Work part 2.

If, from now on, we're only going to write 'what we know', I'm going to have to stop posting in the very near future. That or embark on a series of updates about the the ins and outs of the Lutheran Reformation. Neither of these options seems a particularly good recipe for a successful blog, so expect to again be reading the incoherent prose of a man who writes 'stuff he knows absolutely nothing about' soon. In the meantime, inspired by Ashley's brutally honest appraisal of his career to date, I thought I'd contribute another job to avoid.

Back in the summer of 2007, as a fresh faced second year history student, I got myself a job at a housing association in order not to default on my vastly over priced rent payments to my unesteemable landlord. Work began innocently enough: I was presented with a mountain of filing to do and people seemed modestly impressed that I knew what a mail merge was. What I didn't realise was that working there was going to make this tatoo seem like an eminently sensible world view.[ pic shamelessly stolen from here]

Having started out doing general office admin, my boss (who could clearly spot an eager-to-please push-over a mile away) soon began setting me to task on a series of jobs "with more responsibility". For no extra money I should add. The people I worked with were lovely people. Patient people who cared about helping others. I admire them greatly. The majority of people who live in housing association properties are normal, average, nice people who are just trying to get on with their lives and maybe get someone to fix the leak in their front room. Unfortunately the vast majority are not the ones ringing you up everyday demanding that you find them a four bedroom house in Covent Garden (true story). In fact the majority of the people who you end up dealing with day to day are either insane, inconceivably angry, or, more commonly, just out-right dick wads.

One of my first tasks with "more responsibility" was to ring up all the deaf tenants to double check if they were indeed deaf. Please just read that sentence again and take a second to absorb the utter insanity of the project. We were trying to get the attention of people who we suspected were deaf using the medium of sound. After a day or two of calling everybody on the list I reported back that, unsurprisingly, very few had actually answered the phone. My boss's response was "we'll have to try calling them at different times of the day. They must of been out." At this point my brain almost melted.

Not long after the deaf person telethon, I was promoted (that's the word used on my CV. A more fitting description would be 'given a job that everyone else refused to do'.) I became transfers administrator. This meant that everyone who wanted to move within the housing association had to contact me, and I then had to explain to them why they were going to be put on a waiting list for two to three years, possibly forever. Lots of people really, really needed to move due to overcrowding, medical reasons etc. Unfortunately there was no where to move them to. There were many, many genuinely sad cases. A family of five living in a one bed flat with a son who, due to being born with an imperforate anus, had no control over his bowels. The man who, due to his schizophrenia, got irrational urges to jump off ledges, but lived on the fourth floor with a balcony. Seriously, these people all existed, and none of them had any prospects of being able to move in the near future.

Were these the people giving me crap everyday? Where they hell. People with real problems tended to have some dignity and were polite and accepting of a system that simply sucked balls. They understood houses in London couldn't be magic-ed out of nowhere. Instead I got phone calls every damn day from a plethora of retards (apologies for the tasteless word but these people broke me) who seemed to think I was personally vindicating them by not allowing them to move to their dream home.

Yes I'm talking to you: lady who wanted to live within walking distance of her daughter's school. I'm sorry you couldn't get a move but it turns out the government doesn't have a duty provide you with a house on the specific street you want to live on. If you want to live there why don't you stop crying about your extremely reasonably priced accommodation and go and rent privately instead of being a massive douche and asking to speak to my manager. You see there are worse things than having to get the bus to school; for example having to live in the same room as your mum, your dad, your sister and your brother who can't stop defecating all over the place.

There were also two idiots who would ring me up on almost precisely alternate days to berate me for only giving houses to white people / blacks and immigrants [delete as appropriate]. I longed for the day when they would call up at the same time so that I could transfer their calls together. What these ass-clowns failed to realise was that calling someone racist over the phone when they had never met you and hence had no idea of your race didn't make any sense.

It was always those with the least to complain about who would demand to have a 1-on-1 meeting and then spend half an hour shouting at me, demanding I photocopy "important' documents (which turned out to be letters from the housing association, hand annotated with comments such as "Aha!! This PROVES I need a move"). Other notable efforts included a man insisting on a move because his floorboards were moving and he used to work for the Queen. When this didn't seem to be doing the trick, he promptly faked a heart attack.

