Observations on criticism

Like all journalists, I often daydream about being threatened with death over a fearless article I've written, like those tenacious, campaigning giants of the profession Woodward and Bernstein, Emile Zola and Lois Lane, Girl Reporter. Don't tell anyone but my own fantasy involves exposing a nest of neo-fascists in the House of Commons - this Fifth Column call themselves . . . drum roll . . . new Labour - and ends with me wounded yet impossibly handsome on Tower Bridge as the body of the chief baddie bobs down the Thames. I also cop the Nobel Peace Prize. If you're going to be intimidated for doing your job shouldn't it be for something shiny your mother can torment the neighbours with as well as something indisputably serious?

Last week my fantasy came true. Kind of. I was finally threatened with physical extinction because of a fearless article I'd written for this publication about . . . drum roll again . . . Keira Knightley. You read that right. Keira Knightley. Her. Pretty. Tombstone teeth. Makes Natalie Portman seem like a slut. I've farted in the face of danger by penning pieces on the UDA, gangsters in Brixton and illegal dumping of toxic waste - actually, not so far off writing about Keira - but it takes a review of a lousy performance in the flop thriller Domino to have my phone ringing off the hook with the old "your-days-are-numbered" number. And land me in the Daily Mail and on Sky News.

Not that the dire warnings lost me any beauty sleep. A tip for impending callers: never tell someone you're poised to remove their reproductive organs until after your voice has broken. And always have a witty retort ready. For instance, if you hiss "I'm a friend of Keira's and I'm going to gut you because you made her cry for 24 hours" be prepared with a killer one-liner when the unrepentant scribe murmurs, "Convincingly?"

Onto the bigger questions. This is the NS after all. How did the KKK - Keira Knightley Klan - scrounge my number? Did they ring every John Lyttle in the book and tell them to check their life insurance? What does this backlash say about our celebrity-enslaved culture? And is Keira cross that Domino is the biggest bomb since Hiroshima while rival English Rose Rosamond Pike's Doom tops the US film charts? No, wait. I take that back. That sounds celebrity-enslaved and I'm a future Nobel Peace Prize recipient. Aren't I?

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