The Mirror's 'weird' hatchet job on Steve Wright

Yesterday's Daily Mirror contained a 1,400-word article about DJ Steve Wright.

Written by Ryan Parry, the paper was so proud of this exposé, they included a teaser for it on the front page:

The front page called it the 'bizarre world of Steve Wright', the online version says it's a 'weird world'.

But the article appears to be a very thin hatchet job in which very little that is 'bizarre' or 'weird' is actually revealed. We're told:

he remains an enigma – even to his closest colleagues.

And

Off air he leads a surprisingly unassuming life for such a well-loved celebrity, shunning interviews and TV appearances. Instead he seems to prefer his own company, living on cheap microwave meals and junk snacks.

And:

For breakfast, he usually asks for poached or scrambled eggs on brown toast from a restaurant called Avelli’s, porridge from Make Mine or Eat, a small bacon or sausage butty with ketchup from Eat and a skinny latte with one sweetener.

For lunch, he insists on a baked potato from Avelli’s or chilli chicken box from Leon’s or he may opt for a chicken pie from Eat.

And:

Steve regularly travels to visit his mum on Fridays in Oxted in Surrey and he asks the broadcasting assistant to get him train tickets.

And:

Home for Steve is now a £1million bachelor flat in Central London, above a scruffy garage where he parks his black Range Rover.

His son Tom...is one of his few visitors there. But at the weekends, Steve escapes to a country bolthole he owns in West Sussex, near to his younger brother Laurence, 52, a business manager at a scooter rescue firm.

And:

The DJ enjoys bombing around the Sussex countryside in a bright yellow Lotus sports car he owns – that’s if he’s not tinkering with his rare collection of old radios.

And on work days, Steve usually arrives at the Radio 2 studios at around 9am and leaves after the show ends at 5pm.

He will have an occasional drink at the nearby BBC club.

It's shocking stuff, isn't it?

There are other details, most of them coming from anonymous friends and colleagues. But it doesn't live up to its billing and makes one wonder exactly what the point of it is. Why this apparent invasion of privacy into the life of someone who, the paper admits, 'shuns the limelight'?

The comments on the Mirror's website are from people who are all puzzled. They call the article 'nasty', 'filthy', 'strange', 'mean-spirited', 'horrible', 'trashy', 'appalling' and 'unnecessary'.

But, as Alexis Petridis remarks in today's Lost in Showbiz column, at least it shows:

that the nation's red-tops are perfectly capable of getting mind-blowing scoops into celebrities' private lives without resorting to phone hacking.

(themanwhofell has imagined the discussion at the Mirror's editorial meeting.)

(Hat-tip to Steve Baxter)