Daily Star lettuce

On 7 October 2018, as the world waited for news of a Brexit deal between the UK and EU, one British newspaper refused to follow the protracted negotiations. On ...

Its circulation plunged under a new editorship in 1987, whose collaboration with the Daily Sport and promise to publish “the biggest boobs possible” in every edition took the paper downmarket in both senses of the word. (“After all,” he adds, “if I had been told three years ago that the New Statesman was interested in featuring us, I’d have laughed.”) Two-thirds of the Star’s print readers are men, and its online readership is closer to a 50:50 gender split. The same questions, the same arguments, the same voices shouting in their respective social media echo chambers for four bloody years,” says Clark. In July 2020, it enjoyed the biggest recovery from the worst of the Covid-19 lockdown readership slump in June that year, growing its average daily circulation by 5 per cent month-on-month to 223,727 (no other paid-for national newspaper grew its circulation by more than 3 per cent in the same period). When the UK left the EU on 31 January 2020, the paper ran a special “souvenir edition” emblazoned with a Union Jack and map of the UK: “Tonight is a TRULY HISTORIC moment for our great nation…” teased its headline. The paper was originally created in 1978 with a pro-Labour stance, for distribution in the north and Midlands. The paper, Clark claims, is now the first front page that staff in No 10 turn to every morning. On 7 October 2018, as the world waited for news of a Brexit deal between the UK and EU, one British newspaper refused to follow the protracted negotiations. Now, the paper is better known for jauntily lampooning current affairs on its splashes, which seem to go viral on social media every few weeks. On its front page, the Daily Star Sunday declared itself a “GUARANTEED BREXIT-FREE ZONE… On 14 October 2022, as Liz Truss sacked Kwasi Kwarteng and U-turned on her economic policies, the Daily Star started a live stream and asked the question ‘Will Daily Star’s 60p Tesco lettuce or PM Liz Truss last longer?’.