and finally...


Me, myself and I, and a few porky pies Chris Proctor steps aside temporarily for a new columnist


H


ello, everybody! Boris here. So, what’s my new


column going to be about? Well it’s not


going to bang on about that old writey-writey stuff and story-gathering malarkey. Oh no. It’s going to be about – ME. The person I am, the Man Inside the Iron Mask, the mask behind the face, the pip in the plum: ME! My favourite subject! I should say – and I do mean this, well,


you know, as much as I mean anything – that it really is a privilege to be writing in this journal [INSERT MAG TITLE]. It’s very top drawer and great fun, very informative, one of my favourites. I know loony lefties have been


blathering on about the fee I’m being paid, which is rich coming from them. Aren’t they supposed to look after ‘the most vulnerable people in society’? Yet they moan at me trousering a modest stipend – £20K a throw, hardly enough to keep Sir Jacob in top hats – when they know full well that I’m unemployed and have an unspecified number of children to feed, a good few alimony claimants, several houses to support and masses of school fees to find. I’m practically a caricature claimant. The handy thing about having ME as the focus means I don’t get typecast. That’s what happens with lots of columnists, not that I read anyone else: why opt for second best? You see, most columnists get stuck in


a rut. They’re the cheeky chappy who’s rude at PMQs, or the young radical exploding with rage to order, or the poor sod rabbiting on about trees and birds and that sort of bunkum. They’re stuck in permanently locked


straitjackets. Straitjackets wouldn’t suit me – zip wires are more my style. Columnists get desperate when


they’ve got to say the same thing every week. You see them sniffing round Westminster desperately hunting an idea. Their columns are basically the opinion of the last person they met before getting started. So having ME as the subject means I can pontificate about any old drivel. It’s like my old job. This week I’m going to tell you about my back ointment. I kept noticing people with straight


backs do well. At the coronation for example, they had the best spots in the church. Red coats, they had. Right up the front. They were almost in the yellow chair, some of them. And what’s-her-name, the current wife, says a straight back makes you look decent. Upstanding. Worth a go, I thought. So I’m recommended this backrub


called Aunty Quasi-Modo. The trouble is application. No volunteers to apply the embrocation since Nadine didn’t get into the House of Lords. I stuck some onto a nail in the wall and wiggled against it, but I ended up with skin as thick as a rhino’s. I’ve kept that. Andy Windsor suggested a few things


that made my hair stand on end so I decided to hire someone cheap to do it and snapped up an immigrant while they’re still available. I mean, calm down, Sue-Ellen! We didn’t mean it! Anyway, the long and short of it, as I’m already over the 500-word, £10k point and I’m getting restless, is that I decided to do nothing about the back. I thought, look old fellow, why not rely on your own sense of decency and moral compass to reflect itself in an unbending backbone? No change so far, but it’s early days.


STEVE BELL


Do you know I’m worn out? I never used to have to concentrate for so long. When it came to tedious things like the economy, pandemics and the threat of global war, I gave up. Someone always gave me a brief to read out loud. Now and again I’d shoot off something on my own and find myself on the front page. I enjoyed that, even if it did make me look like a bog-eyed bovine in a Sèvres supermarket. (That, incidentally, is what this paper


pays for. Class. None of your ‘bull in a china shop’ cliché. You won’t find me coming out with hackneyed phrases like ‘on your side’, ‘my job is to serve you, the people’ or ‘forward, together’.) So, moving forward from my back,


“


Most columnists get stuck in a rut. They’re the cheeky chappy, the young radical exploding with rage or the poor sod rabbiting on about trees


what about the brave souls pushing the limits of human knowledge in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip Pork Pie Eating Contest? Fearlessly, they munched their way through shedfuls of savouries, redefining human endurance. And, before the environmental zealots start swishing orange paint all over the tablecloths, let me say that no cows were injured during the making of the pies. I felt a lump in my throat as the 215th pastry was plunged past the winning molars. It takes backbone to get into triple figures. If I’d kept up with the Aunty Quasi-Modo, I could have won. I’ve certainly got an appetite for a pie challenge. When I began to milk this


cash cow – that is, expand the range of human opinion for an altruistic pittance – I said that this column was ‘going to be exactly what I think’. Brave and bold: you can trust me to bone up on spines and get stuck into pork pies. See you next time!


theJournalist | 27


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28