I think a nadir was reached when I replied in writting to a woman saying 'Dear so-and-so, Thank you very much for the picture you sent me... blah blah blah' after she had mailed me a letter with a polaroid picture of her still born baby attached. God I hated this job. But, for all my dreams of going all Office Space at work, any act of rebellion tended to end up more like this.

So as I sit here unemployed, contemplating applying for "A recession PROOF career in recruitment!!" (Guardian Jobs) I can still allow myself a brief moment of happiness knowing that at least I'm not doing any of the above any more.

Words of warning from a call-centre veteran

They say you should write about what you know. And despite the fact that I’ve never quite managed to figure out exactly who ‘they’ are, ‘they’ certainly have a point.

So what do I know? I know that I will always laugh when John Motson ecstatically chirrups something along the lines of “…and he’s come inside his man magnificently” over the top of some meaningless mid-table Premier League action. I also know, like the estimable Wyclef Jean, that two wrongs don’t make a right, especially when you’re just trying to have some dinner with some candlelight. I, unlike this lady, am aware that jumping into the bear enclosure at feeding time is a bad idea. Most of all, however, I know first-hand of the soul-crushing woe that comes from working in a call-centre. And it is this affliction upon which I will focus my attention.

First and foremost, it is important to provide some context. The call-centre can seem like an attractive proposition for some; flexible hours, the chance to meet new people, a lack of really stressful work. Don't be fooled, for the harsh reality is so very different. As a call-centre veteran (I have worked various spells over the years to support myself through University, and as a post-graduate to create a much needed financial buffer zone), I can now reveal the psychological torment that takes hold when holed up in one of these places for too long.

A brief summary of my call-centre resume should be sufficient to convince you (the reader(s)? - [ed - Fred has already made that joke]) to stay away. I have sold boiler insurance to old ladies, but was forced by the client to lie to them about the validity of the cover period. I have attempted to convince unsuspecting members of the public to sign up to a Kerry Katona-fronted bingo website. I have pressed Texan good ol’ boys into revealing their true opinions on "aloominum" wheels through the night.

I have been told, variously, to ‘fuck off’, to ‘get a proper job’ and, in a quaintly British sort of way, to ‘get knotted’. In addition to this, I have been branded a ‘timewaster’, a 'spastic cunt' (I kid you not) and most damagingly of all, a clown. The truth hurts.

Furthermore, the call-centre has a tendency to attract a certain type of person, comprised of penurious students (understandable), attention-seeking out-of-work actors and singers (irritating) and, finally, nutters who always want to strike up conversations with you, despite your best "leave me alone" lack of eye contact and negative body language. Moreover, it is always these nutters who seem to get promoted to the level of supervisor, at which point their over-eager friendship is replaced by the steely-eyed pedantry of a true jobsworth.

Another grave problem with the call-centre are the hygeine levels. These places are veritable hives of illness. If one person has a cold, everyone will soon have it. Packed in like battery hens, sneezes and coughs spread like wildfire. Oh, and I won't even get started on sharing headsets and mouthpieces. Your only protection against call-centreitis? The wet-wipe.

My antipathy toward the call-centre runs deep. In fact, my main problem with the recent Oscar-grabbing smash ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ was not its overly schematic structure, wildly uneven tone or even Dev Patel’s gormless central performance; rather, it was that screenwriter Simon Beaufoy dared to suggest that any good whatsoever could come from a call-centre. Without giving too much all Boycway to those who haven’t seen it, a major plot catalyst stems from a humorous chance encounter in a call-centre. Had I not been trying to impress a young(ish) lady at the time, I surely would have hurled my popcorn at the screen and lunged manically at the projectionist screaming "THE LIES! THE LIES!".

Having said all this, the call-centre is not without its opportunities for Beckettian gallows humour. The whole process is so spectacularly inane that once one develops a sense of acceptance, black comedy can creep in. This humour can range from the basic (laughing at the names that come up on your screen. To wit: Captain Pollock, Peter Sutcliffe, Mr. Jesus Christ, Mrs Qunt - all true) to the more complex (howling with tearful mirth on the bus home as you assess the existential calamity of what you actually do for six pounds an hour).

