September’s here, and the newspapers are desperate to remind everyone coming back from their holidays that they should continue to buy a daily newspaper. They don’t do this with news (well aside from book buyups and the soap exclusives). No, they do it with free gifts!
Yes, it’s that time of year when you linger just a little longer in the newsagent to see what freebies you can collect with your dead trees. Then you junk entire sections or whole papers in the nearest bin/recycling container without having to go through the depressing prospect of, say, reading The Daily Mail.
The Guardian has returned to its popular wallcharts with various animals and plants this week. Incidentally, today’s chart says I can send away for additional copies at £3.99 each. Or, I could just go out and buy lots more copies of the paper… Last week The Independent had posters of various UK birds, and this week has a double sided daily poster with one side making up a human skeleton. Despite someone pretty much saying as much in a letter to The Guardian the other week, nobody has yet produced a chart of the “new look” solar system.
[UPDATE – Tuesday’s Independent has precisely this chart!] Meanwhile CDs and DVDs are the order of the day elsewhere, with the newly £2.00 Sunday Times giving away a live Jimi Hendrix CD. The News of the World had a token exchange Little Britain DVD, and The Sun had rushed together a Crocodile Hunter disc of some description. The Sunday Express has a multi-part Diana DVD which nobody finds at all surprising.
But the big two are the Daily Mail and The Times. The Mail is giving away 14 David Attenbrough documentary episodes. Sadly, you can’t collect whole series of, say, The Blue Planet this way, but you can get single episodes from the various series Attenbrough has made over the years. But The Times has really come up trumps with Saturday’s paper giving away the wonderful Belleville Rendezvous. And if stories are to be believed, they’re giving away the absolutely amazing In the Mood For Love by Wong Kar Wai. I only recently bought the double-disc DVD of this myself in a sale having waited for it to come out cheaply. However much you might hate Murdoch, do yourself a favour and get a copy of The Times next week if it does come with this film.