Myles na gCopaleen, as we all know, was a genius. Despite not being a real person, he managed to be charming, hilarious and a true upside-down thinker. What’s more is he managed to convey all of this in a postage stamp-sized column in a fairly mainstream publication – The Irish Times – while remaining largely unedited.
The Skinny have recently relaunched their website and, in a scrabblingly desperate bid to increase ‘content’, have included six articles by your humble narrator which had previously been spiked.
The only thing remaining unpublished is an article I wrote about a Will Self event in which I blamed the audience for the event being rubbish. “The people of Glasgow are idiots,” I wrote, “especially you”.
It’s heartening that the Skinny‘s in-house necromancers saw fit to reanimate my dead articles but as with any return from the grave, my aborted babies have come back all wrong.
I’d go as far as to say that my stuff has been edited beyond all recognition. In a review of the Tamara Drewe anthology, an entire paragraph about Fred Bassett ruining Christmas has been removed, as has a funny attack upon the comic strips in Metro. In a review of a John Shuttleworth gig, some funny stuff about Shuttleworth in space has been removed.
In a move far worse than erasing my jokes, they’ve actually added one. It’s the moronic “try looking behind the sofa” line in this article about comedy venues. The shitty title is theirs too. (Though astonishingly they kept my “out of the bums of tramps” closing line).
Making me sound like a cardboard chicken by removing any semblence of intelligence is bad enough but to put words in my mouth (and I do not think this is hyperbole) is tantamount to rape.
Not content with removing my personality, they’ve actually replaced it with another one. Being lobotomised is one thing but to have an entire brain scooped out and replaced with that of a Chartered Accountant is another.
So I’m looking for somewhere else to publish my not inconsiderable wit. Any suggestions?