Dear John...

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I’d written to thelondonpaper in the hope of becoming their ‘columnist of the day’. Arrogantly, I must say, I thought inclusion would be a cinch. Turns out not so, for I sent 400 nuggets of absolute solid gold to them, and they didn’t even have the decency to laugh in my face. I mean, I know that – particularly with this feature – thelondonpaper tends to specialise in badly-written, horrifically uninteresting ichbaaaaaa, but I assumed that this was because no one who could actually write well ever sent anything in. Not so turns out. They actually like that shit.

So anyway, the bit I wrote was in response to this guy, who can’t get a woman for the simple reason that he’s got no personality to speak of. However, instead of taking time to work on the whole personality thing, which can be tricky, he stumped up and got himself a whore. The response to John’s column was fairly staggering. It was overwhelmingly positive. Every time I picked up the paper for the rest of that week, readers were either crawling up John’s cockstand to sympathise with his plight, or else moved to exhaustion, weeping at the base of his stem.

Just in case you don’t follow the link - and please, you really shouldn’t – here is perhaps the most ludicrous excerpt:

In today’s world of celebrity, even the plainest of women want a Frank Lampard or a George Clooney. The worst thing is they are prepared to put up with anything to get them and keep them. I’ve lost count of the conversations I’ve heard between women complaining of inconsiderate, rude, thoughtless, cheating and lying boyfriends. I stand there thinking, “I wouldn’t have forgotten your birthday. I wouldn’t have carried on watching Match of the Day when you had something important to say. I wouldn’t have chatted up that girl at the bar.” But it’s all worthless because five minutes later the boyfriend arrives and, after one look, all her anger just melts away because he’s her Frank Lampard.

Ah, John. John. What are you on?

So, I got quite wound up by all this and I wrote a reply. It was rather too offensive I'm afraid. And cruel. So I tore it up and wrote a rather more considered reply, which I hoped that they would consider for publication. (Oh, to be 'columnist of the day' and get a BORE-rating of 100! That would be quite special.) Anyhow, here it is. It’s exactly 400 words too. I was disproportionately proud of that.

Dear John

I understand perfectly why you ended up paying for female company, but I’m writing this to let you know that there is an alternative.

Last year I reached a low point in my life. I had never had a girlfriend. I spent my days curled up in the living room with my cat, curtains closed to keep the day at bay, watching DVDs and eating Sugar Puffs. I hardly ever left the house. My weight was inching up to the 20 stone mark. My flesh was the colour and consistency of cold gruel and I was about to turn 30.

I realised I was in grave danger of becoming one of those tragic souls who have to have the walls of their house removed so that they can be lifted by a crane to the nearest hospital for gastric bypass surgery, so I gave myself one year to lose the equivalent of Kate Moss in weight and – more importantly – to find someone to love.

I knew I couldn’t do this on my own however, so what I did was this: I started a blog. Blogging about my quest to lose weight, turn my life around and find someone to love was the best decision I ever made. It introduced me to hundreds of people I would otherwise never have met, and a couple of them even deigned to go to bed with me. Free of charge. They both went on to break my heart of course, but you can’t have everything. Where would you put it?

As for your comments about personality counting for nothing and women these days lusting after looks and little else, I think you’re generalising wildly. In my experience, women are a lot less superficial than men when it comes to looks. All you have to do is string a sentence together and have a sense of humour and you’d be surprised how many women will overlook the fact that you’ve got a face like a bag of elbows and a belly like a bag of bowling balls.

Seriously. I’m living proof that you can blog your way to happiness. It might not last forever, but... well, it might. Your column last week was hopefully your first step in the right direction. Get yourself online. The blog is mightier than the whore. (Unless of course you’re Belle de Jour.)
Good luck,

Bête de Jour

After a week or two I finally bit the bullet and accepted that I had definitely been rejected by thelondonpaper. Then I decided to end it all. Then I thought, no, fuck it, my time will come, and even if it takes another ten years, when it does come, I’ll be able to say, with my hand on my heart, ‘Well, at least on the way up, I never sucked on Rupert Murdoch’s skinsock. Nope, not even a nibble.’ (Did you see that horrible shagsack trying to nobble Obama? What a frickin’ sleaze.)

Anyway, fuck him and fuck his parochial rag. I’m over it.

Plus, John, you completely put me off the idea of paying for sex at a time when I was seriously considering it. So thanks. I spent the money on a coat.

...

Now, I have a question :: what's your favourite name for a cat, ever?

When Did I Become Such A Bitter Little Man? Oh, Yeah.

I apologise in advance for this. I’d love to post wonderful optimistic blackberry jam-making paeans like this little diamond (thanks to Our Glamorous Heroine for the link), but my newfound turbo-charged misanthropy simply won’t allow it.

Ah, well.

As I hinted at briefly, curtly, on Friday, it seems that everywhere I turn at the moment, idiots are being paid good money to write the most godawful ordure. Last Sunday for example, I was enjoying a battered Sunday roast in a Burnley pub called The Lynched Black or some such (the battered Yorkshire pudding was particularly good), when I found myself bellowing out blasphemies in response to an article I was reading in the Sunday Times Style supplement. Serves me right I suppose for putting my head in the toilet.

