Deborah Ross: Stop the news, please, I want to get off
If you ask me...
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Your support makes all the difference.If you ask me, and if you don't mind the tables being turned which, actually, seems only fair after all these years, I would like to ask you something, and it is this: could you stop the news for me, if only for a while, so I can get my breath back, and maybe my life, and before my figure goes entirely to pot? I know what'll happen if I carry on gorging like this: it'll go straight to my hips, and then take an age to shift, as it always does. So can you help? Can you?
The thing is, I am too greedy to hold back. Basically, I am stuffing myself. Last Friday, for example, I ate so much news that, come the evening, I was fit to burst. "No more!" I even cried, as I tucked into another helping of the BBC, 72 helpings of Twitter (so moreish!), a massive platter of Sky News and at least seven portions of that funny little fella who used to work for the News of the World, Paul Something-Or-Other who, I think, is meant to be their spokesman but just doesn't seem to get it, and has since been flayed nightly by Hugh Grant on what should now properly be called Hughsnight. I have tried to hold back on Paul Something-Or-Other being flayed nightly on Hughsnight but I can't, just can't.
Oh, help, please. Give me an hour off to walk the dog, at least? But, no, as News International implodes it just keeps coming with more hacking revelations and arrests and senior police officers dissembling and emails disappearing and all the attendant fantasies, like: what if the lady with the big red hair isn't allowed Frizz Ease in Holloway? How cruel is that going to be? And: what about all the News of the World journalists who now have no employment?
And: what about "a source" and "an insider" and "a close family friend", who have also worked so tirelessly for the paper over the years? (Apparently, "a source" and "a close family friend" bumped into each other at the Job Centre and one said to the other: "Bloody hell! Both of us in the same room at the same time? Who'd have thought it? Wow!" Meanwhile, the "insider" has managed to find work with Heat, which is a relief.)
And so, can you stop it? Before I'm obese and the dog keels over through lack of exercise? Thanks. I knew I could rely on you. I'd like to go out now, and should be back by 3pm, so if you could hold it all off until then, that would be excellent.
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