Dont Shade Your Eyes...

In Tom Lehrer's tale of a student of the great Russian mathematician Lobachevsky, he explains 'the secret of success in field of mathematics... PLAGIARISE'! And that's sort of what today's blog is about (plus some stuff about a stupid advert I heard on the radio and perhaps some things I saw on telly or something like that).

Essentially I was tasked with writing a short story. It was more a vanity project than anything, trying to get me out of an inspiration slump and I was aware that, in part, the idea owed a debt to a German short story called 'Dr. Murkes gesammeltes Schweigen', however during my research I inadvertently discovered that my idea was also very similar to yet another, English short story from a collection published only last year and long-listed for the Orange Prize. Now, I've never read Jennifer Egan's 'A Visit From the Goon Squad' (has anyone here? Any good?) and yet presumably someone who had would recognise certain elements of one of its short stories in mine. So, where do I stand?

Now, obviously this doesn't really matter as the story was just for my personal use. But say I'd submitted it to something or posted it somewhere (might have been worth a go, it was described by its only other reader as 'somewhere between Mark Watson and Bunny and the Bull). Would people flock to accuse me of stealing intellectual property? Despite the fact I've never read the original source? The similarities are few and any that do exist are superficial. My understanding is that similar themes and references are used but in completely different narratives- Egan's plays out like a Wes Anderson film and mine like an episode of the Twilight Zone- but are there still grounds to accuse me of plagiarism?

Reading back through it, Patrick Sueskind might want a piece of the action too for a couple of moments that bring to mind his 1985 novel Perfume (with its hilarious/ridiculous finale) and the subsequent film. Again, I've never read the novel (though I have seen the film - I think it's on iPlayer at the moment if anyone's interested. It's a very interesting idea and wilfully strange ((in a good way)) but the novel doesn't seem to lend itself to film particularly well. A flawed but nonetheless very worthy effort, mind) but is that a barrier these days? Has every idea been done already anyway? And if so, isn't everything plagiarised? Will we prosecute everyone? How many questions am I going to ask in this blog?

Well, that's it really, now onto the other gripes. I heard an advert on the radio earlier (I generally try and avoid commercial radio - this was in a cafe, I'm not going to demand them to change stations...) for a certain Carvery chain. It essentially consisted of James Corden doing his best Henry V over Elgar's 'Nimrod'. I hate these faux-patriotic adverts- You're a chain pub not a fucking Lord Kitchener recruitment poster! Honest to God, Corden(!) doing a Crispian's Day speech about carved meats over one of the most moving and powerful compositions of the 20th century, if not any century. Don't you dare! Don't you dare do this to that piece of music! How dare y-! Actually how dare you! ACTUALLY how dare you!

Also, a quick anecdote. Word reached Or So I Thought... HQ of a parent coming into the local Primary School to query their children being given the day off school for the Royal Wedding. Now, I'm not exactly a fervent Royalist but come on! They're just kids! They don't assign meaning to not having to go into school. It's just a jamboree of sunshine and running around in circles until you feel sick. Actually, no, you know what? Fine. Just your kids can come in and we'll draft in a Republican supply teacher so they can explain to a pair of crying 5 year olds why they're in school while everyone else is outside having fun. Giving them a NATIONAL HOLIDAY off school is not the same as indoctrinating them into supporting the Royal family.


This week Sam watched...
The Crimson Petal and the White, which was, well, weird. Sort of simultaneously a bit sexy and entirely the opposite. A bit like one of those dreams where everyone's naked but when you try and run your legs melt.
Campus - There's potential there but it needs a bit of work. I've a list but I won't bore you with it (unless you work on it and fancy listening to suggestions)

Hell in a Handcart Watch
I read a story from the Press Association titled thusly: 'Camerons fly to Spain for mini-break in Spain'. I won't bother to list the myriad faults with this, I'm sure you're all smart enough to recognise them without me.

