ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

TUPNews recommends that you read foreign newspapers printed in languages you can’t understand.

“What shall we say of modern man?” asked Camus. “He fornicated and read the papers.” And why not? It’s lovely and relaxing to idly leaf through a newspaper. On a lunch break, in the park on a sunny day, on a Sunday morning after breakfast – it’s one of the great, simple pleasures.

But the reader is always in danger of being exposed to “opinion” and “analysis”. The former drains the soul, while the latter hurts the brain. Whether the tedium of Monboit or the crassness of Littlejohn, one puts the paper down feeling freshly assaulted.

TUPNews was in an Air France departure lounge recently, and found myself picking up a copy of Le Figaro that was lying around. It’s a nice-looking, breezy paper, not dissimilar in design to our own Guardian. But as I was unable to comprehend anything more than the basic subject matter of each story, reading it was sheer, lazy pleasure, unadulterated by the whining of po-faced twats.

The only article of which I could understand more than half was, for some reason, a preview of the Biarritz vs Munster Heineken Cup final, which is a Europe-wide rugby union competition. It was typically, beautifully French: the first two-thirds of the article were pure hyperbole about what an amazing team Munster were, how rugby is not a game but a battle for Munster, how rugby is not a game but a way of life for Munster fans, how Munster are more like oxen than men, how Munster were the overwhelming favourites. The rest of the article dealt with Biarritz’s level of preparation, concluding that they had better be fucking well prepared to stand a chance of beating Munster.

Munster later won 23-19.