Communal grieving, part 4

Or in this case, one hopes, a total lack of communal grieving.

In the grand scheme of things, there is much that deserves our sympathy: the plight of millions of poverty-stricken in war torn Africa, the persecuted in the Middle East; hedgehogs fooled into being born too late by our lengthy, but rapidly-ending Indian Summer; Newcastle United fans.

Clearly, there are many more that do not warrant sympathy: people with albums by Razorlight, Keane, Snow Patrol, Kasabian, James Blunt and their ilk in their music collections; Saddam Hussein; Republicans; George Michael.

Today, this latter bunch has a new leader. He is someone who has been on the "NO SYMPATHY" radar for a while, what with his smug nature when smarming about the foolishness of folk or playing money-flashing Godwhore on primetime TV. Most recently, he has been garnering headlines for his poor "woe-is-me" announcements following the revelation that he had been knocking off some bint behind his longstanding wife's back. His call for a bit of communal grieving seemed to originate in the mistaken belief that we should have sympathy for someone who clearly thinks his celebrity and pay packet excuse him from behaving with decency.

Looking at the state of the nation, one would have thought that a cast iron plan, yet remarkably it failed to find much favour. So today, Chris Tarrant, congratulations on stepping up to the plate marked CT. He has given an interview in which he underlines his class by deciding to woo his wife back by damning his mistress instead, dismissing her as having meant "nothing" to him despite seven years of illicit romance and lies. But that's merely the precursor for the punchline.

Clearly, Tarrant is so deluded that he is unable to look rationally at the SYMPATHY - NO SYMPATHY SCALE and place his problems therein. No, he obviously sees his plight as hovering somewhere between the child soldiers of the LRA and the families of the Moors Murders' victims.

Having already declared that his life since being kicked out of his marital home was like that of Osama bin Laden, he has now booked himself a holiday. Not just any holiday, but the most sanctimonious holiday of them all, one which warrants his stoning as a warm up to Saddam's hanging.

To wit: he plans to visit Auschwitz, believing that if he goes somewhere that has experienced so much misery, it will "put his problems into perspective".

How about climbing down from your pedestal of pity, bursting your flatulent bubble of over-inflated ego and realising that you are simply a CT who warrants NO SYMPATHY and save us all the trouble of having to find sharp ebough rocks to make sure your pummeled corpse is shredded beyond recognition.

This just in:

In related celebrity "news", The Hamster has made the shortlist for the Variety Club's Celebrity Of The Year, elevated to the dizzying heights of fellow nominees "Brucey" Forsyth, "Babs" Windsor, "Ant" Ant and "Dec" Dec, some old hag from Eastenders, Pukka Cookboy, Fingering on telly makes this Carol Smillie and Parkie because he crashed his car. I broke three wine glasses in one night a while back - one of them crystal as well, but that example of clumsiness hasn't seen me make the list.

Still, one can only hope it acts as an omen and some of his luck rubs off on the remainder of the nominees.

Getting Away With It

Main Entry: blag
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: robbery or theft, often a con or scam
Usage: British slang

Ok, so no-one I love has ever been murdered. No-one I hate has been murdered either.
So it’s not easy for me to put myself into Joanne Lee’s shoes and imagine what she’s been through. I can’t draw on personal experience of murder, because I have none. I can, however, draw on my personal experience of liars, because I’ve met several.
One thing liars are particularly apt at, I’ve noticed, is staying calm and emotionless whilst talking arse-candy. And women, especially, have a habit of nailing it. Almost.

The general public, it seems, are more happy to believe a balloonful of guff if it’s delivered with half-baked sincerity from the painted lips of a harlot. Just look at Princess Di, why not? There was a sickening moment when she looked at you, doe-eyed and dangerous, straight through Mirtan Bishar’s camera in the ITV mockumentary The Queen of Hearts. She was talking of all the pain she had gone through. All the bulimic sicking she had to do to keep her figure thin in the spotlight of the world’s media.

