Bad Press Awards

Mic Wright

Recognising the Worst of the Worst of British Journalism

The Copper-Plated Biro for Besotted Fanzine Writer

Fan fiction can make for queasy reading. If you’re not a particular sort of Star Trek fan, the idea of imagining Captain Kirk and Mr Spock locking lips and setting their phasers to do a lot more than stun is not appealing. But imagining new – and possibly erotic – adventures for fictional characters is a lot less unsettling than penning political fan fiction published in the pages of a national newspaper.

This month’s winner of the Bad Press Awards has appeared in this column before.

The Editor of the Sunday Telegraph, Allister Heath, earned those mentions via his tendency to write paranoid denunciations of the left, coupled with Chicken Little-like predictions of impending doom. This time, though, he’s back for his ardour for Nigel Farage.

So horny is he for his hard-right hero that I suspect he had to break off from typing the first paragraph of his recent column on the Reform UK Leader to mop the sweat from his keyboard.