The Worst Place Under The Sun

Most of the U.K. national press settled for reporting that Gary Glitter lost his appeal against his conviction for abusing young girls and left it at that, but The Sun obviously felt the story still had legs.

In the June 19th edition, alongside a picture that had the old ’70s glam-rock star smiling benignly straight to camera, it was reported that there’ll be another appeal as Glitter – real name Paul Gadd – tries to stall away his sentence in “a cushy remand center.”

As long as the man the paper refers to as “the pedophile rocker” can keep some sort of appeal going – this time he’s said to be asking the chairman of Vietnam’s Supreme Court to intervene – he avoids getting banged up in Xuyen Moc labor camp.

Xuyen Moc, which The Sun reports as being “notorious” and then helpfully provides a description for the millions of readers who have never heard of it, is alleged to have “gun-toting guards” who force inmates to “toil for eight hours a day in the fields, lashed by rain and in 100°F temperatures.”

“Working the fields is a treat. It gets you away from your stinking cell. You wish you had never been born. Even the cockroaches get a hard time,” chipped in Glitter’s lawyer Le Thanh Kinh, presumably for the benefit of anybody who still didn’t get the picture.

– John Gammon