It must be tough being a princess, ay? A fucking princess. Traditionally, the easiest fucking role for anyone, ever. You weren’t even the real Queen, with all her responsibilities, love. You were a mucky, common slag who married for the fame and money. Bleeding-hearts butler Paul Burrell is, contrary to popular belief, doing a damn good job of preserving your memory, Di - as a publicity-seeking, headline-grabbing, woe-is-me attention seeker with a contribution to make only comparable to a conversation with a kettle (you get a lot of hot air blown in your face, and, if you get too close, it's really quite uncomfortable).

So there she was, the Queen of our Hearts, recounting the years of torture she endured when her maids refused to wipe her arse, or Charles was off preferring the anecdotes of his plants to her self-indulgent bleating. And, as if she’d been studying Group Guilt 101, at every crucial moment, she’d flash a look into the camera. The kind of look a six-year-old girl pulls at her father, when she knows she’s been naughty, but is loved enough to be forgiven. Then bought a horse.

Diana perfected the art of blagging.

If she was unhappy, it was her own fucking fault.

I didn’t tell her to marry an ugly Prince. She did that of her own accord.

I didn’t tell her to make herself sick after meals.

And I certainly didn’t tell her to fuck Will Carling, Dodi Fayed, Sir James Hewitt or any of the other badly-chosen bastards who got a seat in her Royal Box.

She knew she made a silly, dream-powered mistake in her life, marrying an inbred German with a penchant for lefty greenism, just because he was a Prince, and she knew she could do nothing about it.

So she got away from it all.

In her tragically short time on this earth, she went to see people who lived harder lives than hers, if that was possible. She spent hours visiting starving children in disease-ridden countries, then flew home in her private jet, scoffed caviar, Dairy Milk and beef, stuck her fingers down her throat and let the regurge hit the porcelain.

I wonder if she ever had the benevolence to bag it up and send it overseas in an aid bag:

“For starving child. Hope I can help. This wasn’t much to me, but it’s a whole meal to you. Sorry I’ve already part-digested it. Diana x”

I digress.

The problem with liars nowadays, I’m afraid, is the noose. It’s not the way our liars are lying, really. It’s the way the media portrays it as truth. Personal comment, cos it's fair, yeah, is the defence. But even that's manipulated bullshit.
Bashir twisted his Mikey Jackson documentary to make the honkger’s candid admissions of shared-bed sleepovers seem seedy and paedophilic.

He manipulated Diana too.

She wasn’t the queen of anyone’s heart. Men liked it when her nipples showed. Women wished they could afford her clothes. That was the extent of our relationship, the UK and her. She was the wayward teenager, we were the concerned parents. She didn't give a toss, as long as we didn't catch her fucking another public school wanker.

On the TV, starving children wondered why the pretty lady who felt sorry for them never actually did anything personally to make it better, just put her name onto tacky franchise charities and pretended she cared about them. One asked Di whether worrying about her bum looking big in Chanel was more important to her than his big inflated tummy from all the famine. No camera crew dared to show her slap him until his face fell off.

Uncle 24HourLiveReportersNailedOnCoffee manipulates us all the time.

Rebecca Loose was made to look like a desperate slag when she spoke out about text-sex with David Beckham. Her strangulated, lust-driven desire to make the headlines with seedy sex stories was matched only by several newspaper editors’ strangulated, lust-driven desire to make seedy sex stories into headlines.

She fucked Max Clifford instead of paying him, you know.

But, bless her, she managed to stave off the urge to blag. She did, it turns out, tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
So help us, God.

Joanne Lees does not get the same sympathy, bless her.

Miss Lees, I’m told, was made to spend hours in the Australian outback after being tied up by some mad dude. This evil dude murdered her boyfriend, too, despite having no motive and no clue who Peter Falconio was.

