In the News

Friday early a.m.

"We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun...."

That was the header Jon Ronson chose for his last Human Zoo feature in the Guardian recently. I love that paper - so much great writing - and in bite-sized portions, being a newspaper.

There was the time Kevin Toolis wrote about his dad's funeral in rural Ireland - and the time Germaine Greer wrote about the sex education "scandal" in Cleveland I think it was.

I dimly recall....."When the children asked the nurse what oral sex was, they didn't want to know the ANSWER, they wanted to know if SHE knew the answer."

The glory of Suzanne Moore, always superb, except now she's gone elsewhere. And the quietly understated comments of Alexander Chancellor - who took a bit of getting used to! Yet now we have the fascination of the latest acquisition, Julie Burchill. Will she live up to her early promise? Will she find something interesting to say every week?

Whatever the answer, she has an ego burning brighter than even a Stella Nova - an essential attribute for any writer.

Think about it -- getting paid an upwardly mobile salary for just one page's scribblings - the effort of which takes up no more than half an hour. You're paid not for your typing, not for your writing, but for your very THOUGHTS! Imagine it....thoughts for sale! My God how I'd love it all back. There's no greater hit I've ever discovered.

It's going to be a great summer again. The best one since the summer of marijuana, those (my God was it four?) years ago. This one will be rich with love, prozaced with peace, and buzzing with excitement. You mark my words.

Some months later...

For more on screaming queens, supermodels, and the rag trade, read Julie Burchill at her finest.
"Men love you because you have a vagina. They don't give a damn about the Versace."
Reproduced in full for you, here.

However, it would be wrong if you got the impression that I only like women writers. Although I've reserved my most lavish praise for Julie, Germaine and Suzanne, there are one or two men also who can light my literary candle. Jon Ronson (yeahhhh) was always excellent, but he's now gone*** - maybe having run out of topics for his highly individual treatments. But David Stafford remains, writing a column called Staffordshire Bull, again in Guardian Weekend.

Whereas Burchill's unquestionably brilliant work is bursting with fear, anger and insecurity - the very Judy Garland of hackettes - Stafford always appears calm, sometimes to the point of drollness. But we know, we understand, how easily this too can mask a mind of terror.

Read him at his quirky best here.

***Jon Ronson emails me to say that he's not gone, just re-directed. (Honest - I'm not making that one up.) You might have read and seen his recent major articles and films on, among other things... Rev. Ian Paisley, Randy Newman, Moon Landing conspiracies, and Ku Klux Klan.