An Open Letter to the Makers of Lynx...

Customer Care

Unilever UK
FREEPOST
Admail 1000
London
SW1A 2XX

Dear sir/madam,
I recently undertook to purchase what one may well term a 'can' of your Lynx Excite product - I, a congenital imbecile, found your flashy advert with its Italian setting, bellicose operatic score and attractive, winged woman falling from the very skies utterly impossible to resist. Lynx Excite: Even Angels Will Fall. What on earth could possibly be more exciting, I ask you? A look at the can assures me in diagramatic form that should I combine the corresponding shower gel with my recently purchased spray, I will receive bikini clad women to the power of two. I'm no mathematician, but even I can well see that this represents a frankly unbelievable exponential return. Fibernace would indeed be proud.

So, what, you may be wondering is the problem with said body spray? Now, I have always been taught not to take adverts too literally, so you can well imagine my surprise when, after a liberal application of your fragrant chemicals, in fact an angel did tumble from the heavens. So far, so good, you may be thinking, but you can imagination my current consternation when I go on to explain that the previously mentioned celestial being landed square on top of me, having reached something approaching terminal velocity. She made no attempt whatsoever to utilise the wings that were gifted to her by God, presumably to avoid exactly this kind of eventuality.

I have sustained what my lawyers have asked me to refer to as 'not inconsiderable bruising', 'minor lacerations' and 'a nearly slipped disc'. Even writing this letter of complaint results in a shooting pain around the knuckle (is it a knuckle?) of my right thumb, which was badly sprained as a result of your celestial tomfoolery. Needless to say, I shall be commencing legal proceedings but felt compelled to provide a letter, in addition to my solicitor serving you court summons, allowing me to express some suggestions for a new marketing and indeed product creation direction.

I ask that you immediately rethink your advertising campaign. Perhaps have a single figure with a white backdrop simply explain to the audience that the humble act of spraying a mixture of potent hydrocarbons onto one's sallow flesh will not make one irresistable to women and may even result in what my solicitor and medical practitioners have termed 'intermediate discomfort'. Spraying something not entirely removed from simple natural gas onto oneself will not transport one to Italy and while it may well cause a phenomenon not dissimilar from your 'angels will fall' scenario, it is certainly a far less attractive proposition. Furthermore, I suggest that your lab produces a new product - perhaps call it 'Lynx Chemical Spray'- that in no way makes an immediate connection between spraying said concoction and dozens of models literally sprinting from far and wide to service your every sexual need. Nor shall you imply that the inocuous act of applying the spray will result in any women in the direct vicinity losing their clothes.

A bizarre mixture of false and some slightly (unpredictably, in fact) less false advertising have conspired to cause me not un-serious medical harm and I urge you to take steps to prevent further tragedy.

See you in court,
Outraged (and limping) of Marston Bigot

Still Got the Blues...

Allow me, if I may, to discuss somewhat of a passion of mine. I can't quite pinpoint the first moment that I realised I loved this genre. Whether it was Clapton's uptempo interpretations or that first thundering riff of Muddy Waters' 'Mannish Boy' or the folky, bellowing sound of Lead Belly belting out 'Midnight Special' or perhaps even the exoticism of the idea of Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil at a lonely crossroads in return from becoming the greatest bluesman in history, I'm still uncertain. What I do know however is that the blues never fails to sweep me up in its fervour and power. To hear Blind Willie Johnson humming in unison with his Open D-tuned acoustic on 'Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground' is to hear the very 'soul of a man' (another of his compositions, incidentally). That moment of intense spiritual torment met with raw bottleneck slide guitar cuts a fine line between blues and gospel but the blues is all the better for its versatility. From throaty anti-recession shouts on Jimmy Witherspoon's 'Times Gettin' Tougher Than Tough' to the wailing, aching guitar licks of the late Gary Moore to the innuendo and raucous comedy of Wynonie Harris' 'Quiet Whiskey', the blues covers the full gamut of human emotion. Many see the blues as a music of pain or tragedy, but, at its heart, the blues is about having the last laugh over adversity.

