Parker knows he hit the spot with hoax!

Jun 14 2009 by Neil Farrington, Sunday Sun

AS a Sunday tabloid sports reporter, my stock in journalism is pretty low.

I may stand 6ft 4in, but I tend to be looked down upon by the industry’s great and good.

So I must confess to a sense of Schadenfreude as I read reports on Friday of the proposed takeover of Newcastle United by “Rick Parkinson” and friends.

After I’d looked up Schadenfreude in the dictionary, that is.

Several of this country’s most august journals saw fit to publish the tale of Parkinson and Co on their websites.

This, despite the story having more holes than a kilo of Emmental.

Right from its opening line, which described its author as “an unnamed PR consultancy”, the emailed statement announcing Parkinson’s interest screamed “WIND-UP!”

Anonymity and PR firms go together like chalk and (Swiss) cheese. Go together like Sunderland fans and Newcastle takeovers, in fact.

For anyone aware that Mackem mirth at the Magpies’ misery has already materialised on spoof street signs and shop hoardings should have detected more than a whiff of Wearside about the email in question.

But the next clue didn’t need a nose for North East neighbourly rivalry. It was blindingly obvious.

Parkinson and “four other North East-based businessmen”, we were told, were “worth a combined £1 billion”.

Aye, right.

For that to be true, a cursory look at The Sunday Times’ 2009 Rich List told you that the Duke of Northumberland, Sting or Ridley and Tony Scott would need to have been among Parkinson’s backers.

Mmm.

Parkinson himself, of course, featured nowhere on the Rich List, which delves down as far as people worth just £30m. Yet the email valued him at £250m.