Who is Kaiser Soeze?
Like it, loath it or remain indifferent to it, it’s generally accepted that the Harry Potter books are a publishing phenomenon. Speaking as somebody who started reading them before the hype really started (I read about them in The Guardian, the point of the article being that Bloomsbury had taken the unusual step of publishing this book with child and adult covers), I was quite pleased to see them become more and more popular and think that the midnight release thing is quite cool.
After a night on the toot, I was passing Tesco at midnight on the night of the last book’s release and called in, with all the other children high on sleep deprivation and excitement, to pick up my copy. What was fun about it was that the security guard at the store, no doubt used to wrestling people trying to shoplift frozen chickens to the ground for his £5.52 an hour, was standing beside the carton he had no doubt just ripped open with the style of the Queen unveiling a plaque on a new school, smiling and looking pleased as punch. The whole episode was quite charming.
The problem was always going to be the embargo and avoiding spoilers with the last book - with Bloomsbury unable to threaten a Howler or, worse, no access to the following volumes in the series, on anyone who released plot details and so on. The news reports that reviews of the book released ahead of its publication include spoilers, the question is…why?
The answer is, because the people who do this sort of thing are shits. There has always been the sort of people who take their seat in the cinema for a performance of a movie that hangs on a plot twist, and stage whispers that twist it to a friend - from Psycho to the 6th sense, I firmly hope that such people were battered to death with clubs crudely fashioned from popcorn containers and the legs of cinema chairs.
The collection of news to print in newspapers costs money, you have to send journalists to many pubs where they ply informants with drinks until the story comes out (trade secret - shorthand isn’t actually shorthand, it’s just a collection of indecipherable squiggles penned while pissed). So much easier just to flip to the last chapter of a book, piss all over the expectations and excitement of children and go down the pub.
I speak with authority, as the man who told his nephew, on Christmas Day, that Santa did not exist (oops!), that this sort of spoiler is a crass act. Whatever else the HP books may be, they are entertaining for kids. I can, however, understand why certain types would want to spoil that - it’s because the same defective character trait that led them to be the sort of journalist that hates the rest of the world, yet doesn’t realise how much more the rest of the world now hates them, and thinks they have scored a point. By spoiling things for children.
Do you know what they do to that sort of person in prison?
After a night on the toot, I was passing Tesco at midnight on the night of the last book’s release and called in, with all the other children high on sleep deprivation and excitement, to pick up my copy. What was fun about it was that the security guard at the store, no doubt used to wrestling people trying to shoplift frozen chickens to the ground for his £5.52 an hour, was standing beside the carton he had no doubt just ripped open with the style of the Queen unveiling a plaque on a new school, smiling and looking pleased as punch. The whole episode was quite charming.
The problem was always going to be the embargo and avoiding spoilers with the last book - with Bloomsbury unable to threaten a Howler or, worse, no access to the following volumes in the series, on anyone who released plot details and so on. The news reports that reviews of the book released ahead of its publication include spoilers, the question is…why?
The answer is, because the people who do this sort of thing are shits. There has always been the sort of people who take their seat in the cinema for a performance of a movie that hangs on a plot twist, and stage whispers that twist it to a friend - from Psycho to the 6th sense, I firmly hope that such people were battered to death with clubs crudely fashioned from popcorn containers and the legs of cinema chairs.
The collection of news to print in newspapers costs money, you have to send journalists to many pubs where they ply informants with drinks until the story comes out (trade secret - shorthand isn’t actually shorthand, it’s just a collection of indecipherable squiggles penned while pissed). So much easier just to flip to the last chapter of a book, piss all over the expectations and excitement of children and go down the pub.
I speak with authority, as the man who told his nephew, on Christmas Day, that Santa did not exist (oops!), that this sort of spoiler is a crass act. Whatever else the HP books may be, they are entertaining for kids. I can, however, understand why certain types would want to spoil that - it’s because the same defective character trait that led them to be the sort of journalist that hates the rest of the world, yet doesn’t realise how much more the rest of the world now hates them, and thinks they have scored a point. By spoiling things for children.
Do you know what they do to that sort of person in prison?
Labels: Evening Standard, Harry Potter, Media, Newspapers
1 Comments:
I suppose you would know since you ruined Christmas.
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