The Daily Novel

Since I have been writing this blog co-incidences seem to be happening to me all the time. So much so that I am beginning to think that God might actually exist. And that he might be running my life.

Take this morning, for instance.

I turned on my green-friendly wind-up radio in the bedroom, hoping to listen to Radio Four. Some unseen hand had moved the pointer to a pop station. I fiddled around. Radio Four seemed to have disappeared. So I settled for the World Service. The first item I heard was the breaking news of the arrest of a suspect for the murder of Hrant Dink, the Armenian journalist, about which I had been thinking of blogging on.

When I eventually got down to the breakfast table my wife was reading Page 13 of The Observer, which contained an article by Jasper Gerard, an ex-City University journalism student. I knew that, but what I did not know until I read the article, was that he was an Armenian.

After breakfast I sat down to write my blog. The very instant I was typing in the word ‘boss’ my wife appeared in the room. That struck me as funny because that is what I call her for all the obvious reasons. (She runs the house and frequently tells me what to do, like put on a clean shirt when I am off to mix with the great and good.)

She told me we must go instantly to my daughter’s house where we were expected for morning coffee. As we drove up Denis Campbell appeared at the door bearing his baby child. Like Gerard, Campbell is both an Observer journalist and an ex-City University journalism student (class of 1991). Campbell told me he had just been reading a hatchet job on Gerard in the Private Eye. So he ran upstairs and gave it to me.

When I told my daughter, Holly, about this she said sceptically; ‘Dad, Denis is always coming out of his front door.’ So I better leave aside matters of divine intervention and concern myself with things I really know about like journalism and Private Eye.

The Gerard article is in their Hackwatch slot in issue number 1175. I could not find it on their web site, so if you want to read it you have to buy the printed version. It is a hatchet job par excellence.

The thrust of the article is that Gerard, far from being a ‘brilliant new columnist’ is a ham-fisted half-wit who’d be more at home on the Daily Express.’ They see it as an example of the tabloidisation of The Observer; ‘Amongst Observer readers, fears grow that “Jasper Gerard” is the new pseudonym of Gerry Bushell.’

To be fair to Private Eye Gerard does occasionally let his sense of humour run away with him, so that he becomes downright offensive. There is one quote in their article, which I remembered being disgusted by at the time I read it. After making the point that the Suffolk murder victims were particularly vulnerable because they were drug addicts Gerard wrote that the solution was to stop the Afghans growing poppies and then he added; ‘if farmers still sow fields of poison, bomb the buggers’.

On the other hand, I was not all shocked, when Gerard referred to Jordan’s breasts, ‘which have, by their very high standards, not had enough exposure this year.’ And I thought Gerard’s satirical article about Christmas was very funny. He said it was dead, ‘killed by us, nailed on the cross. Brent Cross.’ Later in that article he wrote:

‘The jury might be out on Christ, but you don’t need to be a wise man to see Christmas has risen again.’

Not a few Christians I know would not have been offended by this. Most would have agreed with the salient point that commercialisation has killed the Christian message. We have made shopping malls like Brent Cross into the temples of our age. Where the multitude are wooed by their favourite Christmas carols as the tills ring up the takings.

I think Ruth Gledhill, the Religion correspondent of The Times, probably shocks more Christians than Gerard does. Remember her article about the fatness of our Archbishop? Look at her latest story on Jade’s eviction and you will see what I mean. She is sometimes deliberately populist and provocative. But her long and mostly serious articles are read by far more people than any other Times blogger. And the God Slot is not exactly the most read section in newspapers.

In conclusion, Gerard is not that different to many of the other young humourous writers in the Guardian/Observer camp. They occasionally offend me by using words like ‘bollocks’ which I cannot write without hesitating. That is a generational thing. But I would rather be provoked and shocked than bored.