‘Zombie Plague Spreads’

I am becoming attached to the tawdry paranoia of the Evening Standard vendor posters. Although the headlines are meant to tease, they cannot seem to help themselves. They scream like a mistrustful tramp high on methylated spirit.

Tonight, the West End Final poster wailed: ‘London Freezes -10 Warning’. It was like the tagline for a low thrill disaster movie. (Readers in certain parts of Northern America can now start laughing at the fact -10°C is considered news). You just know that the headline writers long for the day then can issue a poster proclaiming: ‘Apocalypse’, ‘Civilisation Doomed’ or ‘Zombie Plague Spreads’.

It is possible my fondness for the posters is down to the fact they remind me of their use as exposition devices in classic BBC sci-fi. No Quatermass serial or earthbound Doctor Who of the 1960s would seem complete if it did not feature a newsstand poster proclaiming ‘Skeleton Found in Knightsbridge Pit’ or ‘London Evacuated’. Just before Christmas I liberated a poster that seemed to have fallen through a dimension where alien invasions are ten a penny by shouting: ‘Fears Grow for Doctor Who’. It still has wall space. At the hands of Evening Standard poster writers, scaremongering with due regard for word economy is an art.