Saturday 21 June 2008

The bizarre tale of Kay Burley and Naomi Campbell

Eating lunch an hour ago, I switched on Sky News and saw an interview with Naomi Campbell, conducted by Sky's longest livvvv.... serving presenter, Kay Burley. Campbell made some allegations of racism against British Airways, which sounded a bit daft to me as the company has a very ethnically diverse workforce. But no matter, I'm more interested in the fact Campbell is absolutely gorgeous and this clouds my judgment of her. She can throw as many mobile phones and kick as many policemen as she likes for all I care. I'm smitten.

Anyway, Burley presses on vapidly with her interview and my attention falls to the Guardian, which I'm reading at the time. I'm such a multi-tasker. With perfect timing, I turn to page 5 and there's a story headlined "Hurly Burley - Sky News presenter in melee at Campbell court hearing''. Of course, there's always something of a press scrum when Campbell arrives at court, but it seems that Burley went aong with her this time and in the scrummage found herslef hit in the face with a camera, bruising her cheekbone.

Helpfully, the Guardian story illustrated the events with a series of photos. It looks like Burley was walking just in front of Campbell when AP photographer Kirsty Wigglesworth tried to thrust a camera by her and snatch a shot of Campbell. Presumably, this is where the camera hit Burley. However, rather than, err, take it on the cheek and press on, Burley then appears to reach out, grab the hapless snapper round the throat and pin her against the wall. So here we have a journalist covering a story on about a model facing assault and disorderly conduct charges grabbing the throat of a photographer covering the same story after being accidentally assaulted herself. Brilliant!

Burley was notably absent from her afternoon show yesterday and doesn't appear on camera in the interview (at least not that I saw), presumably because of her shiner, which you can see along with the throat grab shot over at the Daily Mail.

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