How to Lose Friends & Alienate People

Hmm, as if self-loathing hack Liz Jones isn't catching enough flack from her contemporaries and local Exmoor residents for her new book The Exmoor Files (brilliantly pastiched here), she's decided to have a pop at the whole of the glossy magazine industry, citing an article on beer to which I contributed in Easy Living as an example of how these publications are all going to pot!

Firstly, Easy Living, not really a glossy, and secondly does anyone think this woman could you be any more patronising?!

"I have just been reading the new issue of Easy Living and came across this article. I quote its beginning exactly: 'As an alternative to wine, I'd like to drink beer, but I haven't tried it since I was a teen! Where do I start?'.

"This in a magazine with readers who are supposedly older, professional, fairly well-heeled and, presumably, intelligent."

Yes Liz, they probably are intelligent which is why they are looking to change their drinking habits from high ABV wine to lower ABV beer, broaden their horizons and experience something new.

Honestly, it makes me want to weep sometimes that my profession gives people like this a platform - this is the same woman by the way who compared modern hairdressers to Guantanamo Bay - I'm presuming she also thinks a weekly manicure is a basic human right and that she's currently cooking up a crock on how orange jumpsuits are a crime against fashion!

I would heartily suggest that she steers away from topics on which she has no understanding in future - which, it would seem, pretty much covers anything to do with the real world for a start.

(Illustration by Neal Fox and appeared on the Guardian website )