Fleet Street moves en masse to Abu Dhabi

Another day, another journalist ditches the UK for the Middle East – that is, the part of the Middle East where footballers wives holiday and is home to quarter of the world’s cranes – the Gulf – the home away from home for British journalists.

In April, The National, (it is without a website) an English language paper based in Abu Dhabi, came off the printing presses and the FT announced that it will publish a Middle East edition. All this press flurry in a part of the world not exactly renowned for press freedom. There was this one time when I was editor-at-large of The Abu Dhabi Diary and I happened to say at a party that the weather was too hot. The local prince and his nineteen wives disagreed and I was asked to retract my statement. I declined, pretending it was an opinion and not a fact, adding that I had heard the French ambassador say it first. The very next day I was asked to leave Abu Dhabi and had to give back all the gold I had amassed. Am I bitter? No, it was too hot over there.

Clarkson, you….

The Times Online has taken more than a year to grow on me – having been a senior editor there for nine years I was initially disappointed with the lime green website (I much prefer deep purple) when it went live over 18 months ago. But now I am integrated with it, that is, until the homepage opens up and I see a pull quote from the greatest turd talker (possibly only in line to Mayor Johnson) in the northern hemisphere – Jeremy ‘look at the size of my head’ Clarkson. May JC be run over by a thousand bicycles?

Mark Firth is no longer in heat

Mark Frith, editor of gossip mag-rag heat, leaves his post tomorrow. He’s going to write a book pretty much along the same lines as P.S. I Love You. If you need to leave him hate mail he can be reached on Mark.Frith@hotmail.co.uk. He will be replaced by a spare door for the mean time.