Occasionally when sitting there like an automated chicken whose only role is to irritate and disturb, you will chance upon a member of the public who is sensitive to your plight, and will engage in empathetic conversation before either returning to their episode of Eastenders, or (and amazingly it does happen) acquiescing to your pleading request, and partaking in a questionnaire about the location and usability of their local cash machine. Getting someone to agree to do a phone questionnaire is not in itself cause for celebration, however, because that would be making the assumption that Joe Public is cognizant of basic skills such as listening, talking and counting. One memorable scene from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's groundbreaking 'The Office' epitomizes both the thundering inanity of the typical questionnaire and the terminally frustrating inability of the majority of said public to process a simple request, like scoring on a scale from 1-5.

My post-call-centre search for employment has been largely characterized by agonizing spells of inactivity and soul searching, followed by manic hot-flush internet sessions spent hammering endless combinations into the search criteria of Guardian Jobs, Milkround et al., only to be faced with the constant, mocking six-word epithet ‘Fancy a Career in Media Sales?’. But still I persist, because my determination to avoid these stinking hell-holes is strong.

I’ve never been one for New Year’s Resolutions; my theory being simply, ‘if you want to do something, do it now’. But at the turn of this year, I made an exception. At the time of writing (Wednesday April 22), I've been clean of call-centres now for the best part of six months. I feel like a new man.

I think I'm doing well. Do yourself a favour - don't make the same mistakes I did - stay away from call-centres. AC

Twitter

'Sup reader(s?). Another few months and another vague attempt at contributing to Hot Rant. Still it's not all been quiet since November. In the five months since the last post, Tom and I decided to do something about the abysmal irregularity of our updates. We started a Hot Rant Twitter profile! That's right we joined up to the new (actually quite old) social media phenomenon! I'm not going to lie, we were excited. So excited I just used two exclamation marks. Our e-mail exchange that day was awash with youthful exuberance. Hot Rant was going to get plugged in to the most up to date, hip, news generating, miracle of modern technology. We were going to go global. Micro blogging every hour, spreading impotent rage across continents, global conflict ending because everyone would just become too busy posting their pathetic anger on the internet. That was until it became abundantly clear that Twitter sucked. Bad.

Okay, so faced with this powerful tool for disseminating important news worldwide, we only managed one tweet. About a large rat in China. I still maintain that it was a correct editorial decision to lead off with this. The rat was bloody massive. I've never seen anything like it. But maybe it didn't capture the world's imagination like we anticipated. Nevertheless I stand by the fact that a news story which features a man shouting: "I did it, I caught a rat the size of a cat!" had News at Ten potential. Anyway that's beside the point now. Sometimes the best stories just don't get the coverage.

The real point is how the whole world has decided that 140 character updates directed at everyone you know (and don't) are the future of communication. I logged on today and was confronted by this:

lancearmstrongSitting here with @johanbruyneel at his house. Glass of wine, cheese and crackers. Now going to bed. Night, y'all. http://twitpic.com/2e0z4

First of all I don't know how the hell I ended up internet-knowing Lance Armstrong. Maybe he really likes really big rats. Second, and saddest of all, within seconds of being confronted with the possibility of interacting with a man as interesting as Lance Armstrong, Twitter has already managed to turn it into an unmitigatingly boring and life-sapping experience. To start with, you need to make your mind up Lance. Are you sitting with Johan or are you going to bed? Both cannot be happening at the same time unless you are actually narrating your life, typing in real time on Twitter. I hope you are not. However it would explain why you have included such snooze inducing details in your post. If, after the earth shattering update news, you can summon up the motivation to click on the attached link you will be transported to one of the most insipid pictures in the history of photography. Who is taking the photo? Why is the decor so horrible? And why on earth did you feel the need to share this with me on the internet?

I don't blame Lance (I assume it's ok to be on first name terms now). I blame Twitter. It's that damn 140 character limit which makes everything crap. Even Mr Armstrong talking about his cancer ordeal would be rendered shit and boring on Twitter:

"Sitting here with @testicularcancer in my balls. Glass of Platinol and othr drugs. Cured now. Night, y'all [Insert link to picture of cancer ravaged testicles here]"

Micro-blogging is terrible because, crucially, the minutiae of people's lives is not interesting. Even if you are Lance Armstrong. I'm sick of it.