Joanne has, five years after her ordeal, elected to dye her hair a bit more black, get a lovely make-up job, and speak to the cameras, for cash, about the terrifying events she endured.
She had been silent for so long during the Media Circus surrounding the murder, I was somewhat taken aback to hear her speak with a thick accent.

I was even more taken aback to hear ITV newshound Rep Orter ask her how she felt when her boyfriend’s killer was put behind bars.

“I felt safe,” she said. “He wouldn’t be able to hurt me or put me through any of this again.”

All about you, is it love? Did you not feel a sense of justice for your murdered boyfriend? Did you not feel a sense of relief that his killer had been caught? No? You were just happy he couldn’t track you down and use Diana-approved guilt techniques to convince you to cough up and admit it - you slaughtered your fella on some windy Oz road thinking you’d make up some story about a crazed lunatic and get away with it. You didn’t figure the police were already looking for some dude who fitted your wily description - generic Australian surf-hair and swarthy complexion, you know, a dude....

I wonder how much money Joanne Lees received from various news outlets for sharing her pain with the world.

It’s probably enough to clear a few African fields of landmines. But then, the wider social needs of an entire people are always going to be a hassle when compared to the rigmarole of haircuts, shopping for skirts and personal insecurities about looking fat. It’s a total blag.

Mirror, Indy, Times and Star - Who's the fairest hack by far?

In the world of the arts and media, there is a hierarchy of accreditation. At one extreme, you've got film directors or producers so full of their own sense of importance that their name has to come before the title of the film. TOM CRUISE plays TOM CRUISE inTOM CRUISE'S Obscene Paycheck III. WES CRAVEN'S Law of Diminishing Returns. J M BARRIE'S Dead So Who Gives A Shit That He Wrote It. And so on.

At the other extreme are the entry level reporters lucky if the story they churn out is labelled BY a Chalfont Herald Reporter. Which, in reality, should be just fine. Surely if you go into print journalism, part of the reason is that you can retain a level of anonymity behind what you write.

However, this changes. One day, she'll gravitate to BY Penny Lame. Then BY Heatwave Correspondent Penny Lame. And so on. Ultimately, anonymity will be blown completely, however, when Penny has her photo taken (or in special cases, a pencil sketch drawn) to appear as her byline picture. Now whatever the rights and wrongs of this, it does seem to the Ewerhead Bulletin that this is a picture you would want to take care selecting. After all, if you're any good, it's going to be seen by a lot of people.

So, in honour of those special people who have clearly made that special effort and still look like the rear end of a hippo at tail-spinning shite-time, it is time to open the

BYLINE HALL OF FAME

And who better to blaze a trail than the Independent's uber-frowning, lemon-sucking frumpfuck Deborah Orr. Come on down, Debs:

Send your nominations to This Is The News at jesus.christ@shesoneuglymoo.com

NHS bosses fear huge rise in hypochondria cases
"Problem is much, much worse than we think" - Doctor

THE NHS could be shut down by a surge in the number of new cases of hypochondria.
A record number of people have been diagnosed with the disease in the past year — and the problem will only get much, much worse according to NHS officials.
Hospitals are struggling to cope after 400,000 new cases of hypochondria turned up on their doorsteps.
Wards in Surrey, Dorking, Toxteth and Edinburgh have been overrun with new patients complaining of previously unidentified symptoms, such as "It could be a headcold or a brain tumour" and "Am I having a heart attack or is it indigestion?"
The rise is thought to be directly linked to rumours that water is poisonous and taking paracetamol with Coca Cola causes instant death.
Full story inside

As many as one in five people live with hypochondria. Symptoms can range from the sniffles to a headache. But one thing is the same for all sufferers — one day, they will die. JONNY LIAR reports on the latest epidemic

“My heart could fall out any minute”

