No 3588 Set by Leonora Casement
So Janet Street-Porter wants "things" treated "seriously and wittily at the same time" in future. We asked for a piece from the new regime at the Independent on Sunday written accordingly.
Report by Ms de Meaner
Not too good this week, given that quite a few of my reliable (reliable!) regulars went off on weird journeys of their own making. I mean, here is darling Anne Du Croz's idea of what a Sindie piece under our Janet might be like: "Today your roving editor's visiting Gleeson Stroke Rehab Ward. It's pulled itself up by its splint-straps - upped its turnover rate. Heave-ho, sister! Cool! What a pong! Don't know how you do it: always smiling, while they're all wailing and popping their clogs . . . Hello Sidney! Speech not back yet? Godawful not being able to talk . . . " Hmmm. £12 to Will Bellenger and Peter Lyon; £20 and the bottle of fizz to Ian Birchall.
This week the Secretary of State for Health announced that the government is planning to reduce deaths by around 300,000. Suicides are also being cut by 20 per cent, presumably as part of the overall total.
This is a magnificent start to a programme that will surely be ongoing. But up to what point? one asks. Shall death altogether have no more dominion? Realism suggests that this is unlikely, for new Labour can hardly hold power indefinitely, and the Tories would unquestionably reverse the process.
It is exciting to realise that, as matters continue, success will feed on itself. What potential suicide will now wish to go through with his decision while this benevolent government beckons him to life, admittedly without beef on the bone, but gifted with ministers who have power to cure all manner of diseases?
Our humbler brothers of the animal kingdom are not forgotten. Even the foxes are soon to feel free from the pains of death. One can look ahead to a world of centenarians and furry friends, one nobody any longer will wish to leave.
Peter Lyon
Television drama isn't historical any more; it's hysterical. You used to be able to bank on accounts of kings and queens becoming too uppity for their crowns or a good battle or even a few frills and spills from the costume department. When you caress the zapper these days, you get the screaming ab-dabs, usually from something young, northern and smutty.
This is something we should all take seriously. Do we want our culture to be scruffed up like this, with expensive hair-dos replaced by expensive air-heads? You're right. Of course we do. For far too long the goggle-box has been occupied by posh frocks and plush furnishings. We've had to suffer interminable chaise longueurs. There are three nines in 1999, and we should be dialling all of them. Television is a necessary inanity, a sponge to expunge the curses of work, shopping and sex. The quiet subtlety of butlers, rectors, chancellors, debs and dukes is an aggravation we could do without. When the day is a screech owl, the night needs to be a violent siren. It's therapy. It's in your face, where television drama belongs.
Will Bellenger
No 3591 Set by Grace Elegy
Let's have another oldie. You enter the party and there floats across the room a remark that makes you wish you hadn't come. The most famous line from when the comp was last set was: "Sir Geoffrey's on sparkling form tonight." There is no limit to the number of entries you may send in, and the deadline is 12 August.
E-mail: comp@ newstatesman.co.uk
A funeral is a serious - one might say grave! - occasion. Yet the burial of our editor, so soon after her appointment, was not a time of solemnity. As newly recruited humorous columnists clustered around the coffin, it seemed that, though dead, she had kept all her wits about her. If Oscar Wilde had observed her loyal staff marching behind the hearse, he would surely have described them as the unreadable in pursuit of the unbearable.
Throughout the service I had the sense she was watching us from the Other Side (and I don't mean the Observer). I reflected on the brilliance of her tragically interrupted career - how one who began by stirring shit had ended up, so to say, interred. Like a Virgin train, she had not gone all the way. And, like so many journalists before her, she had finished up on the bier.
But I must stop rambling (just as she has been obliged to do). As the priest intoned "Ashes to ashes", we were delighted to hear him quoting Mr Bowie, our new editor. Let us hope that, unlike his predecessor, he will not perish as a result of poor circulation.
Ian Birchall
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