Returns, developments and books

Yes it has been a while since the last update but me and Tom are two people who like coming up with ideas and then doing nothing about them. In other words we are lazy. If I wasn't near-certain that it was just me and him who were going to read this I would probably launch into a rant about how great our sitcom / journal / bookshop-come-illegal unpasteurised cheese shop ('Raw Books' if you were wondering) / space program was going to be. As it is I will leave that for another day and simply ask you to be grateful that we ever got this half baked project off the ground.

Anyway since graduating we have both failed to do anything useful and the plus side of this is a massive backlog of things to hate and rant about. Starting out, I'm sorely tempted to launch into a tirade against my most hated and despised topic du jour, i.e. my life. However I'm pretty sure nobody wants to hear the self indulgent wallowings of man with no real problems except having a degree and not really knowing what to do with it. As such I'm going to hold off and propose a novel direction to this blog. Yes I'm still going to rant about the man who attempted to make me inhale second hand heroin smoke whilst I was asleep on a rail replacement bus in Streatham. Seriously heroin addicted tramp, the bus was 150m away from where it was terminating. However I'm also going to suggest that not all of the rants have to be about stuff we hate anymore. So here goes:

First up is a brilliant rant from Charlie Brooker about the whole Brand-Ross saga. Check it out HERE. The topic of my first positive rant, is someone else's rant about something they hate, I acknowledge that, but let's view this as a gentle breaking in period. I'm not usually a great fan of Charlie Brooker but I think he pretty much hits the nail on the head here as far as I'm concerned.

Second is a book that I'm reading at the moment called 'The Last Mughal' by William Dalrymple. It's a history of the last Mughal Emperor of India and the Indian uprising of 1857 and it is brilliant. This reviewer may have a point that the book does devote a lot of it's pages to telling the British side of the story and concentrates on events in Dheli almost exclusively. That said it's probably one of the best history books I've ever read. It gives a hugely detailed account of a plethora of peoples experiences of the uprising without ever getting stuck in boring minutiae. Pre-uprising you get a fascinating insight into the Mughal's luxurious but impotent lifestyle which seems mainly to have revolved around writing poetry and being cared for by his many wives. The book really takes off with the uprising though. There's stories of brutal violence, high-jinx escapes and reprehensible murders on both sides. Dalrymple doesn't shy away from the horrific atrocities committed by both sides, giving detailed insights into how both the British and Indians justified them.

Not unexpectedly it's the ludicrous stiff upper lip attitude and ridiculous sensibilities of the British officers that provide some moments of comedy. Firstly there is General Nicholson a violent man who hated India and was unbelievably curt. A typical letter of his to his superiors reads:

'Sir,
I have the honour to inform you that I have just shot a man who came to kill me.
Your Obedient Servant,
John Nicholson'

The man seems to have been an actual lunatic. On his death bed, apparently barely able to breath or talk: "He was, however, still well enough to fire a shot from his pistol through the side of the tent to shut up his irregular cavalry, who had gathered in vigil outside his tent." Strangely enough he actually inspired a religious cult while he was alive whose adherents thought he was a descendant of Vishnu. "Nicholson tolerated his devotees as long as they kept quiet; but if 'they prostrated themselves or began chanting they were taken away and whipped."

Another example of insane British manners comes from the letter a young officer wrote to his mother the night before the British were due to storm Delhi. Musing about the effects that this near suicidal, full frontal attack on the city might have on him he wrote: "I hope it won't make me swear, though that is almost allowable for you are mad with excitement, and know not what you are saying. but I will strive against it with all my might."

It all reminded me of the attitudes on display in Nick Foulkes' 'Dancing into Battle' about the Battle of Waterloo. In a manner echoed by Nicholson's brevity of and nonchalance, Lord Uxbridge, the commander of the cavalry wrote this letter to his wife:

"Dearest Cha,

Be bold, prepare for misfortune, I have lost my right leg. A miracle might have saved it but for the sake of you and my dearest children I have taken the better chance of preserving my life.

God Bless You all."

Anyway what I'm basically saying is that it is a great book. I picked it up in Fopp for £3. I love that shop.

Giles Coren gets mad, but not even.

