world
champion with the options for spoilt children becoming so limited.
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