The Tragic Schoolgirl he’d already assigned to Jeremy. He also had a Dirty Doctor, a Criminal Immigrant and a couple of Scientific Studies that the children could handle. For now, he would take care of the other page lead, a combined Benefits Cheat and Corrupt Establishment story. It was in poor shape; not quite a case of total reconstructive surgery, but it would need substantial work. It was astonishing to him how few reporters could write something as simple as a news story. The intro had come through as:

A NORTH London council continued to pay Jobseeker’s Allowance to a woman who took a job in their own offices, it has emerged.

Not only that, but she was promoted to the role of personal assistant to the departmental head.

Ms Rebecca Yates, 34, had come to work for Islington council as…

The Beast did not start a story as boringly as, ‘A North London council continued…’ Max noted that it had been filed by Ben Jessop, who’d come from a round of redundancies at the Respectable and was obviously still writing the kind of foot-dragging prose that had made redundancies necessary.

Max checked online that the ‘departmental head’ was who he thought he was, and tapped the return key three or four times to make himself space at the top of the article. He paused before starting, like a carpenter checking his tools were in their places. He wrote:

BUNGLING bureaucrats at a scandal-hit council paid dole money to a benefits cheat who was working in their own offices.

Islington Council even made shameless Rebecca Yates, 34, the boss’s PA while she carried on claiming unemployment benefit.

She was promoted under Michael Fenimore, the notorious mandarin who last year refused to resign from the Left-leaning council after the death in care of tragic Baby K.

That was more like it. He made the first paragraph 9.5-point type with no indent. Second par 8.5 indented. Third par onward 7.75.

The pictures had been assigned to the page while he was working: one from Facebook of Yates on holiday, looking drunk, one of Fenimore looking shifty in a car park and a small one of Baby K looking like a baby. Max recognized the picture of Fenimore from the year before. If the story kept running, they’d need to send someone to Islington for a fresh one. He deleted the three bits of dummy copy that read ‘KICKER: caption here capti’, and his fingers filled them in without his needing to think. ‘CHEAT: Rebecca Yates’. ‘SCANDAL: Michael Fenimore’. ‘MURDERED: Baby Kevin Harvey’.