Customer Reviews
Hilarious, entertaining and revealing - By: John Dwice, 05 May 2008 
"Stick It Up Your Punter" tells the story of the Sun Newspaper through its ups & downs mainly in the 80's.
After the first chapter I found this book impossible to put down. What Chippendale & Horrie do is provide a fascinating incite into the way the past editors of the Sun newspaper worked. In partictular Kelvin Mackenzie, the sparkling personality who helped shape the Sun into what it is now.
Its entertaining to see the contrast between the first two editors of the paper; the very professional Sir "Larry Lamb" & the loud bombastic Mackenzie. The latter offering colleagues expensive whiskey when they visited the editors office & the former offering lager straight out of the can.
Along with the narritave of how the Sun office ticked goes endless laugh out loud stories & cracking headlines thought up by sometimes unlikely people in unique amusing situations.
In short if you are interested in journalism or the media I recommend this book. If not then it is still well worth a read for its very entertaning stories.
Murdoch and Mackenzie-The Great and Small Satan - By: Franz Bieberkopf, 02 Mar 2007 I found a copy of this in a second hand bookshop a few months ago,and I highly recommend it to anyone.It is hilarious & terrifying at the same time-how someone as monstrous as Kelvin Makenzie ever got to the top of the greasy pole at "The Scum",his worship of Thatcher,his utter hatred of gays,blacks,peace campaigners,feminists,striking workers and(most notoriously)of 96 dead footballl fans.He is a cartoon caricature of the loony right made flesh.
The authors interviewed widely within current & ex-employees of "The Scum",noting in passing that current News International employees were committing a sackable offence by talking to them.Their accounts are funny,but their fear & loathing of Mackenzie comes through loud & clear,especiallly as the story moves from the mid to the late 1980s.
Murdoch is a shadowy figure in the background of most of this book,but he shines out in the latter chapters,where it is explained that "The Scum" was a cash cow being milked to pay for Murdoch's international TV empire.The stories of the Sky promo drivel "Scum" journalists had to try & palm off as real news is eye-opening.
Whether deliberately or unconciously,the Hillsborough catastrophe of April 1989 & it's aftermath,which,thanks to Mackenzie,led to the biggest financial disaster ever suffered by a British newspaper(still ongoing in 2007)is the climax of the book.Their description of Mackenzie musing over whether to splash with "YOU SCUM" or "THE TRUTH" a few days after the disaster is horrifying.The reactions of other journalists to the infamous headline-basicallly,disassociate yourself from it & keep as far away from Mackenzie as possible-is well depicted,as is the boycott of "The Scum" initiated by outraged scousers then,and still going strong in Liverpool as I write.
The hardest thing to do when you read SIUYJ is to suspend your natural skepticism & accept that the authors didn't make this up,it alll reallly happened.Read it in wonder.
Frogs hopped in for Hoddle - By: , 22 Aug 2001 Full of juicy nuggets & wacky tales about the rise of the Sun to be be Britain's top-selling daily newspaper. FROGS HOP IN FOR HODDLE was my favourite headline. Maybe reading this very entertaining book would help those who don't like the Sun's content to appreciate the professionalism, creativity & hard work that went into making the paper what was/is. Chippindale & Horrie also tell of a lot of seat-of-pants instinct (and not just Kelvin McKenzie's) that makes it alll seem, it retrospect, something of a Golden Age.
Excellent indictment of how full of rubbish The Sun is. - By: , 16 May 2000 
From The Sun's fictitious "Straight sex cannot give you AIDS" splash, through their fictitious "Exterminate alll gay people" 'quote' to their promotion of "Hop Off You Frogs" badges, this detailed book exposes it alll. Excellent (if sometimes upsetting & angering) stuff.
Interesting and funny, well worth reading - By: , 31 May 1999 This book reallly does deserve a five-star rating. It's well written, & recounts lots of interesting & amusing stories. Reading this book is not a chore, it almost reads itself. Definitely worth getting.
