Making a splash: the best – and funniest – Guardian headlines over 200 years

It’s late. It always is. Just 10 minutes until the front page has to be sent for printing. And above the main story, the splash, hangs a big white space, awaiting inspiration.

The story: Donald Trump’s fractious state visit to the UK in 2019. The words are on the page, but the most important ones – the 60-point headline – are still wanting. A good, sharp headline here will not only sell the story but sell the paper itself. But it must be short, accurate, decent, rhythmic, in good taste, and a perfect tease of the 900 words that follow.

Then the words pop up out of nowhere: “Tea and antipathy”. It rolls off the tongue and jumps off the page. The Guardian’s team of subeditors, engine room of the operation and unsung wordsmiths throughout 200 years of history, has pulled it off again.

Known in a different age as proofreaders or simply editors, the humble subeditors have grown in stature in the two centuries since the Manchester Guardian first served up a weekly diet of dense, grey columns interspersed with fashionable micro-adverts, line-drawing illustrations and dinky headlines marginally bigger than the story text beneath.

After the news was promoted to the front page in 1952, Guardian subs gained a bigger showcase for their skills, as headlines began selling newspapers. For the most part, this is a serious job of projecting gravitas, urgency, jeopardy. But just occasionally it requires a deft touch – and a funny bone.

“Biggest asp disaster in the world” is perhaps one of the most memorable early puns that set the standard. A play on a Gracie Fields song (The Biggest Aspidistra in the World), it was written by a sub, thought to be John Hall, for a critical review of Charlton Heston’s 1972 film Antony and Cleopatra. At the time, senior editors were worried about the growing tendency for puns in headlines and tried to ban them. They couldn’t.

“Queen in rumpus at Palace” was the 1971 headline on a piece about a football brawl involving a player with a regal surname. “Lucas in the sky with diamonds” ran the header across a film review of Star Wars in 1977.

“Boys will be fathers” was the title of a 1981 article in the Bedside Guardian anthology about a 16-year-old schoolboy ordered to pay 5p a week towards the maintenance of a baby girl. “Funder enlightening” quipped another header about seminars teaching cash-strapped charities the art of fundraising.

By the early part of this century, Guardian subs were running a headline of the year competition. Julie Reid scooped the inaugural prize in 2002 with “The banned played on”, a bitter-sweet homophone above a powerful story about musicians defying the Taliban. But Sheila Pulham’s “X marks the despot”, about an election in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq cannot have been far behind.

The following year “Where there’s muck, there’s bras” adorned a tale of a British farmer diversifying into mail-order lingerie.

When the in-house contest was revived in 2020, puns were still de rigueur. A lyrically homophonous riff by Tim Burrows on Gavin Williamson’s educational woes – “Algorithm and blues” – got the A* first prize, ahead of “Summer of discount tents” (Tim Bryan on a piece about consumerism and the great outdoors), “Oedipus Vex” (Lucy Blincoe’s line on a complex French tale of love and longing), and “A little nous on the prairie” by Nick Robinson on the changing face of ranching in the US.

So much for puns. There are other ways to play with words. Every so often, a subeditor will write a headline that nods to the Sun’s famously triumphant 1992 election headline (“It’s the Sun wot won it”).

There was David Marsh’s “It’s the Sun wot switched sides to back Blair” in 1997, and the delicious “Crime fighting: it’s the sun wot done it” on a 2015 piece about crime peaking at 18C in Manchester.

The “man bites dog” headline has given ample opportunity for playfulness over the years. Sometimes, it is best to keep it simple, as per this tale from 1950. But sometimes there is scope for mischief. In 1955 the newspaper published a short story about bakers testing a new calibre of treats for pooches. It appeared in the Guardian’s 1951-2000 anthology under the title “Man bites dog biscuit”. Far darker was the story from 1998 headlined “Never mind man bites dog. This time, dog shoots man” – a tragic story that could only happen in America.

And what of women? There was a golden chance in February 1948 to toy with a cheeky “Woman bites dog” headline. Alas, the subs of the day did not oblige.

But sometimes, the best course of action is simply to tell it as it is. Brian McDermott, longstanding chief subeditor, came up with a cute riposte on a story about the Conservatives’ plaintive attempt at a PR makeover in 2005. “Please stop calling us Tories, say Tories.”

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It’s the sub wot won it:

10 of the best headlines through the ages

Amo, amas, a mouse mat? Vatican’s Latin test Nick Robinson, 2012. Pope Benedict sets up online Latin academy to revive the dead language.

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But is it weather?, Steve Chamberlain, 2003. Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather Project lights up Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall.

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Champagne super over, Matthew Hancock, 2019. England clinch cricket World Cup after dramatic finale.

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A man, a plan, a canoe. Panama, Mark Smith, 2008. Crime caper imitates real life palindrome

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From the ladle to the grave, Suzanne Warr, 2010. Dinner ladies lead fight for pension rights.

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Hung, withdrawn and re-quartered: May portrait in Oxford row, Kirsten Broomhall, 2018. Students eject painting of alumnus.

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I fed the newts today, oh boy, David Marsh, 2009. John Lennon’s secret love of nature revealed.

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Metaphorically speaking, Chai Hong Lim, 2020. The rise of Prof Jonathan Van-Tam and his analogies.

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This charming man, unknown, 2019. Morrissey proudly wears “Fuck the Guardian” T-shirt on stage.

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Zhumaskaliyev stuns Serbia for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan, Philip Cornwall, 2007 (on Guardian website, but published in the Observer). Kazakhstan men’s football team gain historic first win since joining Uefa, a year after the film Borat was released.