It was an interview with the physically overrated Kelly Brook, written by the intellectually under-endowed Giles Hattersley. I’d never heard of Hattersley before I read that article. Then I looked him up online and discovered that he was everything I despise and envy in equal measure.

Look at this opening to the Brook interview:

‘Obviously, I knew that Kelly Brook was going to be sex on legs. How could I not? She’s been the stunner’s stunner for a decade now. The girl who can make a grown man swallow his tongue. The kind of woman another woman might go gay for (it’s that thrilling combo of carnal sagacity and pathological cleanliness, isn’t it, girls?). And then you meet her and it’s even better.’

Ugh. Jesus. I practically puked up my nuts when I read that. The stunner’s stunner? Does he even know what he thinks he wants to say? Jesus. It still makes me fume. He really is the fuckwit’s fuckwit.

The article continues in the same vein, with Hattersley vacillating between tittering prepubescent public school boy…

‘There isn’t a hair on her head that’s out of place, and – I imagine – if I whipped off her dress, there wouldn’t be a hair out of place there either.’

…and outright idiot…

‘Before feminists write Brook off as a co-dependent sexaholic, it’s worth pointing out she is a shrewd businesswoman....’

I was actually so irritated by this man Hattersley that I ended up having to apologise to Sylvia for screaming out the c-word in her local pub. On a Sunday. Of all days.

Then, as if that wasn’t enough, back in London on Wednesday afternoon I found myself on a train from London Bridge to Peckham sitting directly behind a young lady who’d just come from what must have been the first writers’ meeting for the new series of Scallywagga. I know this because she was braying – nay, bellowing – into her mobile phone, telling her absent friend and writing partner everything he or she had missed. So, thanks to this slip of a girl’s inane yelling, I discovered that, apparently…

* Scallywagga was ‘branded as being by 19-year-olds for 19-year-olds’, but in actual fact Stuart Kenworthy wrote 60% of it and he’s 42.

* Scallywagga has ‘got really good branding’.

* The main reason Scallywagga was commissioned for a second series was because it’s the only Northern sketch show on TV. Furthermore there hasn’t been a sketch show set in the north of England ‘since Les Dawson’. (Which is obviously nonsense. I can’t think of any at the moment but it’s patently nonsense. Oh yes, The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer. There you go.)

* The writers of the next series of Scallywagga are also welcome to have a crack at directing some sketches too, and even performing in it.

* References to popular culture are Scallywagga gold – they don’t have to be exclusively youth-centred references, but if you can squeeze Facebook or Wii into a sketch, all the better. Referencing de rigueur TV shows such as Big Brother and Dragon’s Den is also something very much to aim for.

* Currently averaging 35 sketches per show (a show presumably lasting around 23 minutes), the producers are thinking of throwing in a couple of longer sketches so that viewers can make it to the end of a programme without feeling the need to pour mercury into their eyes.

* The producers are also pleased that young women are going to be working on the show, because they believe that a getting a young, feminine perspective can only be a very good thing. Not that they have to write purely ‘female’ material, but you know, blahblahblah. Keep it northern.

So I listened to this conversation, biting my cheeks to stop myself from shouting out, scribbling down notes and shaking my head at this loud live stream confirmation that television comedy really is just a cynical, soulless mess of marketing and… actually, just marketing. It’s all just marketing.

I have nothing against the young woman on the train by the way. I admit I’m jealous of the opportunity she has to write comedy for such a well-branded BBC product, but I wish her nothing but the very best. I also genuinely wish her the very best of luck with Time Lords. It’s a great title.

When I got home, I checked out Scallywagga online, just to make sure that it definitely was the diabolical drivel I remembered from clips I'd seen. It was. Good production values, great branding, but sadly, and predictably, about as funny as rectal cancer. The least funny of all the cancers.

The next series should be great though.

So yeah, then, as if that wasn’t enough, I picked up a copy of thelondonpaper on Wednesday and discovered that the guest columnist from the day before was an ugly bloke who wrote about ‘Why I visited a prostitute’. Apparently his piece was ‘a very moving read’ and ‘a breath of fresh air’. It prompted one wildly idiotic reader to write: ‘I’ve seen a prostitute three times this year. Not because I craved sex, but because I craved a connection – the connection you get when you are with someone who finds you attractive, that validation that says: “I love you for who you are”.’ Um… do you want to tell him or shall I?

So I got online when I got home and I looked up John’s piece on the trials of being an ugly man in a shallow world and once again, I turned the air blue with violent language.

So I wrote a londonpaper column of my own, a response to John suggesting that if it was love he was looking for, then the blog might just be mightier than the whore.

They didn't get back to me.

I have been rejected by thelondonpaper.

My downward spiral is complete.

I have hit rock bottom.

I am not fit to touch the hem of Giles Hattersley’s hat.

...

A-chillymondo!