Comedian Steve Coogan compared its popularity to paedophilia, Tony Blair’s former spin doctor Alastair Campbell labelled its editor “a poison in our national life”, and Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker likened its readers who comment online to “a chimps’ tea party of the damned”, but the Mail empire has now overtaken The Sun as most-read among the UK’s national papers.
Press Gazette has just reported the latest figures from the National Readership Survey (NRS), which reveal that the Mail titles (including their digital bikini-based behemoth, Mail Online, the world’s most popular news site) have trumped Murdoch tabloid The Sun.
This time last year, The Sun – including its Sunday edition – was the UK’s most-read newspaper brand. Its weekly readership in print and online was at 13.6m. However, today’s figures reveal that its readership has since declined rather dramatically to around 12m. The Mail titles, in comparison, have hit nearly 14m people a week, across the print and online titles.
To celebrate an important day in the battle of these two brands Britain loves to hate/love, here are some clips to remind you of why they are so widely-read.
First up, Charlie Brooker’s biting poem about The Sun (from 2.20):
Video: LiveLeak
And here’s Alastair Campbell’s rant against the Daily Mail:
And finally, singer Amanda Palmer’s stonking musical riposte to the Mail reporting her breast “escaping” during a performance at Glastonbury:
Happy reading, Britain!