‘The Daily Mail Diet’ is due to air on Al Gore’s digital channel ‘Current TV’ tonight. 

Nick Angel, a documentary film-maker and freelance journalist, has taken it upon himself to immerse his whole life into the world of The Daily Mail for 28 days, in a similar style to that of the Supersize Me documentary which consisted of a young chap solely gorging on McDonald fast food morning, noon and night.

Angel described his time in the Daily Mail bubble in his Guardian commentary, “Life on Daily Mail Island” as:

“A month spent reading the nation's leading mid-market newspaper [that] took me into a terrifying, depressing world, filled with suspicion”

His blog amusingly describes a world paralysed by paranoia, scare-mongering and fear, if that can be at all funny. He abstained from any other source of news, including radio and TV. “The Daily Mail Watch” website is perhaps shares the sentiments of Mr. Angel. Most unsettling is perhaps the clear and concise manner in which Peter Cole’s Guardian article, “Why middle England gets the Mail”  articulates the ideology of the Daily Mail:

“Mail views can be characterised thus: for Britain and against Europe; against welfare (and what it describes as welfare scroungers) and for standing on your own feet; more concerned with punishment than the causes of crime; against public ownership and for the private sector; against liberal values and for traditional values, particularly marriage and family life. It puts achievement above equality of opportunity and self-reliance above dependence.”

Readership figures, however, are perhaps the nail in the coffin for the hope of a nation which celebrates diversity and civil engagement. The Mail is now the second largest selling daily in the country behind the Sun; and after the News of the World, the Mail on Sunday is the second largest selling Sunday. The extent to which this mid-market paper exercises its influence should not be underestimated.