Hullo!
It's been rather a while since any of this was updated, but necessity has overtaken motivation as a cause so here we are. Easing back in, I thought it might be a good idea to put the various letters, and replies, that the ever delightful restaurant critic / columnist / Kentish Town resident Giles Coren has shot off to journalists and sub editors in one of his many apparent periods of red-mist syndrome. Doubtless many have already seen them, but for posteritys sake, and if you don't read the Guardian:


1. Letter to Feargus O'Sullivan.

From: Coren, Giles
Sent: 09 July 2008 23:06

feargus,

I'm emailing to say that your review of osteria emilia, in most ways perfectly fine and good and spot on, pissed me off. i booked, as ever, under a pseudonym, that over made up italian bird did not have a fucking clue who i was (or even who baddiel was, who i ate with because he lives, like me, round the corner). Nor were there any kitchen staff peeking out of any porthole. i appreciate that you have to keep your column as lively as possible - and name dropping david i guess might be exciting for your readers (i'll certainly be doing it in my column) - but in your froth to show how folksy and incognito you are, you did your readers and the restaurant an immense disservice: you suggested that i got some special dispensation in eating a la carte. But if you'd spent a bit more time looking at your lunch menu, and a bit less gawping at me, you'd have noticed that it said, "dishes from the evening a la carte menu are available at lunchtime, with some exceptions".

You said "i didn't have the brass neck to demand anything off the unavailable a la carte". it makes you sound like an utter tit. you are not only a chippy fuck but a lazy journalist. 'brass neck'. learn to write, and take your head out of your arse, you fucking twat.

all the best
giles coren

Bear in mind, O'Sullivan also writes for the Times (though I believe this refers to a review he wrote for the London Paper?), so he is actually a colleague of Coren's.


More famously:

2. Letter to Times sub-editors.

Chaps,

I am mightily pissed off. I have addressed this to Owen, Amanda and Ben because I don't know who i am supposed to be pissed off with (i'm assuming owen, but i filed to amanda and ben so it's only fair), and also to Tony, who wasn't here - if he had been I'm guessing it wouldn't have happened.

I don't really like people tinkering with my copy for the sake of tinkering. I do not enjoy the suggestion that you have a better ear or eye for how I want my words to read than I do. Owen, we discussed your turning three of my long sentences into six short ones in a single piece, and how that wasn't going to happen anymore, so I'm really hoping it wasn't you that fucked up my review on saturday.

It was the final sentence. Final sentences are very, very important. A piece builds to them, they are the little jingle that the reader takes with him into the weekend.

I wrote: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for a nosh."

It appeared as: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for nosh."

There is no length issue. This is someone thinking "I'll just remove this indefinite article because Coren is an illiterate cunt and i know best".

Well, you fucking don't.
This was shit, shit sub-editing for three reasons.
1) 'Nosh', as I'm sure you fluent Yiddish speakers know, is a noun formed from a bastardisation of the German 'naschen'. It is a verb, and can be construed into two distinct nouns. One, 'nosh', means simply 'food'. You have decided that this is what i meant and removed the 'a'. I am insulted enough that you think you have a better ear for English than me. But a better ear for Yiddish? I doubt it. Because the other noun, 'nosh' means "a session of eating" - in this sense you might think of its dual valency as being similar to that of 'scoff'. you can go for a scoff. or you can buy some scoff. the sentence you left me with is shit, and is not what i meant. Why would you change a sentnece aso that it meant something i didn't mean? I don't know, but you risk doing it every time you change something. And the way you avoid this kind of fuck up is by not changing a word of my copy without asking me, okay? it's easy. Not. A. Word. Ever.

2) I will now explain why your error is even more shit than it looks. You see, i was making a joke. I do that sometimes. I have set up the street as "sexually-charged". I have described the shenanigans across the road at G.A.Y.. I have used the word 'gaily' as a gentle nudge. And "looking for a nosh" has a secondary meaning of looking for a blowjob. Not specifically gay, for this is soho, and there are plenty of girls there who take money for noshing boys. "looking for nosh" does not have that ambiguity. the joke is gone. I only wrote that sodding paragraph to make that joke. And you've fucking stripped it out like a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a renaissance fresco and thinking jesus looks shit with a bear so plastering over it. You might as well have removed the whole paragraph. I mean, fucking christ, don't you read the copy?