STUART Gaborath just wants to lead a normal life.
But the 25-year-old IT technician has been consigned to his one-bedroom flat for the past 18 months.
He has a deabilitating medical condition, one which is thought to affect far more people than it does.
Stuart contracted hypochondria at a party last year.
He had been suffering from a sore throat, when a fellow party-goer suggested it could be tonsilitis.
"I was a mess," Stuart said. "I had been sucking on Vocazones all night, but they weren't helping. I couldn't understand why. I only had a tickly throat. Then my mate suggested it could be tonsilitis - which is much worse than just a sore throat."
Panicked, Stuart left the party and headed home.
He called a doctor, who asked him to describe his symptoms.
"He said it could be tonsilitis, but he wasn't sure," Stuart recalled. "That was good enough for me. I took the next day off work and made an appointment at the GP."
When Stuart visited the doctor the next day, his condition worsened.
"I was in the waiting room when a woman came in with a goitre. I was sat opposite a clinically obese pair of siamese twins, and there was an elderly woman with alopecia,” he said.
“By the time I got in for my appointment, I was worried my heart would fall out. Luckily, it didn’t. But that doesn’t mean it won’t. I live in fear that it could happen any minute.”
That was a year and a half ago. Since then, Stuart has contracted possible diptheria, suspected HIV and a particularly nasty dose of the Is It Lung Cancer?
Doctors are dumbfounded. Despite running exhaustive tests, they’ve found that Stuart is healthier than five portions of fruit.
“That’s what’s so weird about this illness,” Stuart said. “I want to raise awareness of it. The doctors will tell you you’re fine, and you’ll feel absolutely great. But you know the sword of Damocles is hanging over your head, and it could fall at any moment.
“I’ve had to leave my job, my family and my dreams behind because of hypochondria. It wouldn’t be exaggerating to say it has ruined my life. In fact, it would be true.”
NHS bosses are in a fluster because so many new cases of hypochondria have been reported.
Beds across the country are being filled with hypochondriacs seeking urgent treatment for the condition.
New drugs have been flown in from the US, where the disease affects every single person.
Dr Charles McCharles, from the Institute of Health Problems, said the UK could soon go the same way.
“In the 1960s, the US Government failed to deal with the tell-tale signs of a hypochondria epidemic,” Dr McCharles explained.
“Soon, it spread through schools, offices and libraries. Now you can’t go out in the US without a doctor approaching you on the street for a check-up. They charge you to fix the problems. Common ones include breathing too slowly, thinking too fast and not standing up straight enough to let the blood flow.
“If the NHS doesn’t get its priorities right, we could see the same on British streets. It could take years for it to spread. Or it could happen tomorrow.”
Doctors have started to act locally already. Leaflets telling sufferers how to cope with hypochondria are being delivered to every home.

Top tips for avoiding the disease include:
* Not reading FeMail in the Daily Mail
* Going to the doctor’s once a day (remember to take an apple)
* Only checking yourself for lumps once a week
* Having a proper, researched and considered opinion on your health
* Refusing to react to scaremonger headlines about SARS, HN51 and nuclear strikes
* Borrowing some Nurofen
* See how you feel in the morning

The Pope Must Die - oh, he already has

The planet's 4.12billion beings currently signed up to the bizarre cult known only to humans as Catholicism were today reeling from the news that their pointy-hat fashionista of a leader has disappeared. Actually, it's worse than that.

Far worse.

The Catholic Church has officially declared that the Pope does not exist and never did, except in the diseased minds of their forebears.

A seasoned observer of fanatical cults said: "That's quite enough salt, thank you very much, and go easy on the pepper."

When pushed on the matter, he added: "Hmmm... When will it end, hey? That doesn't exist, this doesn't exist. When will they see where this is leading, hey? And ENOUGH WITH THE SALT ALREADY, cockwad."

The latest declaration follows the shock news that Hell does not exist, except for Muslims, and neither does limbo, except on Club 18-30 holidays. The Vatican is now hawking the world's largest mobile popcorn-maker on Ebay.

