BACKGROUND
Oprah Winfrey is such a fan of Weight Watchers that she has just bought 10% of the company.
“I believe in the program so much I decided to invest in the company and partner in its evolution,” the talkshow host turned billionaire businesswoman said on Monday as she announced the deal, which includes personal endorsements and a seat for her on the company’s board.
Investors appeared to have faith in Winfrey, who has been dubbed “Queen of All Media” and built up a $3bn (£1.9bn) business empire. Shares in Weight Watchers more than doubled after the news broke. The share price spiked from the $6.79 she paid on Friday night to as high as $15.09 on Monday, with shares ending the day up 105% to $13.92. That makes Winfrey a paper profit of $45.6m. Full story >>
THE CARTOON
The cartoon by Kipper Williams from The Guardian shows Oprah standing on a weighing scale. She has a sackful of money slung over her shoulder (representing the profit she made by investing in Weight Watchers). However, the combined weight of Oprah and all that money has broken the scale!
COMMENT
I remember the time when you could find public scales into which you had to insert a coin to weigh yourself. That was before everyone had personal scales at home.
VOCABULARY
Although the word scale can be used to describe an instrument for weighing, the plural form scales is more common (sometimes as part of a pair of scales or a set of scales). This is because scales were originally simple balances (literally pairs of scales). So even though they are now usually devices with an electronic display showing the weight, we still refer to them as scales.
