Blame 'Skins' (whatever that is)

It's the oldest trick in the Great Big Book of Journalism - try to connect your news story to a pop cultural phenom in order to create a tasty headline. That's how we end up with stories about cloning breakthroughs that talk about 'Jurassic Park' technology, or small town scandals described as 'the real Desperate Housewives'.

So well done to the Daily Mail, one of the country's leading purveyors of popculture-news hybrids, who managed to plumb new depths today with a story that their own readers clearly won't understand. In a story about a vengeful buy-to-let landlady who evicted her tenants after seeing photos on Facebook, the Mail describes their debauched activities as being Skins-style parties, before realising that none of their readers would have the slightest clue what that was supposed to mean. In a subtle piece of exposition, 'Daily Mail Reporter' explains "Skins is a TV series on the E4 channel and is based on the riotous life of teenagers", thereby invalidating the whole point of the reference in the article's headline.

As an aside, it's worth noting that the landlady in question, with whom the Mail's sympathies clearly lie, sounds like a revolting piece of work, particularly with the comment: "The tenants were found by a lettings agency, who told me they were a very nice middle-class couple...It very quickly dawned on me that they were actually a bunch of massive chavs." What a shame she didn't find a photo of her toothbrush in amongst those Facebook photos.