But while the cult's prophylactic-starved pond-dwellers begin adjusting to 's disappearance, cardinals have been forced to call in the special police after a strange man going by the name Ratzinger appeared as if by magic in their midst. The white-haired Teuton caused consternation among the assorted paedophiles and hebophiles as he was overheard repeatedly chanting: "There is no holocaust, there is no holocaust."

Communal grieving part 3

The God-fearing Amish people face a fresh threat to their destabilised community. In the wake of the Nickel Mines massacre, the peaceful people - thought to number just 200,000 in the US - face annihilation by a new army, the News Media. Furious reporters, editors, cameramen, fluffers, hacks and grips have formed a powerful alliance determined to wipe the wilfully obstructive bearded ones from the planet once and for all.

Fronted by an Anglo-American leadership made up of Fox News anchorman Dirk Houndum and Sky News tsunami cleavage-bearer Fleur Tovertly, they are out to vengeance what they perceive as the most disgraceful affront to quality journalism since their last celebrity news bulletin.

"These people would not allow us into the funeral of those dead young girls," said Houndum, visibly straining at his leash. "How is the world supposed to function normally without access to the grief of strangers at the moment of their greatest devastation?

"Apparently, they don't even mourn the loss of these lives at their funerals, but celebrate them, while behaving in a stoic manner. What sort of freaks are they? If they really were humans, they would be screaming and wailing straight into camera for hours on end."

"Fuck 'em all, I say," he added.

The NMA has appointed Top Gear's celebrity crap driver Hamster "The Richard" Hammond as their official poster boy and frontman. Speaking from his hospital bed, he said: "Buergh. Aaarrghhh. TIMMY!"

Seconds later, Ms Tovertly ran screaming from the windows of one Nickel Mines home and said: "Oh my God! I've just taken the opportunity - is my shirt undone enough? - to peer through that window over there, while the family are at the funeral - what? undo one more button - and OH MY GOD, these barbarians do not even have HD plasma screen technology - push the bra up a bit? How's that? good - in fact THEY DON'T EVEN OWN A FUCKING TV!!!!!!! - tell you what, I'll just take the shirt off, yeah, it's the peephole bra.

"In this day and age, they have no right to exist. With no TV how can they join us in poring over every death of a stranger and forcing ourselves to feel a grief at someone else's loss that cannot possibly be genuine? I ask you, how? They must be wiped off the planet. Or sign up to the full Sky package."

It has since emerged that the Amish community leaders have requested that no book of condolence is opened for the five dead girls and that the world forgives their killer for his indiscretion.The Hamster, one of the few people to have survived multiple books of condolence, said: "Ach ach. Guuurghbubuh. Amish must DIE!!!"

Teabags read papers that are racist and classist

Today the Mail had a piece about a vicar who's in a bit of trouble for including in the parish newsletter a line about how "there's a little nip in the air - which is what they said when the Japanese man was hung!" Oooh, I say.
The PC Police (read: people who are familiar with the modern world) are up in arms, and the Mail thinks this is all just quite dreadful. Political Correctness run amok, etc.
Which is what they would say.
Ah, but wait.
Over at the Mirror, they're having a field day with "the Snories." Yes it's party conference time, and in a move that may have been envisaged, the Mirror's not overly thrilled with the political bombs being dropped in Bournemouth. Again, fair enough.
Except that while the Mail and its ilk sells their special brand of thinly veiled racism, the Mirror can't seem to mention a single Tory without referring to him as a toff. "Toff." That's who's doing it to us. The toffs. The Tories aren't a group of people who have conceived of policies that the Mirror feels will be detrimental to the UK. They're, you know, a bit like that cunt down the bank. You know the one I'm talking about.
In a pub recently, somebody told me that the UK's not a class-distinction sort of place anymore. But apparently, nobody told that to the Mirror.
I don't like the Mail, the Mirror or the Tories. So really now, why am I going on about this? Well, maybe because for some damn reason, the opinions of the tabs are important in this country. The Volvo-driving, right-thinking "liberal" middle-class British masses would love to tell you that somebody like Robert Fisk's the most important print journalist on this piss-stained isle, but that's shit. Worse, it's denial. People may quote the right-on liberal broadsheets (or "qualities", whatever the fuck that is), but the daily sales figures tell a different story. So do the context clues involving which papers get queues of politicians who want to suck a little cock in exchange for a bit of support.
There is a fundamental denial of the fact that this is a tabloid nation which remains in the thrall of whichever print rag will pander to the various preconceived notions of diverse yet consistently dim readerships. Call the result entertaining. Call it combative. Call it interesting. Just don't call it journalism.

