Carole Malone: psychic or liar?

A few weeks ago, Carole Malone was proved to be a liar when her own paper retracted her ridiculous claim that immigrants get 'free cars'. This came soon after the paper had to pay damages to Cherie Blair for false claims Malone had made about her.

She lies about immigration quite often - pushing all the myths about council housing, health queue jumping and benefit scrounging, without producing shred of evidence to back any of them up.

And thanks to Somerset Bob, we have another example of Malone's dishonesty. In mid-October it was widely trailed that Cheryl Cole was to perform her new single on The X Factor and that she was not going to be singing live (although only some of it appears to have been mimed in the end). Noticing that the show goes out on a Saturday night, Malone fired off her column for the next day's News of the World. She asked:

why did she mime her new solo single on last night’s X Factor?

And then answered:

It suggests she can’t sing. It suggests that she isn’t capable of doing a big number on her own. It also suggests she doesn’t have the guts to perform in front of a live audience — all the things the inexperienced contestants are expected to do without a murmur...last night’s performance showed that, unlike the X Factor finalists, she’s not a real talent at all — just a coiffed, over-promoted, manufactured one.

All the usual Glenda Slagg-type bile you would expect. There were just a few slight problems.

One was that it was only a year ago that Malone was calling Cole a:

drop-dead gorgeous, incredibly successful singing star

Amazing how someone can be so firm in their thoughts until they decide to change them.

But the main problem with Malone's article was this: Cole didn't actually perform her single until the Sunday night results show.

So as the first editions of the News of the World went to press, it contained Malone's review of something she not only hadn't seen, but which hadn't even happened yet.

It's as if Malone had decided what she was going to think without waiting for the facts. Imagine that. The 'review' was not published online but was highlighted by Tony Blackburn in a series of tweets, and on some forums.

This is a deliberate piece of deception. Malone sat down and churned out her article knowing it was all a lie. So not only is she a dreadful writer, she is totally dishonest and lacking in shame.

In other jobs, pulling a trick like that would probably get a lot of people fired. At the phone-hacking News of the World, you just carry on.