As most people will know by now, Damian Thompson is leaving the Daily Telegraph after an entirely amicable beating up by "self-content officer", "editor-in-chief" and "supreme commander", Jason Seiken. This blog has been given exclusive rights to the Dame's last Telegraph column, the one that was never actually printed.
Jason Seiken - he wants you to consume great content. Or something.
Just what is happening at the Telegraph? Mekon lookalike Jason Seiken has sacked nearly all the staff and from now is going to write the entire newspaper himself. However, all is not lost: reports are coming in that my friend Brainy Gordon is still on board. Brainy is known for her tasteful memoir The wrong knickers; some have compared her descriptions of the angst felt by young ladies seeking men to Jane Austen at her best ("Fie, Mr Bingley! You have sent me the bloomers of Lady Catherine de Bourgh by mistake!"). Brainy is said to be working on a sequel, to be called The wrong bra, or My cup runneth over. My spies tell me that she is in line to become the new business editor of the Telegraph.
Professor Gordon. The badge reminds her how to spell her own name.
I myself am moving on to pastures new. After giving the best years of my life to the Telegraph and recruiting such star bloggers as James Delingpole, David Lindsay, Martin Salter, Gerald Warner, and George Pitcher, I have decided to take my talents elsewhere. Of course I do have my regular column at the Spectator, in which I introduce readers to composers they may never have heard of before, such as the "three Bs" - Bach, Beethoven and Mozart - but this hardly pays enough to keep me in CDs.
So I am currently weighing up various offers: the Australian Pottymouth Gazette, incorporating Rolf Harris's Kangaroo-tying Weekly, is looking for a new correspondent specialising in Catholicism, cupcakes and custard, and I may be in with a chance there. Alternatively, my old friend Cardinal Vincent Nichols has been getting a bad press lately - mostly from me - so I am thinking of offering my services as his new press officer.
Of course, since he suppressed the Protect the Pope blog, Bishop Campbell has also started feeling unwanted. I have written to him, offering to revive the PtP blog, leavening its usual heretic-smiting with a few witty anecdotes about Gladys Mills and Noele Gordon (mother of my friend Brainy!) We'll see if he bites!
Bishop Campbell asks for an extra helping of custard.
One of the great things about my blog is the number of daughter blogs that it has inspired. I regularly read Mundabor's blog, although I don't really understand his references to Pope Quisling and the Sodo-Nazis - I think they must be some sort of rock group.
I even read Bosco's blog!
Then there are Catholicism Pure and Simple, Eccles is Saved, All along the watchtower, the donkey man, etc. Of course my favourite blog of all is On the Side of the Angels, written by my great friend the Archbishop of Corby.
Dude, aren't you homologising the contradictorily monolithic contextualisms of mimetic space, by disregarding the tensely granulated actualities of logocentric wholeness?
So, what else is happening at the Telegraph? There's still a strong religious presence, both from the slightly silly wing of the Catholic Church (Tim Stanley) and the Monster Raving Pelosi church (Cristina Odone); Geoffrey Lean (aged 107) is there to warn us of the dangers of a new technology called the "horseless carriage"; and Dan Hodges is ready to give his expert opinion on the World Cup (apparently England are hot favourites), UKIP (not likely to get any MEPs), and Ed Miliband (a man of impeccable table manners).
The affable Dan Hodges.
Although I am sorry to let my blogging sheep wander unattended, I have every confidence that they will continue to generate click-bait by writing controversial articles, such as "Do Muslims cause climate change, or should we be blaming Steve Gerrard?"
So, farewell to all the readers of my blog, most of whom were banned long ago by my zealous team of Sri Lankan "muddlerators" (thanks, Eccles!) as soon as they said anything intelligent. I'm not generally in favour of euthanasia, but I've arranged for the last remaining trolls - mainly mollusc-molesters, Dawkinsites, incognito deacons, Fabian teenage girls, and of course a coach-load of "Phil" sockpuppets - to be sent to the Lord Falconer Death Camp, as they clearly cannot live without me. Byeee!
Freed from the evil Telegraph Empire, Damian looks 20 years younger already!
If OTSOTA is an archbishop, then I am the Queen.
ReplyDeleteI have known Damian since the early 80s.He worked in the holidays as an assistant in Faulkes the Furriers at Fiveways, on the Hagley Road until the dread day when dear, dear Noele was in for a fitting of her new ferret stole and caught him fingering her discarded Beaver Lamb which she had thrown carelessly across a chair in the fitting room while she wrestled with her girdle. From the fastness of my own changing cubicle, where I was being riveted into an ocelot basque by an off-duty welder, I could hear the anguished screams of both parties, and by the time Benny and Miss Diane, who were returning from Vespers at the Oratory, arrived on the scene, and broke it up the fur was flying up and down the road as far as the Plough and Harrow. I can safely say that in this instance, the parting was far from amicable. Damian dashed across the road to Tescos, and headed straight for the patisserie section with Benny's trademark knitted hat pulled down over his winsome features - and he was last seen heading towards Handsworth on the 11C, having cleaned out the entire counter of vanilla slices.
