[Shaun]

since I like quoting myself lately

There has been a surge of political opinion and critical ones too - ones that were formerly given to the likes of well-educated and informed devil advocates, beseeched upon them with trust that they knew what they were talking about. Nowadays, you pick up any newspaper/magazine, or click any web page, and the majority of columnists are celebrity guests.

A trivial example of this I encounter regularly is the monthly Sky magazine that falls through the letterbox. Now, being part of the Murdoch franchise it's inevitably going to be packed with mind-numbingly simplistic journalism and facetious nonsense, but, it's divided rather neatly into tiny morsels of arts, sports, film, drama, and so on.

However, my eyes fell upon the 'comedy section' which has rather generously been given to a Mr. Russell Kane.

Oh. Well what has he won? I assume a lot, despite the glaring handicap of never-having-heard-of-him. Get this, he was Newcomer of the Year in 2004 to the Laughing Horse [of course]. And erm, that's it.

Ah well maybe it's a populist decision then, they're hardly going to land Eddie Izzard for the gig are they?

Erm. He hosted Big Brother's Big Mouth for a week in 2007. He was on Live at the Apollo once.

SO HAS BLOODY EVERYONE.

Now, call it journalistic envy if you will but can you fucking blame me? The reluctance to blog and to even begin my forray into journalism traces back to this, this very iota of jealousy and cynicism. What chance do I have when even the smallest of positions are thrown carelessly to the vaguely-famous and flimsily-talented? I mean no disrespect to Mr. Kane, other than to say that my brief glimpses of him on my television portrayed him as a wannabe Russell Brand - a kind of endearingly energetic yet essentially irritating loud person whose immature approach to humour (see: Russell Howard) is inevitably going to appeal to the impressionable masses (oh, the bane of my life) because he's saying things loudly, which I don't want to say, because I have integrity and decency.