I got the sack the other day from the London Evening Standard, where I’ve been a weekly columnist for about a decade. ‘Belt-tightening’, I was told: Osbornean austerity claims another victim. As Fleet Street sinks giggling into the sea, a mini-tradition is emerging for long-serving hacks to grumble in the Spectator diary about losing regular work. Here, in recent months, have been Rachel Johnson (heave-ho from the Mail on Sunday) and Lynn Barber (heave-ho from the Sunday Times), so it was nice of the editor to offer me the opportunity now it’s my turn. Distinguished company, and the ritual serves everyone. As Kingsley Amis wrote:
Life is mostly grief and labour
Two things get you through.
Chortling when it hits a neighbour
Whingeing when it’s you.
It’s not my financial wellbeing that concerns me so much as my psychological outlook. If you’ve been writing columns once a week for any length of time, you get used to having opinions on things — even if, like mine, they’re generally of the toothless liberal-democratic kind.
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