So what, you may be wondering, does an Oxbridge-educated English comedian who went on to become the highest paid actor on American television have in common with a Depression-era preacher blinded by a handful of lye flung in anger or a Chicago Blues innovator dogged by alcoholism until dying penniless some 50 years after recording his first hits or the ex-con with the booming voice who died of Lou Gehrig's Disease before he ever saw the fruits of his extensive influence or the Texas boy who brought the blues kicking and screaming into the 1980s and was just free of his crippling drug addiction when he was killed tragically in a helicopter crash? Well, our very own Hugh Laurie has recorded a blues album and on Wednesday afternoon he performed several tracks from 'Let Them Talk' for a live-stream on the Guardian website.

Yes, Hugh Laurie out of Jeeves and Wooster and 'A Bit of Fry and Laurie'. He's done a blues album. Of blues songs. Yes, out of Blackadder and the... ahem... Stuart Little films. He's done an album.

Now, if you're expecting me to rant and complain about why a successful English actor and comedian shouldn't be recording a blues album, you're actually going to be disappointed. There's no doubt that Laurie is a talented musician, a multi-instumentalist in fact. Anyone who's seen 'A Bit of Fry and Laurie' will remember his brilliant parody and comic songs...

Actually, permit me to go off on somewhat of a tangent. It worries me that there will soon, or perhaps already is a generation of people who only know Stephen Fry as the convivial and intensely knowledgable host of QI and a foremost tweeter and technophile and Hugh Laurie as an American diagnostician. For my money, 'A Bit of Fry and Laurie' contains some of the greatest sketches ever committed to celluloid. From the louche critics running the rule over their own work to the brilliant piece of high concept comedy resulting in a magnificent topper about the comic timing of Paul Eddington, the four series are all packed with absolutely stunning pieces of wit and silliness. Ooh, Peter and John, how could I have ommitted them... and the voxpops! Ah, basically just buy the DVD boxset...

Anyway, back to the subject. Naturally Laurie has come in for some criticism for his latest venture. A quick glance at the comments made during the live streamed gig reveal that his latest career turn could best be described as... divisive. Many take the Onion-style 'affluent white man enjoys blues' angle, but the wonderful thing about blues is it's an ownerless concept. If you can hear anyone from Skip James to Stevie Ray Vaughn to Joe Bonamassa or Joanne Shaw Taylor and have that music resonate within you, it's achieved its aim. The blues will be there for you at your lowest to help you conquer that grief.

But the blues isn't afraid of challenging major socio-political issues too. J.B. Lenoir's 'Eisenhower Blues' album covers issues including but not limited to the Vietnam War and Civil and Women's Rights. And while we cannot all directly relate to songs like the heartbreaking 'Strange Fruit' by the unparallelled Billie Holliday they remain as tangible cultural edifices representative of the outpouring of grief at the time. Naturally for someone like Hugh Laurie to claim to be able relate to that literally would seem crass but he's not doing that. He's in the fortunate position of being able to record music in a style that he loves without having to worry about the figures. Very few Bluesmen have lived to see their records make money, but finance was not chief among their motivations. They had something to say or they wanted to move people or even just wanted to spin a good old yarn.

Laurie openly acknowledges his 'trespassing on the music and myth of the American South' but to criticise a blues musician for being a white, middle-class Englishman is utterly ridiculous. Are we to brand Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page 'shameless thieves of African American culture'? Blues is infectious- it makes your feet tap, your hands clap and brings a smile to your face if it wants to and that effect does not discriminate. Laurie isn't asking us to lie down and proclaim him the new Mississippi John Hurt. The blues survives thanks to new blood, new interpretations of classics, new songs entered into the great tome of the Delta but most of all it survives through being played. By anyone. From a poor Alabama slave boy to a fat, middle-aged axe-man in a working men's club in Bolton. Laurie wants to use his influence to keep the blues alive and disseminate its power to as many people as possible. And what, I ask you, is wrong with that?

