Wednesday 9 February 2011

BBC lists 50 newspapers with strangest names



The BBC website is running a list of 50 newspapers with the strangest names, compiled by readers.

The BBC says: "The debate was sparked by the launch of News Corp's iPad paper, which has the rather simple moniker, The Daily."

Topping the list from Enniskillen, is County Fermanagh's wonderfully named The Impartial Reporter.

From Missouri state capital, Linn, there is the Unterrified Democrat; from New Orleans the Times-Picayune; and from Massachusetts the Carlisle Mosquito.

Also on the list is The Arran Banner, the only newspaper said to be named after a potato.

In Cuba there is a paper called Granma , named after the boat in which Fidel Castro and his Marxist followers landed to start the revolution.

Cornwall's The Falmouth Packet gets a mention, as does the Royston Crow and the Casket in Nova Scotia, Canada.

My favourite UK newspaper name, the Banbury Cake, makes the list. A friend once worked there as a reporter. When he phoned the House of Commons and told them where he was from, he was asked: "Are you the currant affairs reporter?"

  • The Cake is named after the Banbury Cake, a spiced, currant-filled, flat pastry cake once made and sold exclusively in the Oxfordshire town. Literary fact via Wikipedia: In Ulysses by James Joyce, the character Bloom feeds the seagulls by throwing pieces of two Banbury cakes, which he bought for a penny, into the River Liffey.
  • My former Press Gazette colleague Jean Morgan names her favourite as the Murrumbidgee Irrigator in Australia.

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