3) And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed the unstressed 'a' so that the stress that should have fallen on "nosh" is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable. When you're winding up a piece of prose, metre is crucial. Can't you hear? Can't you hear that it is wrong? It's not fucking rocket science. It's fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never ended on an unstressed syllable. Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck.

I am sorry if this looks petty (last time i mailed a Times sub about the change of a single word i got in all sorts of trouble) but i care deeply about my work and i hate to have it fucked up by shit subbing. I have been away, you've been subbing joe and hugo and maybe they just file and fuck off and think "hey ho, it's tomorrow's fish and chips" - well, not me. I woke up at three in the morning on sunday and fucking lay there, furious, for two hours. weird, maybe. but that's how it is.

It strips me of all confidence in writing for the magazine. No exaggeration. i've got a review to write this morning and i really don't feel like doing it, for fear that some nuance is going to be removed from the final line, the pay-off, and i'm going to have another weekend ruined for me.

I've been writing for The Times for 15 years and i have never asked this before - i have never asked it of anyone i have written for - but I must insist, from now on, that i am sent a proof of every review i do, in pdf format, so i can check it for fuck-ups. and i must be sent it in good time in case changes are needed. It is the only way i can carry on in the job.

And, just out of interest, I'd like whoever made that change to email me and tell me why. Tell me the exact reasoning which led you to remove that word from my copy.

Right,
Sorry to go on. Anger, real steaming fucking anger can make a man verbose.
All the best
Giles

Oh dear. The section reading "you've fucking stripped it out like a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a renaissance fresco and thinking jesus looks shit with a bear so plastering over it" is perhaps the finest example of Coren's fine way with a completely overwrought analogy. Has anyone ever seen Jesus with a bear? Is that his point? Maybe he is a genius after all. His so called 'jingle' line is appalling, though.

3. Reply from Times sub-editors.

Dear Giles,

Sub-editing is a noble profession. It is also a thankless one - particularly when your writers call you a "useless cunt".

There was a sharp intake of breath when your e-mail hit the inbox of subs throughout the industry this week - that was after we'd stopped laughing. Not that we didn't think you had a point. Yes, tinkering with copy just for the sake of it and without consultation is wrong. It is disrespectful and arrogant. And we can see why you'd be furious at the loss even of an indefinite article.

There is nothing more irritating than a sub-editor who thinks they know better than a writer, particularly one who cares deeply about his work. But did you really have to be so rude?

Laura Barton stated in Friday's Guardian that there's "something of a long-standing tension between writers and sub-editors". Do you wonder why? Contrary to your belief, we don't "believe we know best when we know fuck all".

If you could only see the state of some of the raw copy we have to knock into shape. It's badly structured, poorly spelt, appallingly punctuated, lazily researched. We're not saying your writing falls into that category - on the contrary, your journalism is highly accomplished. Never having worked on your copy, we can only take your word for it that it is beyond improvement in its pre-published state. Strange as it may seem, many writers do not possess your grasp of language; indeed it is sometimes difficult to believe that English is their mother tongue, and they don't give a damn about what they produce because they know that a good, often highly educated sub-editor will correct it, check it and turn it into readable prose.

None of this, however, can excuse your nasty, bullying, "know your place, you insignificant little fuckwit" e-mail. Yes, it's funny, in a way that pieces that use "fuck", "shit" and "cunt" so liberally often can be, but, please - someone made a mistake. They surely had no intention of sabotaging your deathless prose. So you don't like what happened to your piece - have a word with your editor. The hapless sub will no doubt already have been soundly thrashed and had their dictionary privileges removed.

Some years ago, a colleague of ours had a T-shirt printed up with the legend "xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx is a cunt" on the front, which he wore every week when having to deal with the writer to whom it referred, because he, like you, became so disproportionately abusive when his use of language was questioned. We'd hate that to happen to you, because you can actually write, and having "Giles Coren is a sanctimonious little twat who needs to get over himself" could be quite costly in T-shirt lettering. Subs are no more infallible than writers. So, let's all try a little mutual respect, shall we?

