THE FOURTH ESTATE:

SYDNEY: One of Australia’s leading Liberal/National Party publicists is said to be recovering as well as could be expected in hospital here after collapsing in shock overnight on hearing the news that the Albanese Labor government’s honeymoon period hasn’t ended quite just yet.

James Morrow, who also intersperses his LNP public relations duties with pretending to be a journalist with The Daily Telegraph in Sydney, fainted dead away about 8.42pm Eastern Daylight Saving Time last night when someone texted his iphone with the latest Newspoll results showing Labor maintaining a solid 55-45 two-party preferred lead over the LNP federally.

“No! That can’t be!” Morrow was heard to exclaim while enjoying a Reschs schooner in The Evening Star Hotel in Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills, with Piers Akerman. He slumped to the floor and was taken by ambulance to the Bobby Askin Private Hospital in nearby Glebe.

Morrow had staked what he thinks is left of his reputation for fair and balanced journalism with the intro to a totally anti-Labor column piece he penned for The Daily Telegraph last Wednesday. He began: “One month into 2023 and the Albanese government’s honeymoon period is now as forgotten as a new year’s resolution gym membership card”.

Morrow’s fainting spell and subsequent rush to the ED came about the moment last night when he realised the voters of Australia hadn’t got the memo – not just yet, anyway.

A nurse in the hospital’s ED told The Bug: “Mr Morrow was quite angry when they brought him in. He had just come to and was shouting stuff like ‘that column should have worked a treat with Newspoll only just starting to go out in the field’.

“He kept shaking his head and shouting ‘That great photo of Albanese on the grog at the Australian Open and that brilliant heading about how utterly wrong he was to do that because we were always going to blow up the pix and get stuck into him over his drinking problem and shit work ethic should have worked a treat. What is wrong with people!’

“Mr Morrow just kept lamenting the fact that the minutes he had spent compiling that totally anti-Labor rant that outlined all the disastrous headlines for Labor over recent times, ALP election policies that now were a definite case of “be careful what you wish for” for voters and all the issues and challenges that were likely to derail this woke, socialist, government in the two and a bit years left before Australians did the right thing and got rid of them had all ‘proved a waste of my valuable time’.’

“I even went to the trouble to find a bit of space to slam that other woke weirdo Jacinda Ardern across the Ditch for breaking her promise to build 100,000 new homes by 2030!

‘I begged the cunts last Tuesday night to put me on the front cover to maximise the joint effort we were all making at the time – good people who know Right from wrong over at the Heralds, pollies such as Warren Mundine with his “on the grog for three whole days” line, the networks, good old Prue [MacSween] and others – all banging on to show Albanese couldn’t give a flying fuck about the dar… the first nations people in Alice Springs and preferred to suck piss at the tennis instead of doing his fucking day job!’

The Bug understands that as Morrow lapsed in and out of consciousness overnight he kept muttering ‘maybe the honeymoon is not over after all, like I sort of suggested deep into my column with a silly divorce analogy that I hoped would be overlooked’ and ‘clearly much more work has to be done by all of us in the mainstream media to make those fucking stupid voters come to their bloody senses!

“‘That divorce line was the sort of thing I rarely use in a column if I’m trying to come across as a deep and balanced thinker,” Morrow apparently admitted to a nurse as the drugs kicked in.

“It was bullshit and I really did think this week’s Newspoll would show a much tighter race.”