A Couple of Words, If You Don't Mind...

Well, hasn't the world changed since we last met, eh? Murdoch's intolerable expansionist endeavours have been enabled by Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary (that's his name, isn't it, James Naughtie...?), Kolo Toure has tested positive for Charlie Sheen and faces suspension (or at least I think that's what's happened) and everyone's favourite melty-faced dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddaffi has clung onto his stranglehold of the Libyan people with renewed vigour and ever more dodgy soundbites... and TV appearances where he sits in a car with an umbrella. Oh! And the Lib Dems lost their deposit in the Barnsley by-election (finishing 6th behind the BNP and an independent no-hoper).

But instead of musing on whether troubled actor Charlie Sheen (as we're contractually obliged to call him- a bit like 'The Actor Kevin Eldon') is a tragic case of celebrity excess taking its toll or a ludicrous genius finally saying the things we're all thinking; or whether the people of Libya will ever know freedom, I'm going to bring up a couple of personal causes (well, sort of personal).

Winning!: The rantings of a lunatic or the single greatest philosophical statement of the century so far?

First cause. For some reason Auntie Beeb (who is incidentally involved in both of these) has seen fit to axe the sitcom Whites. You remember Whites. It starred Alan Davies as a thinly-veiled parody of semi-celeb chefs (the kind you would see on Great British Menu) and was notable for its marvellous characterisation, super-sharp script and scene-stealing cameos from co-writer Matt King. Well, for some reason, BBC Comedy has decided that Whites was less able to inform, educate and entertain than, say, BBC Three's Coming of Age or Lunch Monkeys. Just muse on that for a while. Anyway, if you happen to be on Twitter then you can hurl abuse (but in a sort of semi-constructive way) at @bbccomedy with the hashtag #bringbackWhites.

Second cause. If you're a radio-loving insomniac like me, there's a good chance you will have heard some of 5Live's Up All Night with Rhod Sharp/Dotun Adebayo. A marathon of global news, features, phone-ins and everything you could ever want between the hours of 1 and 5 in the morning. On Tuesdays at 2.30 is the American TV slot and Rhod goes live (via the magic of Skype) to the living room of one Cash Peters, TV swami, author and alternative health guru who delivers a wonderful half hour of badinage, results of his latest health experiments and even some TV reviews if we have time. Now, what does this have to do with anything? Well, there's specualtion that Cash may have made his last utterance of the brilliance of Oprah's TV station on 5Live.

It's difficult to understand the magic of the Cash/Rhod relationship without actually listening to it, but suffice to say it's brilliantly entertaining and one of few things that can make me laugh out loud at near enough 3 o'clock in the morning. Broadcasts aside, Cash is somewhat of a cult hero inspiring fierce loyalty in members of The List (you may not know what that is, but I know for a fact you want to be on it now) and providing marvellous blog posts on his website (www.cashpeters.com), as well as providing spiritual guidance to those in need (myself included). His jolly and yet grizzled tones have helped people through exams, dissertations and probably even childbirth (almost certainly... probably). The fact is that Up All Night, 5Live and indeed all British late-night radio will be a poorer place if Cash has in fact made his last appearance.

So, I urge you, do what you can to keep Cash Peters Up All Night!

The AV Club...

[Note how I resisted calling it 'You're AVin' a Laugh' or something.]

The big news issue of the day is, of course, the debate surrounding the forthcoming referendum on the Audio Visual method of electing our MPs and many publications/websites etc. seem to be focusing on the battle lines being drawn not only between parties but within them too, not to mention between coalition partners.

