HOW DIM DO THEY THINK THEIR READERS ARE?

Richard Desmond, owner of 'The Daily Star' is also part owner of 'The Irish Daily Star', whose editor has been suspended over the publication of pictures of Kate Middleton in a less than fully dressed situation.

Mr Desmond has said angrily, that had he been the outright owner and had had full control of editorial policy, the paper would never have published the pictures.

Now you might have concluded from this that our Mr Desmond has a deep 'respect' for William and Kate. But if you did, you would have been wrong.

You see, as well as owning 'The Daily Star', 'The Daily Express and Channel 5 Television  Richard also owns a number of tv stations whose programmes, or rather delectations are not listed in in 'Radio Times'.

After a great deal of publicity in the aforementioned 'Daily Star', two of these channels chose to celebrate last year's royal wedding by showing "A Royal Romp".

You could be forgiven for assuming that this was an appropriate mark of respect on a day of celebrations all over England. You may imagine that the programme was an account of members of the family on a horseback, galloping across their vast estates. But if you did, once again you would be wrong.

"A Royal Romp" actually featured a character called Kate Fiddleton in the business of consummating of her marriage with lookalikes of Wills and Harry, while lookalikes of the Queen and Charles looked on. Tasteful, huh?

And just to make sure that no-one missed the show, it was repeated the next day...

However, Dirty Dicky Desmond is not the only tabloid proprietor to be caught displaying double standards.

Mr Murdoch's 'Sun' commented on the 'Irish Daily Star's' decision to print the pictures, saying: "Prince William's wife is entitled to feel fury and disgust at these low life rags printing pictures of her topless".

A wee bit odd that they should have forgotten that only two weeks before they felt within their rights, indeed justified, to show pictures of Prince Harry's arse, saying that it was "a crucial test of the freedom of the press" and that it was absurd that in the days of the internet that 'Sun' readers with no access to a computer should de denied the opportunity to engage in the 'national conversation'... (so the sub heading on the above pic is not entirely accurate or truthful, is it?). 

Yep, that's the what the national conversation was about... Harry's bum, or at least so reckons the Sun, oddly around the time that Hillsborough was about to explode in their faces.