All the best,

Mia Aimaro Ogden
Joanna Duckworth
Senior sub-editors, The Sunday Times

Hooray!

Televised Football

Once upon a time, in a land that has come to be referred to as ‘the 1960s’, one could sit down on a Saturday evening, and enjoy the simple pleasure of watching football highlights. It was basic, decent, honest, but most importantly, it was not a struggle. Millions of people up and down the land would simply sit and let the delights of a mud-soaked Brighton & Hove Albion drawing 0-0 with Aston Villa wash over them. The commentator would have no need for hyperbole, would not refer to a pass as an ‘offload’, or to a clean-sheet as a ‘shut-out’, and they most certainly would not talk about ‘the Makélélé role’. A simple voice, 22 men running their heart out for their local club, and a field that can only be described as a poor man’s Somme – lovely stuff. Post-match analysis was also reassuringly clean-cut; it would consist of a well-spoken man, whom had a strong vocabulary, simply grinning after the Brighton/Villa clash and saying “well played both teams, great stuff there, up next… Plymouth Argyle versus Queens Park Rangers”.
Unfortunately, somewhere down the line (let’s say… after Thatcher? She is a villain of the necessary cartoon proportions), the BBC and BSKYB decided that this kick-ass formula needed a revamp. It needed to be sexed up, flashy, big business – coincidentally all the characteristics of people who benefited under Thatcher (cow). At first however, I must admit, it was ok. The BBC launched the dynamic duo of Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson, and BSKYB gave us Andy Gray and his insights into managerial tactics. Former players, with a good grasp of their native language, and a straightforward manner of communicating to the general public what managers expected of a flat-back four.
But with TV executives being what they are, they couldn’t settle on what was an acceptable update. SKY started running war-metaphor advertisements, in which managers and players are hyped as gladiators. I have seen Frank Sinclair play against Cardiff City, and I can assure you my dominant thought was not “bloody hell, Ridley Scott missed a trick here”.
The BBC executives on the other hand, seemed to develop a voracious appetite for employing former players to do the Hansen/Lawrenson role, an appetite we can thank for giving publicly funded punditry careers to such stars as Lee Dixon, Gavin Peacock, and (I shit you not) Iain Dowie. For those of you not familiar with Iain Dowie’s football skills here are some stats; in 3 years for QPR, Dowie scored 2 goals………… Iain Dowie was a centre-forward.
Indeed, it seems that the BBC has forgotten the key prerequisite for being a television pundit; good presentation and oratory skills. What we now have however, are poor former players grasping at the use of metaphor and simile, in the manner of a child grasping desperately at an allusive shiny balloon. An example will illustrate this best. Here is how Iain Dowie recently described Wayne Rooney’s immaculate ball control skills:

“It’s like he has got velvet gloves on his feet”

What? I mean seriously, what are you saying? Shall we find out together fellow ranters? So Dowie’s claim is that Rooney’s ball control makes it seem as though velvet gloves cover his feet. Firstly, the foot equivalent of a glove is a sock, and Rooney was wearing two socks when he controlled the pass – Dowie’s simile is inherently stupid. Secondly, since when did velvet gloves become the finest material for increasing grip on gloves? I recently asked a construction site worker if he would like to come with me and give velvet a try, and I woke up on a drip. The suggestion seemed offensive to him. “Lay off Dowie!” I hear you cry, “Give that gimp Peacock what-for!” you demand.
Firstly, Gavin Peacock likes to say “I’m just going to run the analysis”. What he means is he will run the video, and analyse it. I know this seems picky, but you can’t be too careful when dealing with a mega-brain like Gavin Peacock. Most importantly however, he seems to be unaware that he is on a television programme, or more accurately, what television actually does. The beauty of television is that it affords the viewer the opportunity to visually appreciate what is going on ‘at the other end’, and enjoy the beauty of moving pictures. Peacock however will continually pause footage in order to draw circles around the number of players ‘behind the ball’, then count the circles, and then forever conclude that ‘Bolton came today to disrupt Arsenal’.
Or he will stop footage, and then draw arrows showing where players will next move, in order to illustrate ‘pressure on the forwards’. Thanks Gav, but without the pause and the arrows I would have figured it out myself by watching it happen anyway. He is rendering moving pictures and one of the 20th century’s great inventions obsolete.
Maybe he and Lee Dixon are secret agents, bringing TV down from the inside, revolutionaries on a quest to see radio and the spoken word brought back to the fore of British culture. Or maybe they have been placed on MOTD as a tester for the BBC’s new primetime show How Not to Orate, or What Not to Say, I which two women with an overt sexual chemistry tell people that they ‘speak stupid’, and that this is the reason nobody wants to sleep with them.
I realise that maybe I have ranted too much, but I leave special mention for the superstar ITV pundit – Andy Townsend. However bad the BBC gets, you can be sure that ITV will plunge deeper. During the coverage of the FIFA World Cup 2006, or ‘Blatterfest’, Dutch football legend Ruud Gullit offered the opinion that Spain’s football failures were a consequence of apathy on the part of the many regional allegiances that its players have, and that players from political rivals Barcelona and Madrid did not want to mix. This was too much for Townsend to accept, who interjected with this nugget of diplomacy;

