I’m speechless

The Media Guardian “Media Monkey” section (may need free registration) reports on the ‘Shaftas’, a negative award ceremony for the worst sort of hack…

Heat magazine won worst magazine of the year for their infamous tasteless stickers stunt.

This was a sticker featuring a picture of Katie “Jordan” Price’s profoundly disabled five-year-old son with the insignia “Harvey wants to eat me!“. This was so amazingly dreadfully out of tune – and, what’s more, widely reported – that Heat were forced into apologising. Words cannot describe how uncommon an event that is.

Media Guardian then however report an incident that didn’t make it to the press at large, unless you’re a reader of Loaded “magazine” (a publication that, all else being equal, should have been snuffed out at birth):

But they failed to show up so the award was given to Loaded instead for the magazine’s “110 birds we’d like to bone” feature. Even the hardened Shaftas audience shook their heads at Loaded’s inclusion of Kate McCann in this list, with a caption which read: “Sensitive one this but there’s nothing more erotic than a pained woman in need of some good lovin”. Hmmm.

Hmmm is about right. “Sensitive one this”? Kate McCann? That’s gall. That’s so amazingly tasteless I’m actually mostly speechless. Even most b3tans won’t go down to that level, and those that do at least are usually trying to be funny rather than creepy.

And that is creepy. It’s practically on ‘sick stalker’ level.

Loaded editor Martin Daubney bounced onto the stage to accept the award, saying: “I would love to blame a reporter but I wrote that myself.” After it was pointed out that made him a “truly dreadful human being”, he countered: “And I’m paid for it.” Monkey predicts future Shaftas greatness for this man.

Why do people buy Loaded magazine anyway? It’s not even very good porn, and it’s obviously from this not at all funny, so why bother?

The rest of the awards are interesting, bashing Richard Desmond and the usual suspects; worth a look.