Bertie Bassett’s Licorice All-Sports

PITCH #641 - A football pitch about Sir Alex Ferguson.

Howdy, sports fans. In little old Britain, they care a lot about sports.
And everyone, the world over, knows that above all, they have a passion for soccer.
Soccer, you know. It’s not the same as football. They use a round ball and don’t wear helmets or shoulder pads. Now, British soccer fans love successful soccer clubs. The really successful ones, like Manchester United, Arsenal United and Chelsea United. These are the teams with the most money and the best players, so they are loved by everyone in the country.
The smaller clubs don’t have any fans. Or at least, if they do, we haven’t heard of any.
So it would make sense for a company like ours, with all its non-relevance to sport, to look at a new market. Somewhere we can emulate our other sports/insurance successes, a bit like we did with football in the US. We can put ourselves about and really use the English love of soccer for our own gain. Not to mention the chance to get Rooney’s autograph.
We’ve had our money department on the case for two years and they’ve dug up some interesting facts. It turns out Chelsea United have some Commie billionaire pumping dollars into the club. We could do the same, in a kind of uneasy alliance. But I'm an 80s American man at heart, so I don’t think we should go for Chelsea United. Commie bastards.
Arsenal United have just splashed out a bunch of green on their new stadium and will be raking back the cash from the start of the 2006 season.
Which leaves Manchester United.
And, fortunately, our money investigators have found out something rather useful. The club, for all its success, is in a lot of debt. A lot of debt.
I felt I needed to say that twice, for emphasis.
We could, quite easily, cough up something in the region of £56m English pounds for a huge stake in this club. I know Murdoch pulled out, and you may well be thiniing he has as much money sense as us. But I’ve just got a feeling this will be a good move for the Glazers.
Manchester United have been selling club credit cards for a few years. Now, we can offer something a little bit more special for the fans. We can insure their £500 club shirts in case they spill brown sauce on them. Or pie.
So, I’d like to ask you for your expertise, and the backing of the board of GlazerDragons, for a £56m investment, in return for a 51% stake in our venture. I thank you, and if you’d like to ask any questions, I’d be more than happy to answer them.

Q: You say Manchester United are the prime choice for the GlazerCorp to pour in their dollars. What do we get in return?

