Open letter to 'The Guardian'

Dear 'The Guardian',

It's not me, it's you.

I'm leaving you.

There's no easy way to say it (actually there is, it's 'I'm leaving you', three simple words that economically convey an important message but which you would no doubt spin out to a five page splash in your weekend magazine or a themed special supplement or, even more likely, a recipe special featuring comfort food, meals for one and a way to make pot noodle using tears - and that's part of the problem), but there it is. Recently I've felt that we have less and less in common.

We used to have a lot of shared interests: incisive reporting, informed comment, Posy Simmonds. I'm still interested in all of those things but you appear obsessed with speculation, 'lifestyle', oh-so-funny columns, recipes and fucking, fucking, fucking Will Self.

There's something else you should know. For quite a while now I've been seeing 'The Telegraph'. We kept bumping into one another at friends' houses and it seemed that we had more and more in common.

Of course, we disagree about a lot of things, and at times I'm not at all sure if The Telegraph's views are sincere or ironic or simply intended to provoke reaction (usually spluttering disbelief) but The Telegraph has kept up to date with current events, knows what is going on in the world beyond a few South London post codes, and is more likely to print a story about rising tensions in the Trossachs than, say, a review of a DVD box-set of a tee vee show from the eighties that concludes that it was not as good as you remembered. Really? Well hold the fucking front page.

(I just want to make clear that I've never been with The Times. Well, a couple of occasions. But I never paid for it, it was derived free with my groceries. And it was overpriced.)

So I've been seeing another newspaper. But you've hardly been an innocent party in this yourself, have you?

Over the last few years you've had all sorts between your sheets. I could understand when they had something interesting to say, but when it became meaningless, that really hurt. 

As for your friends. Jesus Christ, I've seen the letters that they write to you. I thought that the columnists you hung out with we're spectacularly devoid of something to say, but the letters page is breathtaking - especially when a chain of correspondence involving bad puns runs over a number of days, or weeks. It's like being trapped in a car on an interminable motorway journey to hell where somebody has invented the shittest car game ever and you don't know whether to lunge for the door handle, the steering wheel or the gin.

But that's as nothing compared with 'Comment is free'. Three categories: people out to make a point about how clever they are; people who are happy at last that they have a place to leave uninformed political comments without being challenged; and the sort of person who thinks that white bread leads to global warming.

So that's it. You remain on the newsagent shelf and you have been deleted from the 'favourites' on my browser.

And here's the reason why. Even when, a couple of years ago, you published a column with no apparent trace of irony by somebody who said that they would push somebody under a train for eating a burger or something - the week after a woman was pushed under a train - I was prepared to overlook such behaviour. But last weekend you published an interview with a man who, after buying a too-tight pair of shoes, wears them painfully but does not walk in them, calling them his 'barstool shoes'. That's right, instead of throwing a bucket of shit over him and screaming 'REALLY?', you publicised what can only be described as twattery on a grand scale.

This is what Richard Littlejohn is talking about when he refers to 'Guardianistas' as being self-regarding twats. You made Littlejohn right! Fuck you!

Goodbye.

 PS. I would try to get custody of Steve Bell, but I don't want to take him away from his home.