On October 7, a Daily Mail column by Jeff Prestridge listed 11 UK shares put forward by fund managers and platform commentators, 10 paying dividends, around Laura Foll’s claim that UK shares trade 35 percent below other global markets. ‘Dirt-cheap’ is the columnist’s gloss, not a price. In the fourth paragraph he turns Laura Foll’s figure, a 35 percent discount to other global markets, into ‘In plain English, it’s dirt cheap’. The headline moves that discount from a whole market onto each share and sells you the rank of the clever buyer who spots what the world underprices. The page’s picture lays a rising yellow arrow across a Union flag, so the bargain arrives with a flag attached. The page against its headline: the fifth paragraph says ‘no guarantees’, the 15th says ‘not recommendations or tips’. Several picks have fallen: Games Workshop nearly 7 percent this year, Coats 1.3 percent over a year, Foll’s laundry and workwear pick 4.9 percent. The column’s January picks did turn £8,000 into £10,240, against £8,427 and £8,448 for trackers, before stamp duty and dealing charges. When the headline promises and the body disclaims, the disclaimer is the sentence built to hold up. Foll co-manages Law Debenture, 90 percent invested in the UK; the column asks if she is talking up her own book and answers ‘Not at all’. She spoke at Investor Summit 2026 in London on September 18, where Law Debenture’s logo sits among the sponsors and ‘Money Mail & The Mail on Sunday’, Hargreaves Lansdown and interactive investor are listed among 44 groups that ‘spoke or sponsored’. The column uses Hargreaves Lansdown data and quotes interactive investor. None of that makes a pick wrong; it shows who was in the room.