A: Well, thanks for that question. The great thing about soccer is that no football teams, despite running like a business, advertise for fans. It’s an untapped market. You don’t get billboards screaming “Support Scunthorpe” or anything even remotely like that. The only way British soccer fans choose a club is either through blood loyalty, local loyalty, or gloryhunting.
Manchester United are a prime target for glory hunters due to their recent successes in the Soccer Championships in the UK.
We can capitalise on a market no other UK soccer team has cracked. We can start advertising Manchester United on the telly. The TV. The tube. The box.
Imagine, if you will, this: Our insurance company, AIG, can get a sponsorship deal with Manchester United because we own them. So, AIG will be emblazoned across the team’s soccer uniforms this season.
Problem is, many UK soccer fans don’t have a clue who AIG are, or what they do.
So, we put the letters AIG onto a football pitch. They kick the ball about for a bit, before slotting it home into the soccer net. It makes AIG look like soccer fans, and, hopefully, make soccer fans like AIG.
Then - bam! - we cut to scenes of Manchester United playing soccer. We can use grainy footage to give it that British nostalgia feel. To make people want to play in that soccer team.
Then, simply, and this is the real killer, we say: “AIG, sponsors of Manchester United soccer team”, with a link to our clever, doubled-headed website.
Of course, there’s fuck all link between insurance and soccer, but soccer fans won’t know this. Thinking they’re clicking online to get more info about their favourite soccer stars, they will instead be lead to our corporate website.
Here, they will be offered the chance to buy a Manchester United soccer shirt for £100, and then take our AIG insurance in case they spill brown sauce on it.
Before being able to leave the site, soccer fans will have to sign up for a lifetime of AIG insurance products, because if they don’t, they can’t be considered real soccer fans.After a couple of seasons at a debt-ridden, mismanaged club like Manchester United Soccer Club, we can move on to Fulham, Portsmouth, Wigan, Crystal Palace and Charlton. From there on in, we buy up seven UK soccer clubs every season, stick AIG on the front of their uniforms, and make them change their websites to include our company name.Then we move all the teams to the US, and start new teams in the UK. Names we’ve come up with so far include: Glazers United, Malcolm United, Bush United, Mississipi AllStar United and Complete and Utter Bollocks.For more on our final advert, please click

Sorry you're leaving

The brown envelope schlepped its way around the newsroom and finally landed with a jangle on my desk.
Inside were coppers, a few minor silvers and the odd pound coin, all poured out of poorer people's pockets for the editors' leaving present.
"Make sure you give generously," was the plea from the sycophantic underlings, still eager to impress a drunken Scottish tightwad with a penchant for the sensational.
"At least two pounds."
At least two pounds? Let me see.
It wasn't too long ago that I spent almost three months waiting to speak to the Old Hacker. Three months and not a single word. Not one utterance for an editorial employee who sits slap bang in the centre of the newsroom. Not even a "Sorry, can't talk now" or a "I'm going to be honest, this is the situation..."
No, wasn't offered the pleasance of that.
Instead, I had to threaten to hand my notice in to get any kind of response.
And even then, I was told my meagre wages, out of scale with everyone else's, were absolutely fine as they were.
So that £2 I was asked to give, let's see, works out at about 20 minutes work. So, in order to contribute to his collection, I'd have to give up my precious earnings from 20 minutes. That 20 minutes would've been spent sweating, swearing and thinking of ways to get out of work tomorrow, while balancing a handful of community-based leads, forward planning lists, and phone calls from angry readers with no intellect.
So, £2 is it?
That's what I should give back to the man I hold single-handedly responsible for ruining my career.
I resisted the temptation to write "Eat my fucking shit" in his ridiculous leaving card.
Others hadn't resisted the temptation - with two personal highlights from the garish ball-point blanket of comments: one, curled like an affectionate tongue in the starfish: "Thanks boss."
The other, "Thanks for everything" - from someone in a similarly shit job with similarly shit wages to me.
Thanks for what, eh? The man we're talking about almost let two serial killers get away with murder in eagerness for headlines and sales.
So needless to say, I didn't put my £2 in the envelope.
Just a short note saying: "Hello, I've never really met you, but I work in your department for 10 hours a day for fuck all money. Sorry you're leaving. Thanks for nothing. I would've given you some money but you've done fuck all for me, mate. I've busted my ass for two years and haven't had so much as a thank you. So consider my pay rise your fucking leaving gift. I know you're going to get a glorious company pension, complete with free golf for life, so £1,000 might not seem that much to you. But believe me, it is a lot of money. The difference between a motivated, enthusiastic member of staff and a jaded, demoralised hatefiend. So take that money as part of your retirement deal, dude. You've clearly been skimping on everyone's rises so you get a better financial reward. And that's why I haven't given you £2, you fuck."