A writer’s life is a hard one. There is toil, there is sweat, there is angst, and often, it is all for nothing. Only one’s faith, as one labours lonely as a cloud, ignored and obscure, provides a semblance of sustenance.
Unless, that is, you opt for the genre to beat all others – the confessional sex diary. Or poem. Or even novel. Better yet, why not embrace all three? So long as you’re prepared to spill the beans about your sex life, real or imagined, you’re guaranteed oodles of publicity (if not literary immortality).
Perhaps this was Deidre Dare’s strategy. If so, it seems to have paid off, for as RollOnFriday report, Ms Dare has bagged a newspaper column. Unfortunately, the aspirant scribe – surely the most famous unpublished writer in the world – has also lost her job with Allen & Overy.
Despite the global economic meltdown, Dare seems remarkably sanguine about her newfound unemployment. After friends sent a missive requesting attendance at Deidre’s “firing party”, the feisty wordsmith felt that a corrective email was in order. Thanks to RollOnFriday, we know that this is what she sent:
Dear All
I have been reminded that my situation is very serious and should not be taken lightly. Accordingly, this party will be re-named to “Deidre’s Very Serious Dismissal Party”.
Hope to see you all there,
DD
If that’s not a work of genius – under pressure, too – we don’t know what is.
Russia is very lovely place for a lot of strangers who are not able to get success in their motherland. To became a popular musician, actor, singer, you don’t need any talent, the wonderful thing, you don’t need charisma. You must have imprudent character, influent patron and sponsors. If you have it come to Moscow and become a superstar!
For a certain poet, an unspoiled stretch of seaside was like “the holy hush there is in the land on Christmas morning. The roads fairly empty, the sky almost free of aeroplanes and you begin to hear and see and smell once more”.
But who uttered these lines?
(It’s a Monday, and this is your starter for 10 – and yes, we’re fresh to the metropolis, from a coastal sojourn.)
The following words appeared in a Times article in 2003, about the paper’s recently departed Head of Legal, Alastair Brett. They’ve been doing the rounds in the wake of Brett’s sudden exit last week, though without attribution. Who, we wonder, wrote them? Two suspects present themselves – our own occasional scribe, Alex Wade, and Dominic Carman, son of the late, great George (an old mucker of Brett’s). Or was someone else the author? Whatever: the fact remains that Brett was a fearless, tenacious and excellent newspaper lawyer, a man whose commitment to press freedom coursed through every vein in his body. We don’t know the precise reasons for his departure, but he will be missed.
“[He] is known for his impassioned commitment to press freedom – so impassioned that he has been described as “certifiably insane”. Capable of an intimidatory snarl or two, and prepared to be stubborn, Brett is far from mad. He is erudite, charming (so the ladies say), and not known for sitting on the fence. If his sanity has, tongue firmly in cheek, been questioned, one thing not open to doubt is that Brett epitomises the old school Fleet Street lawyer”.
Pictured: Fleet Street - not the same as it used to be.
A curious observation leaps at us from Roy Greenslade’s piece about whether Conrad Black, shortly to roam the high-class hotels of the world again as a free man, will return to the UK and carry out his threat to sue his biographer, Tom Bower, for libel:
I somehow doubt that he would have the appetite, or the funds, to pursue a libel action, but Black marches to the sound of his own drummer, so he might just do that. Even if he did, my money would still be on Bower winning.
Hang on, Roy – what about suing via a no win, no fee deal? Funds or no funds, a CFA would see Conrad through – though maybe he’ll remember what happened to the last press baron who sued Bower. Anyone for Richard Desmond’s curious dalliance with libel?
Pictured: the kind of place in which Conrad Black may be spotted (if not at the Royal Courts of Justice).
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All OK for Desmond and Five
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Released almost a year ago, Spada’s groundbreaking research report, British Professions Today, is available for free download
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A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.
Πλάτων, Greek philosopher.