All the news that's unfit to print

"After one such call, the Daily Express ran a diary story about the comedian Russell Brand at the G20 protests in London. Quoting fabricated remarks from the Starsuckers caller on 3 April, the paper said Brand had "sheepishly confessed that when he was a little boy he once wanted to be a banker when he grew up and even had a toy Fisher-Price cash register". The following day, a fabricated story appeared in the Mirror's gossip column about Pixie Geldof, the socialite daughter of Bob Geldof. Paraphrasing the hoax Starsuckers caller, the newspaper stated: "We're told: 'Pixie joked she didn't know why her boobs had got bigger, then she pulled out a pick 'n' mix pack from her bra.' Sweet."

A story about singer Amy Winehouse's hair catching fire from a faulty fuse spread across the world after it was printed in the Mirror on 21 March under the headline "Amy Winehouse in hair fire drama". The Starsuckers researcher gave the newspaper fictional details of the story, which she said she had "heard" from an unnamed friend who was at the singer's house. "Fuses blew as Wino jammed with mates at the house in north London – and sparks lit up her beehive," the Mirror reported. "We always knew you were a hothead, Amy." Two days later, the same story appeared in the Daily Star, which had also received a Starsuckers call, with an embellishment about how a friend of the singer "ended up punching flamey Amy's head to put out the blaze". It reappeared on several celebrity gossip websites, a New York Post blog and, eventually, the pages of the Times of India – the widest-circulation English-language newspaper in the world." — From a story about tabloid hoaxers in The Gaurdian