Blunt edges

I’m not quite sure which of the political weeklies has been the inspiration for His Master’s Voice, the new comedy series on Radio Four (Wednesdays) set in the offices of a true blue magazine, but I can assure you that life at The Blue Touch bears little resemblance to The Spectator. No one at Blue Touch ever seems to do any real work putting the magazine together — there’s no cursing about useless computer systems, no panicky ‘Hold the Front Page’ moments, no heated rows about headlines and cover images, and whether or not it’s OK to be quite so tacky about certain celebrities. The only thing I recognised was a quip about the Competition and the giving away of £10 and a bonus bottle of Scotch in return for ‘literary quips, philosophical limericks and a parody of Martin Amis’. Life at Blue Touch seems unchanged since the Fifties, and there’s barely any reference to the bold new designer world of blogs, podcasts and websites (which if said quickly enough sounds like a box of twisted root vegetables from Abel & Cole).