Odd this day
So, happy 10th anniversary to this headline…
I am indebted to Pete for bringing this vital piece of history to my attention.
Now, it seems to me that there are two approaches one could take to a piece of ‘news’ like this: laugh at it, assume it can never be explained, and move on. Or: search that headline and see what turns up. I hope you know me well enough by now to know that option one was, in fact, not an option.
At this distance of time, and with a local newspaper, this might have been a wild and perhaps grubby Essex goose chase, but in fact Mr Giles’ meticulously researched exposé is still live:
It opens routinely enough:
I’ve endured many dreadful restaurants in my time, but last Saturday was the worst.
…and then takes a swerve:
It wasn’t that the waiter/chef was rude, bossy and unhelpful — it was that he soiled himself in front of us and then proudly told us about it.
This seems unusual, to say the least. It is only when we read the next sentence that things start to fall into place.
We arrived at about 6am. To be honest, I wasn’t even hungry then, but he told me in no uncertain terms it was time for me to eat.
Clearly, the fact that no one goes to restaurants at 6am is intended to be a clue: this is not an actual restaurant review. It concerns a waiter/chef, “a rotund and brusque little fellow, just over 2ft tall with unkempt scribbles of ginger hair”, wearing “pyjamas …smeared with porridge”, who bellows at them about “LADY RAISINS” (“not a euphemism for … nipples”), presents them with sausages when they ask for ice cream and then:
He farted loudly, and said, with some degree of pride: “I’ve pooed.”
It’s signed off with the words
Sometimes imaginary restaurants, even if they’re terrible, can be the most enjoyable.
The whole thing is deeply odd, and there is no explanation of why it might be appearing in… well, any newspaper, especially a local one. The only explanation I have arrived at is that, given the dire state most of our print media are in (locals especially), perhaps a gap needed filling one day, the features editor offered to write a ‘funny’, and an editor said ‘yes’. The decision to plug it on the front page, just below the masthead, suggests a belief in the strength of the piece which the evidence doesn’t altogether bear out, but each to their own.
For my money, some of the comments are (albeit inadvertently) funnier, with one ‘Bernard Fatsack’ asking
are these people using LSD ?? What a load of old tripe, just go to your local take away to endure filth, rats, bugs and poe faced middle eastern men serving you tripe to fund their flash cars and intricate beards
Another ‘reader’ announces: “This guy is the features editor”, and adds:
I’ve set up a facebook page to get him sacked, Please like and share.
This amused me considerably more than the other Dave G column I clicked on, which includes the line
I have a colleague that my wife and I call Eggnog, but whose actual name is Eoghan.
Yes, the long winter evenings must just fly by. Now, you might quite reasonably want to suggest that this is not the weightiest Odd this day you’ve ever seen, and that I am in no position to be taking pot shots at other writers. And you’d probably be right. In a blog that tends towards inconsequential drivel, this does seem to have veered that way more than usual. And, let’s be honest, I owe Dave. I do rather like silly headlines.
This isn’t the best I’ve read, though. That would be
…which has never been, and will never be, surpassed.