ReplyDeleteAs for Brainy Gordon - I hired her many moons ago to ghostwrite my autobiography. I explained en passant that I had a fake franciscan living in my shed who came out at night and stole the bloomers from my rotary drier. She looked pensive and disappeared. Next thing I saw she had her own book out - in which she had stolen and sexed up an everyday story of an imaginary Witch Empress living in retirement in a Stockport suburb. My chaste pursuit of Drayton Parslow from Husborne Crawley had been turned into a torrid affair with Russell Brand, and my stout Army & Navy undergarments had been transformed into wispy nothings from Victoria's Secret. Cami-knickers? In Stockport? In the foothills of the Pennines we have to wear three pairs of Damart to donkeystone the steps, or we get a chill on the kidneys.
Dear Sir,
ReplyDeleteSince Dr Thompson has now been amicably sacked from Daily Telegraph blogs, the demise of his ghastly column also thankfully means the demolition of a raucous rallying point for those traditional Catholics who still cannot accept the Pinnocchio Mass as the glorious pinnacle of two thousand years of liturgical innovation.
Yours etc.,
Ferdinand Mass-Trousers,
Episcopal Liaison Coordinator, Tunbridge Wells ACTA
The way is now clear for real Catholic comment, rather than absurd Brideshead queenery centred on someone who has devoted her life to damaging the Church by means of malicious gossip.
ReplyDeleteDarling eccles, can we have a whip round for phil and co? I have a whip if someone wants to come round and use it on them :) xx Jess
ReplyDeleteDear Madame,
DeleteHere in Tunbridge Wells ACTA we have been looking for exactly such an opportunity to combine liturgical dance and the penitential rite for some time. Do you take away bookings or must we come to you?
Ferdinand Mass-Trousers
Extreme Form Mass Coordinator, Tunbridge Wells ACTA
In view of the recent entirely amicable parting of the ways between the Tablet and Robert Mickens, I expect that august Journal of Record is now looking for a new Rome Correspondent. What better job could there be for Dr Thompson? I am worried about reports of the Holy Father’s significant weight gain since taking office. Could it be due to a liking for custard made with double cream? Are cinnabons available in Rome for the Secretary of the (soon to be suppressed) Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments? Dr Thompson could tell us of all that delicious Italian wine he was not drinking. Who better lo lurk (rather than loiter) outside meetings of the Council of Cardinals, with his old mate Cormac? Come on Ma Popehate, give the lad a job.
ReplyDeleteNear the American College there is a little dive where seminarians sneak to scarf down Walnut, ripe pear, and Gorgonzola Pizza. My godson, a seminarian, took me there, and over an al fresco dinner, a prof from the NAC expatiated on how Tabasco sauce bottles made the ultimate holy-water dispenser. The right size for holding in the hand, the hole just right for perfect drop dispersal. . .. .now I am addicted; yet here I sit in soggy England dreaming of ripe pear, walnut, and melted gorgonzola pizza on a crisp pizza base. . . . I now keep a Tabasco bottle of Holy Water ready for action on the hall table. . . ah, fond memories of Rome!
DeleteBruvver Eccles, it's rather simples -- the [i]Telegraph[/i] is simply becoming the [i]Telegraph[/i] again, and has given up trying to fill the void left from the Thatcherite destruction of the [i]Times[/i] during the Falklands War ---
ReplyDeleteFrom today's (online) front page :
[i][b]I was addicted to sex with married women[/b]
As a young man, Akhil Sharma revelled in the most dangerous of liaisons, having sex with other men's wives – until the thrill began to pall [/i]
---
Can I be the ONLY one in here to remember that this sort of TRASH was PRECISELY why no decent-minded person would care to be seen dead with a copy of this broadsheet ?
... RIP the British Press ...
Some of the comments here are so narcissistic - people with too much of nothing to say, advancing their egos, By the time I get to the third sentence I have to reach for a large glass of rich tawny port. That'sh shree glasshes already on thishpaje.
ReplyDeleteCreul words, bruvver Leong.
DeleteIt's the attention span - and the increasing cost of a bottle of port.
DeleteDamain has increased his custard consumption by over 200% since he quit the Telegraph.
ReplyDeleteI’m not sure that dear Brainy will altogether welcome the news. It might mean that she has less spare time in which to research the ever decreasing list of maladies of the mind with which she identifies but has not yet laid claim to.
ReplyDeleteBeing utterly self obsessed is not an easy life choice.It takes dogged determination.