Alternative Vote is a simple idea, albeit in a fairly complicated way. You select not only your first choice but also your second choice meaning that if your first choice is eliminated due to no-one reaching the 50% threshold your vote carries over to the second choice until eventually the least hated party/person ends up in power. Clegg, who had originally called AV 'a miserable little compromise', now leads the charge in support of it only to be turned on by David Cameron (trouble in paradise?) who claims it is 'inherently unfair' and went so far as to say that under AV we could end up with a party in charge that no-one wanted or even actually voted for. Well, phew, Dave, just as well that didn't happen in the last election, eh?

The main point is however that this is an issue where party politics has almost gone out of the window, where PM and Deputy can face off against each other, where cabinet ministers can disagree, where Prezza can be furious with Ed Miliband. The best analogy I can think of (in my tiny, nerd-culture addled brain) is Marvel's Civil War crossover comics from 2006/7, written by the incomparable Mark Millar. A government initiative demanding the registration of superheroes leads Captain America to abscond from his duty to round up the rogue masks and fall in with an anti-registration group, quickly becoming their figurehead along with other prominent figures such as Luke Cage and Cable. Meanwhile Cap's old friend and co-Avenger/Ultimate Tony Stark thinks it impossible in the current political landscape to resist this change and continue to self-police and gathers his own team of higher-profile heroes (She-Hulk, Mister Fantastic and even Spider-Man who unmasks especially) to hunt down the resistance.

As the plot develops amid much tragedy, the Human Torch and Invisible Woman side against their intrepid leader Mister Fantastic, Spider-Man turns coat after discovering some of the more unpleasant features of the act and ultimately they all cause more damage with their 'Civil War' than either the Registration Act itself or any resistance to it would have done in the first place... oh, and Captain America is assassinated on some courthouse steps.

Now, what does this have to do with AV? Is Prezza a Luke Cage, punching his way against the reform, or is he more of a Ben Grimm trying to protect the interests of civillians and keep himself in pies and insurance comparison ads? Will Cameron be gunned down on some stairs by Crossbones? Is Clegg going to don a suit of fictional metal and laser his way to some actual power?

No... or at least I'd be very surprised. The main point is that it's interesting to see individuals pitched against each other within their own groups. Public hostility to politics (like public hostility to heroes in the wake of Hulk's smashing of Las Vegas or Nitro's explosive murder of 600 people) is likely to lead to a 'yes' vote, argue some commentators, but then there are surely many who think FPtP flawed but that AV is just a way of keeping things much the same but different enough to fool most people into thinking there doesn't need to be a proper change for another 400 years.

In any case, it looks like this one will run and run (and I am in no way qualified really to talk about any of it or discuss any ramifications).

Just as a quick straw poll/trial, please comment on how you would vote (1st, 2nd and 3rd choices please) in the referendum.

1) Yes to AV
2) No to AV
3) What does it all mean? Why can't we just go home?


This week Sam watched: True Grit. A masterpiece. Towering performance from Bridges, fantastic script from the Coens and if Deakins doesn't win the Oscar for cinematography it's a crime. A masterclass in film-making.

Ill Informed TV Reviews: I...

Right, here's a sort of accidental idea I've had whilst shambling around today- review TV shows, having missed the first 3/4 or so. Basically, I caught the tail end of Cookery School, Channel 4's answer to the BBC's cook-off monopoly, if the question was "can you make a sort of low-rent Masterchef in what appears to be a brick high-rise in Acton?"

Now Cookery School is much like an ordinary school: There's an overwhelming pressure placed upon the students and at the end of tomorrow's episode someone gets evicted... Oh hang on, that's not schools, is it? That's reality television... always get those two mixed up. Not schools at all really. (Well, maybe after Gove's finished tinkering: "Once you've bought and funded your own free school, you can kick the weakest students out at the end of every week...")

