An emotive photo showing a child victim of Syria’s civil war was accompanied by the plangent appeal: ‘Why has the West abandoned our little children?’
This could be a front-page this September, as the world reels in horror at the death of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi - his lifeless body shown washed ashore at a Turkish tourist resort.
And yet this was Metro’s front-page two years ago this Wednesday, as refugee families fleeing terror attacks begged for British - and Western - help.
Back then, families forced from their homes and in their millions into neighbouring nations such as Lebanon and Jordan were in mortal fear of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Five-year-old Nour stared out, while father-of-six Adhma Al-Hamwi told Metro: ‘What have these children done to desrve to be abandoned like this?’
Two years on, not only does his brutal government pose an ongoing threat, but the militant forces of so-called Islamic State have emerged as even more bloodthirsty tormentors.
Jerry Lee Lewis made sure to make a joke about it but his first visit to Britain was the beginning of the end for his first rock’n’roll
reign.
"That was the 'good old days'," he sardonically drawled - before adding: "... that we had to modulate and bring up to better days..."
Thankfully, what he claims – to Metro, no less – will be his
last tour to these shores will doubtless turn out only the latest triumph of a
relentless career.
As his 2006 LP's title put it: Last Man Standing.
("Can I play the piano standing up? Man, I can play it lying down...")
Okay, maybe Chuck Berry and Little Richard may disagree.
Although for all their rumoured feuds, Chuck turned up in a five-minute video
tribute before Jerry Lee eventually took the stage, this Sunday night at the
London Palladium…
Others shown giving him his dues included long late past
compadres such as Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins and Sun Records supremo Sam
Phillips.
As Perkins put it: "It was all over, playing piano for everyone else, because that was Jerry Lee Lewis..."
British mercy-mission volunteers battling to help out in squalor-ridden refugee camps have condemned the Calais ‘chaos’ left too untended by European leaders.
Refugees from Afghanistan, Syria and Iran were helped by a makeshift group of helpers prompted to cross the Channel after being moved by the migrants’ plight.
But the trip organiser told Metro he was shocked not only by the abject conditions faced by the 5,000 stranded in Calais but also the lack of organisation among those trying to assist.