“What?! That’s ridiculous; the coach ought to sort that out!”

Idiot. It is no surprise that in previous years ITV deployed the ‘tactics truck’, which was a van directly outside the stadium in which Townsend would watch the game, and from which he would give his half time analysis. I should imagine Townsend did not see the inequality of the situation, despite the fact he was in a Ford transit in an empty NCP, whilst the rest of the gang would be inside the 80,000 strong San Siro. Then again I don’t think he actually knew what a tactics truck was, seeing as tactics and vehicles are two concepts that go way above his head.
So please TV executives up and down the land, stop this madness and give back the decency to football. Please shorten MOTD, so that 50 something’s of Britain can wait less time to join their partner in bed and not have sex. PUNDITRY HAS GONE TOO FAR.

ROAR Covers

A dangerously obvious one here, but a topic i feel must be brought explicitely to light.
Now, Kings doesn't have the greatest track record of instigating and maintaining a student-led fourth estate structure. Even those rotten stinkers at UCL have done better, having as they do a student radio station which is going fm this week. The good man Drummond's alleged attempts at the setting up of something similar here only descended into murky threats of speech only podcasts.
Now, you may cry, surely Kings has Roar! But then you would have to sit quietly and consider the stupidity of your ejaculations. Everyone knows Roar is terrible. From its trite, underwhelming attempts to take on a glossy magazine format instead of a respectable, London Student esque newspaper guise, to its endless, boring articles on Rag week, cringing pieces on sex and dating, and ill advised attempts at humour, the paper is even more of an embaressment to the college than the badly dressed engineering students streaming in and out of the campus doors every morning. But of course, everybody knows this.

The icing on the proverbial cack here is the fact that, before even sifting through the cretinous garbage inside (except of course for the music section, as Vinny and I have written for it, saving grace and whatnot), one must first face down the cover. Offensive as the basic templated set out and tabloid fonts are, what most brings a tear to the eye and an upsurge to the gullet, is the godawful images of too many drunk medics in school uniform quoffing snakebite (does anyone outside of the first year even drink this?) and generally looking rowdy, obviously either at Phase (eurgh) or Walkabout (euuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurgh), which always seem to grace the cover. Must this be the face of our college tome? Whose fucking ridiculous idea is it to put this on the front of it? Who is this appealing to, aside from other drunk medics, who still consider a school disco night (replete with thos appalling dots on the cheek which all the most loathsome pencil on) a legitimate form of entertainment? It's a disgrace. (Ammendment) As anecdotal evidence of the preposterousness of the whole thing, when i returned to the heady nightlife of a Southampton University student 2 years after i left, i was reminded why i initiated my departure. Standing on a table at one particular dive of an establishment (Jesters, obviously), i saw an overweight, badly dressed student chugging from a jug of snakebite, simultaneously keeping one hand shoved firmly down his pants. I dont mean to make too scathing a comparison, but the individuals on the cover of Roar are, i fear, only one uncropped picture away from this kind of behaviour. But i digress.

The humanities department has some of the finest looking young people in London in its ranks. This should be made use of. Likewise the fact that the outside of the Maughan fucking owns now that the scaffolding is off. How can the good students of the Strand maintain a straight face and an ounce of dignity when this is how they are being represented at a base aestetic level? Im sick of it.