I watched the last quarter as the 'students' were tasked with cooking risotto with mussels and then chastised in front of one another by chef Richard Corrigan (out of off of Great British Menu) and 'cookery mentor' (or 'chef') Gizzi Erskine. Graduate (it's what we call them now that none of them can get actual jobs) Bram (who knew people weren't only called that in the 19th century?!) was complimented on the texture of his risotto. Clearly there was a bit of history with Bram, as Corrigan was forced to reconsider his opinion of his cookery abillities. Bram, clearly a bit of a 'character', did an impression of Corrigan, explaining that he expected the Irishman to deride his humble rice dish when in fact he had let out a gutteral "mmmmm", in the post-cookery interview segments that take place on the balcony, complete with black, spiralling fire escape stairs as if the students had all popped out for a cheeky fag break.

It's the classic format. Plucky amateur cooks try and make it big and learn a few things along the way. Like Masterchef. Except not really Masterchef, shh, what did you go and mention Masterchef for?! Well, I guess it's because Masterchef have a flash new studio complete with Time Commanders-esque surveillance balcony for Gregg and John to eye the incompetence of the contestants like dodgy food emperors at an amphitheatre. "Tougher challenges" claims the voiceover... and yet I thought that Imperator Greggus Wallacius had decreed that "cooking doesn't get tougher than this" every episode for about 4 whole previous series.

Anyway, the thing about Cookery School is that it's almost a throwback to the late nineties, early noughties heyday of Channel 4, where BBC formats were slightly altered and then shoved in brick studio space in Hounslow. Who can forget the seminal RI:SE or... you know... the educational things they used to do... sort of edgy stuff... about sex and drugs? Even the camera work is reminiscent of that Golden Age of television where top media luminaries like Kate Lawler and Mark Durden-Smith could run the rule over the day's news in an edgy early morning formats... no, not like Daybreak, even edgier (if you can imagine such a thing...).

But, I only saw the last 15 minutes, so the first bit could have been shot as a Bergmanesque character study of some tragic but loveable amateur cooks set in Malmo. I don't know. Next: Outcasts, the last 15 minutes of Episode 2... possibly.

Denial's Not Just A River in Egypt...

Right, yesterday saw under pressure national hate figure Hosny Mubarak pull an audacious switcheroo on the furious public assembled in Tahrir Square. A press conference was called, rumours spread that the 82 year old was about to step down. When the time of the conference arrived, Mubarak kept the world's media waiting while he stood backstage giggling. Eventually he arrived on stage and declared that, actually, the conference was all a big joke and he wasn't stepping down at all. HA! Jokes....

You see? It was all a big prank. He's going to be there for ages yet... at least until September and by then this whole Tahrir Square revolution thing will have blown over, probably and he can cling on for another 30 years...

Or perhaps not. I don't know. I try and avoid big stories like this that lots of people seem to have opinions about, frankly because it takes a lot of time and effort to get oneself to the required level of knowledge and expertise to be able to offer a valid journalistic opinion. Which is actually what today's blog is about...

Journos famously cut it fine when offering their two penn'orth on topics by not actually reading/watching/doing what it is they're writing about. It happens to all of them at one point or another. They'll drop a bollock and say something silly about an episode of The Tudors or cooking Risotto or something. Just you see if they don't. Yesterday this issue reared its inelegantly-coiffured, empty lens glasses-clad head once more after this article by Deborah Orr was printed in the Guardian G2. Now, while I don't necessarily agree with the content - while I don't think 10 o'Clock Live is the perfect vehicle for Lauren Laverne, she is nonetheless a very talented presenter and at no point have I ever heard her touted as our answer to Tina Fey before this piece - there is an obvious boob... well obvious to anyone that saw the episode of 10 o'Clock Live in question, in which a PRE-RECORDED, STAGED PIECE ABOUT CHARLIE BROOKER AND LAVERNE COCKING UP A LINK was aired and then mocked by the presenters themselves.

