Thoughtcat in Private Eye (again)

Oh, now this is getting embarrassing. After years of having everything I sent them sent back (albeit with their wonderful ‘Sorry, no thanks’ compliments slips), I score two Private Eye submissions in a row with a contribution to their Order of the Brown Nose column of a recent item in the Guardian. There seems to be no online version of it, but every Saturday at the back of the main paper the Grauniad has a ‘Pleased to meet you’ column in which a reader talks about their love for the paper. This is fair enough in itself – newspapers, TV programmes, radio shows, even websites (occasionally) do give people something to hold on to in their lives, and can thus generate Real Love. But this one was nauseating – two flatmates claimed that their own passion for the Grauniad was such that, if there was no food in the house on a Saturday morning but they had £1.40, they would forego breakfast and spend the cash on the paper. I could almost have stomached it if the pair in question had been destitute – I’m a longtime fan of the oriental proverb about buying a lily and a loaf of bread with your last penny – but come on, these are employed, fortunate, middle-class people, for God’s sake! Anyway thanks to this latest display of media desperation (on behalf of both the paper and the readers in this case) I received another cheque for £10 from messrs Pressdram Ltd this week. If I keep on at this rate I’ll be a millionaire in 961 years.