But hey, it's just a bit of lazy journalism, happens to the best of us, right? Wrong. Twitter went 8 shades of mental about this. First with some quite personal attacks on Deborah Orr, then people defending Orr, then people attacking the people who attacked Orr and then people who attacked Orr attacking the people who defended her on the basis of their defence. Now, aside from a cheap dig at the format which might concern the production staff and presenters, the only person who should really have been 'offended' by the article is Laverne herself. I can sympathise there. I hate reading criticism... and as a writer, that's, well, a bit of a massive pisser. In fact, if you leave a comment, there's a good chance I'll track you down/humiliate you with my lucid prose... or just cry... one of those two...

I'm sure that after reading my spot on dig at Mubarak at the start there you will have realised that I didn't even watch the press conference- I was busy writing something else at the time- but you have to fill the column inches somehow. And that I suspect is what happened to Orr. She wanted a quick piece to demonstrate that she too loved critics' darling 30 Rock (which is very good, to be fair) as well as having a quick pop at the fairly divisive 10 o'Clock Live.

It was Brooker himself who first drew my attention to the article in question via Twitter. Now, I love Brooker, the man is massive influence on my writing and general miserable approach to life, he has magnificent hair and all he did was indicate the mistake, but in doing so he inadvertently created somewhat of a monster (at least on Twitter between about 10 o'clock and sort of late lunchtime-ish) where people got really quite angry about this little journalistic slip-up.

The article was just a clear opportunity to make a cheap snide, which we all love as writers, let's face it. I made a cheap snide about Mubarak, perhaps the week's most obvious target, at the beginning of this very column. Orr, a respected social and political commentator, was just padding out her double-page spread in the G2, it was an honest mistake, she's not an abominable, controversy-hungry, bile-spouting harridan like Melanie Phillips or Jan Moir, she's just an ordinary journo. I honestly think that in a world where the Daily Mail continues to be published there are journalistic issues that people should be more worried about than one columnist cocking up side-piece about Tina Fey/Lauren Laverne.

I'm not entirely sure why I'm defending Orr- she's doing a job for actual real money, that I've been doing free for what seems like an eternity- but some of the things that people Tweeted about it were needlessly offensive. Many of the commenters, I suspect, had not even read Orr's article in the first place and were operating by hearsay. I love Twitter, but we Tweeters are, all of us, guilty of some quite staggering hypocrisy sometimes- whether it's denouncing racism on Question Time and then laughing at some gypsies getting married (which I'll happily admit I've never watched and will never attempt to write a piece about) or attacking a journalist that wrote an article they've not read about a show that she hadn't watched. Not to mention whoever was subbing that day let this mistake slip through the net, but then they might/probably have better things to do on a Thursday night than watch live topical comedy shows, I don't know.

So maybe we can cut people some slack. It must be bad enough being a Guardian journo where every Tom, Dick and Harry can take the phrase 'comment is free' a little too literally and leave a borderline-insane/worthless opinion on your piece for all to see on its website... in fact, my favourites are those like John Harris who go after malicious commenters and keep commenting on their own pieces getting angrier and angrier or Sarah Ditum's games reviews where she isn't afraid to embarrass commenters for being overly dramatic with their sort of half-critical arsey remarks. Because these people only leave these narky, niggling little nuggets of criticism (probably born out of self-hatred in what I believe is known in the trade as 'the Frankie Boyle Method' of being funny) because they think that the authors will somehow not care enough about their work to take issue with them.

I can't speak for the writers I've mentioned, but I certainly take some pride in my pieces (I mean, not all of them, obviously, some of them were bordering on utter shite - as is this one, some would say) and it hurts to see them attacked by angry office workers trying to avoid having to fill in a spreadsheet about the Hamburg files. Writing in the G2 in an extract from her book on the very same day as Orr-gate, screenwriter/director Nora Ephron described the pain of seeing your work flop. It's 'mortifying', 'lonely' and 'sad'. And that's from a triple Oscar nominee, so imagine how shite it is for us downtrodden hacks.

So maybe, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't tweet/leave a comment on the Guardian website... Mkay?